Gamer Rewards, Achievement and Trophy Madness

When it comes to gaming, nothing fuels more debates in my inner circle of gaming friends than that of gamer rewards: namely, Xbox 360 Achievements and PlayStation 3 Trophies. All of you reading this know about these virtual trinkets, no doubt, and I’m sure the opinions on them are as varied as each of your personalities. But are these “Gamerscores” and “Gamer Levels” really worth anything, even bragging rights? Does your Gamerscore/Level reflect true skill level, give you a sense of competitive edge over your Friends List members, cause you to brag at every point in gaming discussions, or cause you to do things you would’ve never done before, such as cheat the system to get more and more? Or is it simply a marketing gimmick used by companies to sell their games? To start, I’ll briefly look at each system and their pros and cons, then look at the marketing angle of the idea as a whole.

Xbox 360 Achievements

I’ll start with the system that introduced it all: the Xbox 360 and its fabled Achievement system, which contributes to something known as a Gamerscore. Gamerscore is a number that grows with every Achievement point tallied during in-game play time. On February 1, 2007, Microsoft announced that all future, disc-based games must have 1,000 Achievement points; less can be shipped, but anything added later must be free. As a result, all games have 1,000G worth of Achievements. Downloadable content (DLC) is handled by a different set of rules, and is not required to contain Achievements.

Achievements are obtained by completing in-game tasks. Lower-worth (5G-15G) Achievements may include simply completing levels as you progress through the story elements of a particular game or online in competition (multi-player/co-op play). Higher-worth (20G-100G) Achievements include tasks that are more difficult and less linearly obtained. For example, completing every other task may net you 900G, which itself is worth 100G to get you to 1,000G for a particular title, but getting to 900G may include beating a game on its most difficult setting, or by completing every mission, finding every upgrade, locating every location, etc.

One con with this system is that the Gamerscore number becomes ambiguous. Your Friends List will simply list out the total scores, which increases as you play games. If you compare your Gamerscore with your Friends, then and only then will you see a breakdown of each Achievement for each title. In other words, the total Gamerscore leaves you feeling numb. What does a score of 35,000 really mean? That you’ve completed 35 games 100%, or that you rent/buy a lot of games and play them “normally”? But it’s not reserved to the Xbox 360, this feeling. Let’s look at the PS3 Trophies.

PlayStation 3 Trophies

Sony had an advantage when creating the Trophy system…a year-and-a-half lag versus the competition. Basically, the Trophy accomplishment system is Achievements with a yummy candy shell. The Trophy system was launched with firmware update 2.40 in July 2008 on the PlayStation network. Similar to Microsoft, Sony required that all games ship with Trophies from January 2009 forward.

There are four types of Trophies: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, each contributing their own levels of experience points to the gamer. The experience (XP) is tallied via a percentage progress bar in the gamer’s profile. Once the XP hits 100%, a new level is obtained. Gold trophies are worth more XP than Silver, Silver more than Bronze, etc. Platinum is worth the most, but is ONLY obtained after nabbing all other Trophies in said title. In other words, Platinum is the 1,000G Achievement equivalent. Bronze Trophies amount to the 5G-15G Achievements; Silver compare to the 20G-40G; Gold compare to the 50G-100G.

How does this Gamer Level system differ from Gamerscore (360)? Easy answer: RPG-esque level-up progress. I can explain better with a real-life example, my own Gamer Level.

I’m currently at level 12, with 33% completion toward level 13. I have 9 Platinum Trophies, 42 Gold Trophies, 137 Silver, and 612 Bronze (800 total Trophies). I can tell you that leveling up happened a lot quicker at lower levels. From level 1-2, it didn’t take but maybe a single game’s Trophies to level up, probably less, and definitely didn’t require the Platinum. But now, at level 12, I’ve completed two games and am only at 33% toward level 13 – I’ve nabbed two Platinums during level 12. In other words, it takes a lot more XP to level up the higher level you are. It’s actually quite ingenious and familiar, since that’s how pretty much every RPG game handles leveling up. That’s why the system, to me, feels so much more personal and victorious…it’s why we play Borderlands, Final Fantasy 13, and many others. We want to grow and share our growth with others…some for nasty reasons, some for cool reasons.

Is there any reason why one would or should choose one of these systems over another? In my view, not really. Neither system is “better” because the end result is the same. But, I will say that the PS3 Trophy system is a bit more familiar and personal, not ambiguous like the Gamerscore system. Just an opinion, though.

Marketing Gamer Rewards – More Sales or Doesn’t It Matter?

Marketing takes so many shapes these days in our consumer society that it’s actually difficult to pinpoint a moment during my day where something isn’t trying to hook me in to buy it. Stadiums are named after banks and highest bidders now, not because the name implies some historic relevance or regional nostalgia. That’s why when the argument turns to “this is nothing but a marketing ploy by console manufacturers” in my aforementioned inner circle of friends, I have a hard time grasping what’s so surprising about that. I’m old school, and I accept marketing ploys in every form, I don’t resist them. Game publishers spend millions of dollars on advertising–even smelly turd games sometimes get over-hyped–so why would the addition of virtual rewards make or break a gamer’s decision?

The answer may simply be “mental programming.” We’re all programmed at an early age to be competitive and to rise above our peers in our endeavors. It’s what makes for better products and services. If company A didn’t feel the need to rise above company B, neither set of products or services would benefit, and neither would the consumer.

The question is: do Trophies/Achievements raise the sales numbers of games? In my humble opinion, I don’t think so, at least not consciously. If there were no corporate mandates in place that requires developers to include them, and simply left to developer choice, then I would say that there would definitely be a sales impact between games that include and don’t include them. But now that Microsoft and Sony require them in every game, does it really change anything? If you’re going to buy a game anyway, and all games include Trophies, then how would the inclusion of Trophies/Achievements play any role in your decision? For example, let’s take Killzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 – two games that have PS3 Trophies – and look at the decision-making process. Both games reside in the same genre (FPS), are the same price, and offer Trophies. Do you really think that a decision to purchase one over the other has a damn thing to do with Trophies?

One issue I do see is in Sony’s model. If you understand what I wrote about how the leveling system works on the PS3, you know that it takes more and more Trophies to increase your level the higher up the ladder you climb. In other words, where it may have only required one or two games to get you to level 2 or 3, it will take you seven games and lots more Trophies to get from level 12 to 13 (my situation). Now there is a marketing hook if ever there was one, but it’s not fully recognizable. For me to keep leveling, I need to exponentially increase the number of titles I play. Bam! Easy to see the marketing ploy at work here…definitely more of a ploy by Sony than Microsoft as you dig into it.

If you own both consoles, and prefer one system over another, then I can also see where a decision needs to be made that can affect sales, but if you’re talking the same title, who cares? In the end, I see no reason to believe that the inclusion of Trophies/Achievements in every game is a marketing ploy to increase sales. I have never heard of anyone buying one game over another in order to just score Trophy/Achievement offerings – unless, of course, said person belongs to a group of people who abuse the systems. More below…

Gamer Rewards in Pop Culture

With Xbox 360′s Achievements in particular, pop culture has taken liberties with poking fun via sarcasm. T-shirts, YouTube videos, and even bits on TV shows all poke fun at the Achievement phenomenon. I haven’t seen much poking fun at the PS3′s Trophies, but it wasn’t the first console on the market to offer them, nor are they as popular. I’ve taken the liberty of downloading a few funny Achievement and Trophy banners to share with you. I also purchased the RRoD Achievement Unlocked t-shirt at www.thinkgeek.com as a gag gift to my Xbox 360 friend. He laughed.

One issue I’m having with gamer rewards are some gamers’ methods of cheating the systems to score more points. One method is to rent games, play them for the rewards only, then brag about their score. Yeah, that’s fine, game rentals have been going on for some time now, and if you rent them nowadays, you can’t escape the gamer rewards. But there are some gamers whose sole goal is to rack up rewards so they can brag. If your focus isn’t on the experience, then you’re a Gamerscore W***e/Gamer Level W***e. I’ve also seen exploits in some games that allow you to bypass the regular method of getting rewards…in other words, cheating the system. There are actually gamers out there who are proud of scoring a Platinum Trophy in Buzz! Quiz TV without doing the work. Again, if your focus isn’t on the experience, then you’ve been brainwashed by the system and have no pride. You’re missing the point, entirely.

Another issue brought up during debates is a matter of skill. Do gamer rewards really measure skill? To me, this answer is both yes and no. As I stated earlier, you may be a casual gamer, but have a high Gamerscore/Gamer Level. If you buy a lot of games, or rent a lot of games, or borrow a lot of games, your score may be high due to the law of averages. You play a lot, so the chances that you earn a lot of the lower-worth rewards are high. So let’s say Gamer A has a 30,000 Xbox Live Gamerscore or a level 10 PS3. Take another player, Gamer B, who owns only a small amount of games, but gets the most out of them and completes them. Gamer B’s score Xbox Gamerscore is 15,000 or a level 6 PS3. Does that make Gamer B a worse gamer than Gamer A? Absolutely not. Does that make Gamer B a better gamer than Gamer A? Hmmm…possibly? Depends on too many factors. It’s a matter of budget and care. Some gamers don’t care, so they don’t want to complete every game to 100% before moving on. Some gamers can’t…I don’t have 100% on all my games. But, I challenged my one friend to get both Platinum Trophies in the God of War Collection. Getting those two was fiendishly difficult because of the Challenge of the Titans…sorry, but that took skill…patience and skill, but not a ton of time. I can’t defeat Radoc in Killzone 2 on Elite Difficulty; I just can’t. I’ve spent tons of time on it, but still can’t. Will more time prove that I can defeat him, or will changing my tactics and increasing my skill prove it? Who knows, but to say that dedication, focus, and patience aren’t skills is short-sighted to me. That doesn’t mean I’m a better gamer than my friend – not at all, no way – but it does mean I’m willing to do more with a game than normal to get my rewards, to get that feeling of completeness. Does it require more skill? Depends on the game, depends on the gamer, depends on the care/concern. I have games that support Trophies that I couldn’t care less about 100% completion…I also didn’t buy those games because of Trophy support, obviously.

Pop culture may one day dictate that we as gamers don’t need Trophies or Achievements, but in the end, is it really all that different from an Olympic athelete desiring a Gold Medal for his or her efforts? Think about it, the answer isn’t simple regardless of which side of the gamer reward aisle you find yourself…including the fence.