A Cure For The Achievement Whore

It’s a well-established fact amongst the writers of this glorious website, you guys the readers who visit each day (or whenever, I suppose) and pretty much anyone else who knows me with the exception of that weird lady across the road who stares at me each time I walk outside (although I can’t really blame her, considering ‘outside’ is a mystical land to me), that I am an Achievement Whore. Or ‘Pathological Completionist,’ as a friend puts it.

One of the great running jokes with the aforementioned writers is that I played Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters twice over for all of the achievements. I’m here to tell you all today that this accusation is not true. I played through it once, yes for the achievements, but still just once, and then sold it directly thereafter. In truth I won the game, so I figured I might as well be a gracious winner rather than one of those who arrogantly denies their prize or hands it off to someone else. Also: achievements.

According to Urban Dictionary, this is the best definition of an Achievement Whore: “Person who acquires XBOX 360 console games for the soul purpose of getting all of the achievements for that game to gain gamerscore.”

I reject that assertion, as always, and substitute my own: An Achievement Whore is someone who plays games, all games, regardless of whether they’re fun or not fun, easy or difficult, good or bad, cheap or expensive, new or old, with the sole intention of unlocking achievements to increment their GamerScore.

There. That’s better. And I spelled ‘sole’ correctly too.

The key difference lies in acquiring games only to unlock achievements. That’s not usually the case and I, for example, have never looked at LOST: Via Domus, King Kong or fucking Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Chapters and thought: “Yup, gotta play this. Easy GamerScore for me lolol.” Okay I might have thought the latter, but I never actually brought myself to actively acquire and play these games, nor would I. It’s cheap, degrading and there is no real sense of… achievement, when one plays such games.

GamerScore itself might just be some number to many but for Achievement Whores, it’s more of a monument to our sins than anything — ignore the reference, you fanboys. It’s a way of saying, “Look at what we’ve done in our time with our consoles.”

But like anything that starts off as a recreational activity, there is the potential for addiction and indeed many Achievement Whores will not give a second thought to purchasing and playing such games as Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Chapters, which, and I shit you not, gives you 1,000 GamerScore in mere minutes. Just so they can increment that magical figure which gives meaning to their lives and justifies their existence on this Earth.

In my experience when you deal with addiction, there are two ways to rid yourself of it; you either allow yourself to hit rock bottom, or (similarly) you allow yourself to do it in excess until you’re sick of it. Now the latter doesn’t always work, as is the case with heroine or arson but let’s say you really like the taste of a certain food. Spend one week eating just that, and tell me again how much you really like the taste of that food. Indeed after every drunken binge, the guilty party will profess the infamous statement of, “Never again!” before spending a week or two away from the stuff and then going back to it. Sometimes the effects are more permanent; I for example cannot bring myself anywhere near Zappa Liquorice… long story.

For many Achievement Whores, rock bottom would be the day they succumb to the craving and buy such games as LOST: Via Domus, King Kong and fucking Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Chapters, or worse yet, one of the Barby party games. However there are some who have played all of these games and more, and soldier on in their Achievement Whoring ways, so a different approach must be taken.

Herein lies my cure for the Achievement Whore:

Imagine if you will, a single game that has let’s say 1,000 GamerScore. We’ll call it Achievement Whore’s Paradise or something similar. Though I’ve always preferred Valhalla myself. This game will work on the principle of making the person do something until they’re so sick of it that they can’t stand to be anywhere near it any longer, and just to keep things constant, such a game will have sequels every few years for those with more hardy constitutions, or obviously future Achievement Whores.

This game will offer the easiest achievements ever found in a game, so easy in fact that you could unlock them all without so much as breaking a sweat. This would be to allure the Achievement Whore, baiting them in before dropping the avalanche that follows with no less than a thousand unique achievements. That’s right, 1,000 unique achievements worth 1GS each will unlock for a total of 1,000GS in this new game.

The player will start off happy enough, hearing that achievement pop sound — aka the happiest sound on Earth — and being giddy with excitement… at least, the first twenty times. There will be achievements for no real reason at all, whatsoever, unlocking so often that the player begins to fuss over what they are doing wrong, when they nervously clutch at their controller as the happiest sound on Earth engulfs them, consuming their souls and leaving them a cowering husk, but somehow still making them want to play more because, let’s face it, the achievements are so easy you can’t not. By the time they unlock their 1,000th achievement and complete the game, they will move over to a corner in their room and curl up into the foetal position, suckling at a bruised, bleeding thumb before crying themselves to sleep.

From that time and all times thereafter, they will cower in fear of the happiest sound on Earth as it mocks them and brings them dark reminders of their troubled past. They will eventually move on to other platforms, not PS3s because trophies seem too similar. And they will only ever buy the games they truly want, because those games are worth the painful reminders. And the Achievement Whore that once was, will be no more.

To help things along, I’ve compiled a list of example achievements that one might unlock in such a game:

Started the game.
Played for five seconds.
Used the Right Trigger once.
Used the Right Trigger twice.
Used both triggers together.
Put your Left Trigger in.
Let your Left Trigger out.
Put your Left Trigger in a second time.
Shake your controller all about.
Meet Peter Molyneux in the prologue.
Complete the prologue on any difficulty.
Pushed all the face buttons.
Pushed the face buttons in order. (This one, an ode to Guitar Hero)
Press the D pad up.
Press the D pad up again.
Press the D pad down.
Press the D pad down again.
Press the D pad left.
Press the D pad right.
Press the D pad left a second time.
Press the D pad right a second time.
Hit A.
Hit B.
Hit A a second time.
Hit B a second time.
Switch the game off by going back to the Dashboard.
Send a friend request while playing.
Accept a friend request while playing.
Delete a friend while playing.
Send a deleted friend a message while playing.
Invite a deleted friend into a party while playing.
Leave a party containing a deleted friend while playing.
Prefer a player while playing.
Thanked God for Jim Sterling in chapter one.
Complete chapter one on any difficulty.
Kill an enemy with a weapon.
Kill an enemy with a weapon you are wielding.
Kill an enemy without a weapon.
Kill an enemy without using a weapon.
Stand on a rock.
Give something to Adam Jensen in chapter two.
Complete chapter two on any difficulty
Follow your objective.
Follow your next objective.
Follow the following objective.
Complete all objectives.
Use grenades.
Use grenades on an enemy.
Use grenades on an ally.
Use grenades on yourself.
Visit Commander Shepard’s favourite store on the Citadel in chapter three.
Complete chapter three on any difficulty.
Swing a sword.
Swing an axe.
Shoot a bow.
Shoot using a bow.
Shoot Beau using a bow.
Crouch for five seconds.
Stand up after crouching for five seconds.
Attack someone with melee while crouched.
Crouch behind someone, then stand up.
Crouch over a dead body, then stand up, then crouch and stand up again.
Think with portals.
Think without portals.
Speak to Gordon Freeman once in chapter four.
Complete chapter four on any difficulty.

And so on…

To be honest I was pretty keen to just keep on going until I hit 1,000 achievements. Kudos to you if you read all of those, you silly person.

Every achievement is as easy as easy gets and the game will take a grand total of twenty hours to complete. Hopefully twenty hours is enough to get through 1,000 achievements or there might have to be DLC.

And there you have it. My cure for the Achievement Whore.

Satire aside, what do you guys think of this as a viable approach to Achievement Whoring? I’d really like to know. Perhaps Dean and I might get someone to make such a game (no Online Passes, don’t worry) on behalf of eGamer, or we might even do it ourselves. Look out for it, we’re going to be famous.