Basically gamers are naturally drawn towards achievements, so developers need to ensure that the way they implement them encourages gamers to enjoy the game in the way they’d like them to, rather than forcing them to grind senselessly or complete very difficult tasks (the latter usually just leads to people cheating to get them all, especially in online games!)

I know it’s hardly true to their namesake, but I don’t think many achievements should really require that much skill – it should defo be more about encouraging players to try new things, or reward them for the things they’re going to find naturally rewarding anyway (i.e. jumping off the highest building in crackdown, having a threesome in Fable 2!).

It’s getting better though – I’ve been playing a lot of early 360 games recently, and the achievements are rubbish!

Because to find the achievement unlocked feature annoying it must happen to you about every 12 seconds.

Achievements can add to a game, particularly ones of a sandbox nature where there’s less natural targets such as completing a story. Microsoft’s approach is impressive in the sense that it is the first unified system, but it’s not a good thing to get too caught up with accumulating gamer points as what matters most is the quality of the experience.

Perhaps the most useful thing about trophies is providing evidence to having completed a campaign or reaching another milestone. It does adds a little extra satisfaction after spending so much time on a game.

These guys use a formula based on how many people have that achievement compared to how many people own the game, to determine the real difficulty of that achievement.

It’s a good way of trying to level the playing field I guess.