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This seems to be the type of cranky ass old person take that cohost loves so lets go.

There are a lot of shitty things about gaming. Exploitative and predatory micro transactions, terrible DRM schemes, addictive but shallow gameplay loops to feed point 1... But most problems we have in gaming are inevitable. Not that they can't be fixed, or overcome, but no one person or company could stop these things from initially happening. Ideas born from market forces.

... But Achievements, for something so unfortunately ubiquitous now... are kinda a weird idea? That we needed a... platform specific list of arbitrary accomplishments with their own, universal sound and popup message? It's easy to imagine a world where that didn't happen and arguably, it happened the only time it could happen.

When the 360 came out, we didn't have any idea what online services should look like. What did it mean to have a profile and friends on your console? Microsoft had an idea for "Gamer Score" (which, while it is a still existing niche is... something only weirdos talk about now) and needed a way to give that relevant, but neither of these things were inevitable. Nintendo still doesn't have them (Notably actually saying 'Achievements don't actually solve any kind of problem games have') and Sony seemed to only do it since it was a point used against them in the console wars. If Microsoft never added them, as they blindly stumbled around trying to figure out early online systems, it's easy to assume that they never end up happening. Despite this. Achievements are very much in the popular consciousness. And they suck.

One of the things that make them suck is that they're on a platform level. Microsoft and Sony require them, so unlike a lot of inevitable issues, they can't really meaningfully evolve away, or significantly change. Any change has to be within the the perimeters set down by those companies. Can't be like "You know what, this doesn't work for my game, I'm gonna pass" because Sony and Microsoft will whine until you pull some Undertale shit.

You can change when they pop up, but it's constraining to presentation. The thing with achievements is that they also get in the way of achievement-like systems made to fit the game. Want to have your own pop up and presentations in your own menus? You can do that, but it runs redundantly next to whatever the system forces. A nice thing I worked with once was the gamejolt API. I Wanna Be the Guy's Trophies are handled through gamejolt, but gamejolt has no system to display them. It's entirely up to the game. It was fun, and let to a lot of gags. You can do gags with normal achievements, but you lose something. Gaiden had marked positive and negative achievements and image gags. The image gags wouldn't work on a Microsoft console, and the positive/negative split doesn't fit Sony's tiered 'trophy' setup.

They also steal player attention. Many players put way too much focus on achievements, whether you want them to or not. You could have really lame achievements to try and not influence how the player plays at all but... that makes people mad. Or you could have achievements that are hard and represent real achievements... but... that makes people win. People are out there that are OCD and want to clear everything, whether it's healthy for them, so putting "level 1 no damage run, fists only" as an achievement might actually cause some people mental distress. Which like, sure, there is always going to be design patterns that hurt people, even if its fine for 99.9% of players but... these things don't meaningfully add anything that games couldn't add to their game themselves if they wanted it. People will defend achievements like "Oh but it encourages players to play games in different ways or engage with different mechanics" as if that... wasn't something... games could already do... in.... countless ways. Including this one, if they so chose.

It's just this weird, vestigial thing that can't die because just enough gamers care a little too much about them.

On Steam and pass on them? People on your steam forums are probably going to cry. A lot. Even though they're a weird nerd and no one has probably ever looked at their steam trophies outside of maybe to check if they've finished a game. Also you're giving up money because people will buy games to get easy achievements to get POINTS, which makes me feel SO WEIRD. As a game dev it's like if I baked pastries and I found out that people would buy some and throw them out, just because they wanted to collect boxes. It's... actually kinda weirdly upsetting?

So you have this... weird social system no one actually checks, but influences the single player choices people make, that has mandatory requirements that you can't really change or control, that seems to only be important because people convinced themselves it was. They're like some weird vestigial zombie thing that no one would know to miss if it was never introduced to begin with. But now it's a mind virus to the level that people add them to retrogames, which... despite being TECHNICALLY super cool and crazy impressive is... Extremely lame.

... Oh and then finally, while I think the consoles are a bit better about this now, historically, turning off that notification was a pain. I remember on sony stuff for the longest time, the only way to hide the popup was to turn off all popup notifications. Sorry, not going to see you asked me to play Street Fighter because I don't wanna see popups in some other game!

And of course I'm venting about this now cause my steam settings reset and I'm reminded that the only way to turn them off on steam is to turn off the whole overlay. Which, fine, I don't use the overlay, but... it's just wild to me this is accepted?? and if you look up threads asking how to turn them off, you just get weird people like "Why would you want to do that???"

God they suck. In fact, suck is the perfect word to describe them. Exploitive monetization doesn't suck, it's disgusting and unethical. Achievements aren't either of those things. But they suck, and they didn't have to be. They are an answer to a problem that doesn't exist.

If I went back in time and erased them... no one would probably have ever noticed the difference. We're stuck with these stupid things because microsoft accidentally clicker trained a bunch of 14 year olds almost 20 years ago.

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