Achievements: a discussion of evolution.

Since the XBox 360 was released, the trend of player achievements became phenomental craze, that became an unwritten law throughout all releases of games. Sony followed soon after with the trophy system. The purpose of these awards is to show off your progress in several games online. It seems like a new competition nowadays to become the Alpha Gamer, where those who delve too much into these things can cause them to be ridiculed as a trophy/achievement whore. The real question is: Have we had this system before, and haven't even known it?

An achievement for every player, no matter how ridiculous.

The origins of an achievement, you might say, started off taking on a human opponent in Pong down in the cornershop. One would take on the rest of the other Pong fanatics from the surrounding area, where there would be the one person you just had to beat. So what would have happened if you couldn't find an appropriate challenger at the time? With no other excuse than because you were antisocial and spent all your 20 cent pieces on the game when everyone else did all those silly things, like going to school.
Pong wasn't going to go around forever, and new games would be released. Therefore, games worked out a system where gamers would score points. There was a new objective now: beat the high score. Personally, I was one to sink numerous dollars of pocket cash just so I can have the advantage of having my initials engraved on at least one place of the coveted top scores of shooters and racing games. Obviously, this feat never worked out as I lived under a parents-know-best household that frowned upon video games, and I had child-like hands that didn't know the basics of accuracy. This, like all aspirations people have, was something I would aim for, knowing full well it would be a lifetime struggle, amongst all other things such as work, school, relationships and family. Everyone else would feel the same way, in a perfect world.

One of the prestigious accolades for any gamer before 2000

Publicity was very limited at the time, and even less so on the consoles before the 5th generation, unless you decided to invite friends over, and even then the only time when anyone gave a toss was when a new game was released for the Sega Saturn, or whichever. However, mention that you never passed the last stage in Alex Kidd in Miracle World and be prepared to be ridiculed. during the Nintendo/Sony wars, the competition was tightened with 4-player action, finding out who could become the supreme player. Single player games could also be determined as well, showing who could have the most complete collection of Materia, and who obtained all 23 cheats on GoldenEye. OK, so we talked about the consoles, but even so, we were being ridiculed by the PC elitists who could take on people either worldwide, or within LAN parties.

Achievements were also symbolised by showing how much a game was completed (via percentage), or receiving a particular reward for passing a game on a certain difficulty, such as stealth camo in the Metal Gear Solid Games. But with even more online interaction of games in the 6th generation of consoles, and the implementation of Xbox Live, you could say that the gamers wanted more than just credibility in the chat rooms. Thus, modern day achievement systems were implemented. Nowadays you could tell what the player has done, such as gaining complete information in a codex, or killing a certain amount of chickens in 10 seconds, and the standard level clear, game and difficulty clear. Xbox Live, followed soon by Playstation Network, have surpassed the PC in gaming popularity, but Xbox Live could also support games that were marked "Games for Windows". It wasn't until Steam was released that PC gamers could be able to diversify their achievement gaining. Now we just have to wait for Nintendo.

So we could safely say there have been an existence of achievements of video games throughout our lives. The trials and tribulations of gamers to achieve a specific goal, be it to finish a game, or to gain the world record score. There have just been many different evolutions of the system. Trust me, they will be here to stay, and there will be an aim. Above all else, there are millions of people to gain the high ground as the ultimate gamer.

 - Random Cynic