So is there an achievement system like 360/PS3 or is this just like Wii and 3DS?
I'm having a hard time understanding this.

So are we.

Sounds to me like it'll be closer to trophies/achievements, but it'll be totally optional.  I dont mind that at all.  What I do mind is that along with 'optional' comes freedom of how to utilize them.  Especially if it's points based, or it unlocks system-level rewards (think play-coins).  If there are no rules in place, you'll have stuff where mashing A in a game gives you 1,000,000 points, or where beating a game on super duper hard mode gives you 10 points.  As long as there is consistency between games, i'm fine with it.  If they are optional to devs, i'm fine with that, too.

Well, it's disappointing (I think.  Reggie's not being terribly clear here.) that the achievement system seems to be optional because a few 3rd party developers complained.  I really enjoy trophy hunting in my PS3 games, and I have a suspicion that Nintendo making this "optional" means that for all intents and purposes it's not going to happen for most Wii U games.  It's work that developers can easily cut out if they're short on time or resources, which for most projects is the case.

Hopefully it's not point based, whatever it is.  Gamerscores are impossible to interpret.  Did this person play a ton of games for 5 mins or completely master every bit of 5 games?  It's an almost meaningless number in the end.  Trophies are much better in that regard.


Mega Man 9's achievements are still the only ones that have ever hooked me. (Damn you, Mr. Perfect!)  I'm fine with them being optional. I'd much rather that than having half-assed achievements where the devs don't care.  Hopefully there's a bit of system level integration though.  It could be the kind of thing that'd be fun to see pop up on the Miiverse.

I'm glad they are including the option for trophies, but with that said I'm also glad they aren't forcing developers to use it if they don't want to. Sometimes its nice when games have achievements, but I don't think it should be forced. I think this was a good move on the part of Nintendo.

I was worried the Wii U wasn't going to have any achievement system at all, so this definitely puts my mind at ease that it is there as an option. Would it have been better for gamers if it was mandatory that developers use it? I don't know about that. If you put too many requirements on developers they may just decide to not support you at all. But its never a bad thing to have stuff be available as options.

Plus as we see on the PS360, when developers are FORCED to do achievements when they don't want to, they will do it in the most half assed and unenjoyable way possible.

And yet developers still eagerly support Microsoft (despite Achievements being mandatory this entire generation) and Sony (whose trophies became mandatory in 2009).  There's Steam Achievements on PC, too.

Brood, I don't think it only being optional is going to have much of an impact on how many games on the Wii U support it, and I will tell you exactly why: because in the case of multiplatform games the work for the achievements is already done. They can reuse the art from the other platforms and just copy and paste it into their Wii U port as well. So it would be a trivial thing for them to implement. Its not like they would have to make new artwork or whatever for each console. They just do it once, and then reuse it over all of them. Or they could just cheap out and use some generic artwork for every single achievement. I've seen a lot of games on the PS3 where every trophy shares the same image, which sucks, but at least its better than nothing I guess.

The only time where this might be a problem is in exclusive Wii U games which aren't multiplatform, so in those cases they can't copy and paste them from the PS360 version. But we all know 3rd party exclusives on Nintendo hardware are few and far between.

So the bottom line is even though in theory the feature is only optional, I think in practice it will be used in most cases. You also should take into account the pressure fans might put on developers to include them.

Having it optional is actually the best option.  Just as long as Nintendo has some standardized infrastructure in place so that it's easy to do.  I assume that's what they're doing because the Wii technically have optional achievements now.  There is nothing stopping you from programming them in your game.

How do Sony and MS enforce mandatory achievements?  I wouldn't want any in my game.  Could I get away with one single achievement when you start the game called "mandatory achievement Microsoft made me put in"?

Mandatory system standards.  All the console manufacturers have them for various things from achievements to crash-prevention, and if you fail to meet them, the respective platform holder won't allow your game to pass through certification.  You won't be allowed to publish your game if you can't pass certification.

No, because there's no such thing as a 1,000 point achievement.  Now, you could have 10 100-point achievements named such things, with a similar amount of Gold trophies for a Sony title.  Just see Terminator Salvation for an example of this.

The reason you want them to be standardized and system wide is so that all your online buddies/friends can be able to see them. You should be able to click onto one of your friends/buddies on the Wii U and pull up their profile and through that be able to see the achievements they've done, and they should be able to see yours as well. Having it being system wide puts it all together and helps it be more organized and easier to access.

So... a ****-waving contest?

Pretty much, yeah. But its all in good fun.

Yep, plus I've found achievement systems to be a good way to encourage me to do things I might otherwise not bother with.  I know I wouldn't have gotten as much out of Dead Space 2 (yeah, beat Hard Core mode and then tell me there's no survival horror in that game), the two Bioshocks, and the two FF 13s without them, that's for sure.

Thank god!!

So the requirement is a minimum amount of points then?  Well then I figure I would go with the minimum amount of achievements I could get away with and alternate them between being ridiculously easy and ridiculously hard (can I make "get 100% completion and then delete your save" an achievement?)  And I would make sure all the descriptions made fun of the whole concept and implied that Microsoft and any player that cares about achievements is a tool.  I just have a kneejerk reaction to anything that is mandatory for no good reason.  If Microsoft mandates achievements, then they suck and my company would put as little effort into them as possible.  And then if we had a really popular series that we knew MS wanted on their system, we would play hardball and refuse to put any in at all.  Like MS would let something like Call of Duty not be on their system if Activision didn't want to do achievements.

Basically, like Steam.

This sounds like Steam.  I'm ok with that.  I'm sure its not 3rd party moaning as much as people inside of Nintendo moaning about having achievements though I think Miyamoto would have a field day with achievements.

The minimum is 5 achievements per game and totaling 1000 points (of course, they now allow developers to go above that total when you add in DLC), which many early Xbox 360 games had (the first Avatar game was famous for achievement whores buying/renting because you could get all 5 achievements and a easy 1000 points in 5 minutes). Achievements are better than trophies because it's quick and easy to compare to others (for example). I wish Nintendo would require it, especially since most multplatform games will already have them anyways. Not a big deal, though it is why I often picked the 360 version of a game.

I'm glad Nintendo is taking a stance by making them optional. Maybe now people will get over them, and they can be used in fun ways that me play a game differently in stead of "# kills achievement" "completed story mission achievement" "completed story mission on hard achievement" etc.

Yes, prepare to feel inadequate.


What happened to playing video games just being fun? /oldtimer

When used properly, achievements can make a good game even better. I always use the example of Geometry Wars 2 on XBLA; the things those achievements made you do were new ways to look at the gameplay, and offered real challenges that you probably wouldn't have come up with on your own. Now, most games don't do it that well, but I'm glad Nintendo is giving the developers the tools to do them if they want to.

*Achievement Unlocked! - "Janus" - Hypocritically mock the features someone else cares about in a video game console despite always bitching about certain missing features yourself - 0 points.*

Ian isn't mocking the feature; he's mocking the policy of making said feature mandatory. I don't see how that's hypocritical. He even said he supports it being there as an option. Its the REQUIREMENT that he is griping about.

And he's not being hypocritical; as always, he wants Nintendo to conform to his personal tastes and mocks any opinion that goes against his own.

Exactly, Ian is also mocking anyone who likes or cares about achievements/trophies. If he doesn't like them, that's fine. But he shouldn't be acting like his opinion is the right one or better than those who like achievements (which as J.P. said, can be great when done well).

No, he wasn't. He was only mocking the policy of Sony and Microsoft where they were mandatory. I think he is fine with them being an option.

Okay, well that bit does looks like he was mocking achievement advocates... especially when you snip it out and quote it completely out of context.

In what context, exactly, is saying that anyone who cares about something is a "tool" not mocking anyone who cares about that something?

Well, I'll let Ian speak for himself. But the impression I got was that he was fine with achievement as an OPTION, and that bit you quoted was what he said he would do if he were a developer being forced to include them. When people are forced to do stuff they don't want to do against their will they will tend to do them the most half ass way possible, or deliberately sabotage it out of spite. That's why I agree that this shouldn't be forced. Its just like why having a military made up of volunteers gives you better results than a military made up of draftees. People who are doing something they don't want to against their will are going to half ass it, or even toss a monkey wrench in to fuck things up.

I'm fine with many things being an option... but that doesn't mean I don't have a low opinion of those who take that option.

To call everyone who likes said option a "tool" is mocking them... even if you do it in jest (as most mocking is done in jest).

I think achievements are silly so my hypothetical game would be mocking the concept because if I was a game designer I wouldn't want my game to have any.  But they are an expected feature these days so a console should support them.  But it should be optional and up to the developer to decide if their game should have them or not.  The fact that Sony and MS REQUIRE them is ridiculous.  This isn't like making sure the game doesn't crash, this is just dictating content.  It's as ridiculous as mandating online multiplayer in every game.

And I don't react well to being forced to do something that should be optional.  Thus, if I was a game designer, I would refuse to do achievements in a non-mocking way as a personal protest against Microsoft's ridiculous demands.  This would apply for practically anything.  If I had to use Kinect, I'd make it so the player has to finger the screen to fulfill the mandatory Kinect requirement.  If Nintendo, for some reason, mandated Gamepad touchscreen usage (and they don't thankfully) I would make you draw a mustache on a portrait of an Iwata or Reggie lookalike.  If you're going to dictate the content of my game for arbitrary reasons, I'm going to do so in a way that mocks you.

Your comment isn't just mocking MS/Sony.  You clearly attacked those who like achievements/trophies.

I said "And I would make sure all the descriptions made fun of the whole concept and implied that Microsoft and any player that cares about achievements is a tool."

I would make sure the description of the achievement implies that.  To mock the concept, my Microsoft mandated achievments would make fun of the player that worked hard to earn them.  My game would only have achievements because I'm forced to have them and then the achievements would make fun of those that earn them, so that any attempt to "show off" one's achievments would backfire.  Who wants to show off achievements that state they're a tool?

Just imagine some ridiculous achievement that involves an insane amount of mundane effort and time from the player only for the player's achievement to be called "Has No Life" and then mocks them for going to insane effort just to get some checkbox by their name for something the developer didn't want to do in the first place and only included because Microsoft made them.  Or imagine one called "Turned On Game" which is just so utterly meaningless that showing off that achievement would make you look silly.

"Care" is the key word.  I didn't say "like", I said "care".  If you're the sort of gamer for which achievements are so important to you that you really care about your "status" on Xbox Live, you ARE a tool and that's exactly what I'm mocking.  I imagine most gamers would find it funny that a game, in protest of mandatory achievements, had really silly achievements.  If you care so much about achievements that this would offend or upset you then your priorities are really goofed up and you are well deserving of mockery.

So...

I don't have a problem with achievements or the people who like them, but I think Ian's idea is pretty damn funny. I would have to give kudos to any developer with enough balls to do something like that, but imagine the backlash they would get from fans... and what would Microsoft do? Technically, they fulfilled the mandatory requirements imposed by Microsoft, but they did it in a blatantly insulting way which trolls both Microsoft and gamers alike. Would Microsoft take action?

It depends on the severity of the language and whether it casts the Xbox 360 in a particularly bad light.  I've seen some light jabs taken at Microsoft in the past that they've just ignored, such as a broken door in Bulletstorm that flashes the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death when someone tries to open it.  I think, though, that it would be less of an issue of Microsoft blocking the game in question so much as it would burn all your bridges with Microsoft cooperation on future titles so it would be incredibly stupid for a developer to taunt them with the achievements.

That said, there are jokes and movie references in achievement names all the time, so there's plenty of opportunity and precedence for levity in achievement names.  It all comes down to the language of the achievement names and descriptions whether Microsoft would have serious issue with them.