The Xbox 360’s achievement system was a good idea to give for us gamers. It let us track and record our progress in a game. If we unlocked one, it would reward us with Gamerscore which showed up on your profile. It was a handy little idea because it showed other games just how good you were at gaming. It’s fun to hear the bleep and look on your screen to see ‘Achievement Unlocked’. It gives you a strong sense of completion and makes you more implied to carry on enjoying the game.

However, there are some people that take this to the extreme. Some label them as ‘Achievement noobs’ or ‘Gamerscore whores’, or a mix of the two. This would lead in many feuds between people who aren’t really that interested. This is where I become a bit hypocritical, because I have a fairly high Gamerscore, but it really gets annoying to see people completing games within days just for their 1000G, or people buying games just for the easy achievements. I also read on a few forums of people getting a game and completely no-lifing their way to completing the game. It would’ve normally taken hours of game play spanned over weeks of playing, but these people seem to do it in a few days. Props to them though, I would never have the patience to stay on the same game that long.

There are then some other people, who don’t really care about achievements. They just play the game for the purpose it used to have before achievements came along. They only get achievements which come with playing the game, such as playing through a story mode for fun. These sorts of people seem to be quite aggressive when it comes to asking them about achievements, but they carry on playing the game. I’m pretty sure these people don’t feel the need for staying on a game to complete unnecessary stunts which you wouldn’t actually do in the game, unless they want the thrill of actually doing everything in the game.

Because of the statements above, achievements can bring out the best, and the worst, in some gamers. Sometimes you’re happy that you’ve unlocked something, but then when you exclaim your joy you are pelted with insults such as ‘you have no life’ or ‘get a life noob’. However they do take this offensively, when getting offended over the internet is probably the last thing you would want to do.