A few good yonks ago I played Portal a lot. It's one of my favorite games. But I played it for the gameplay. I did not even bother too look at the achievement menu untill I was long a seasoned veteran. I could run the whole game, no exploits, In about 45 minutes. I'm sure that isn't a record, but I was...blah blah I'm missing the point.

Why did an achievement entice me to set up 2 Portals so I could just freefall while I went of to do something else? Why I ask you. What's the point?

Why do am I influnced to get 150 kills with each weapon type in Mass Effect when the rifle ridiculously more useful then all of them?

There is a saying in my house that new games, by law, have to have achievements. But I can not understand the point of them when, at most, you might brag about it once. Don't you just grind for half of them anyway?

Is PC gaming just trying to appeal to consal peasents or to a wider audience? If so, what's the appeal in the first place?

TL;DR: What's with achievements? I asks youes.

I'm sorry... what?!

...Okay?

Where were you going with this?

Yes, exactly, achievements in your PC gaming.

In fact, I believe Everquest has had them for donkey's years.

um....right. Well yes there are acheivements for some STEAM games like TF2, HL2 EP2 and portal but what's your point

Warhammer Online?

Sorry, virgin thread.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the lich king... They even admit it's useless but it makes you proud. Is Blizzard falling in the same trap?

I don't quite understand the current obsession with achievements myself, but I do see two positives to their existence. The first is grinding. Some of the achievements are ridiculous and you really have to grind away to get them. This might appeal to some people. I'm mostly an RPG player myself and I actually derive great joy from spending hours and hours on the very first battle ground in a game to get my level ones to ten before I do anything else. To some, grinding toward an obtuse purpose is fun.

The second positive is encouraging you to try new things, to push the game to limits you didn't even think of. You named the achievement from Mass Effect gained from using each weapon a certain number of times. This encourages the gamer to try something, a lot, out of their comfort zone. Maybe they'll find out they like the different playing style. Maybe the strange achievement in Portal you named was created to showcase how neato the game is.

Achievements are by no means for console players only, nor lots of features in video games. Who doesn't like being rewarded? It's a little psychology, a little competitive spirit. The only real downside to achievements comes up when people get obsessively competitive and stop playing the game for fun, bringing others down in the process. Just take achievements the way you like. Don't pay them any mind, or keep taking little peeks to see what more you could do in your game.

I don't play games to leave my confort zone. Theres plenty of real life things that are out of my confort zone. I play games to sit in a big confy chair infront of a crackling fire with a mug of hot coco and a pipe in my confort zone. I guess, like with half the problems in this world, Ignoring them is a viable option. They still are there, infulencing how I play sometimes. But anything that might help a game sell will be present so I don't even know why I bother.

Chocolate on my peanutbutter? Peanutbutter on my chocolate??

I kind of empathize with Miniges on this. Achievements can be intersting but most of them force you to do a lot of pointless grinding, which does make the rewards all the sweeter but makes getting to them very un-fun.

Ionait said that achievements are "encouraging you to try new things, to push the game to limits", while this maybe true, shouldn't a good game make you want to push the limits or try something new on its own? To me a lot of achievements seem to be about forcing the player to do something in the game which isn't fun or useful but the dev's put it in the game so they want you to use it; so they make an achievement where you have to do this. Ex: Team fortress 2's "use melee weapons while invincible achievements"or Mass effect's " get lots of kills with all the guns".
I don't hate achievements but they should be goals that are fun to work towards.

Miniges:
I don't play games to leave my confort zone. Theres plenty of real life things that are out of my confort zone. I play games to sit in a big confy chair infront of a crackling fire with a mug of hot coco and a pipe in my confort zone. I guess, like with half the problems in this world, Ignoring them is a viable option. They still are there, infulencing how I play sometimes. But anything that might help a game sell will be present so I don't even know why I bother.

I really don't mean a real life comfort zone. Hasn't it ever happened to you before in a game, that you had been using one tactic the entire time, were forced to try something new, and went 'hey, this is actually pretty cool/useful' and so you decided to use that new tactic more often?

EDIT:
And to Not A Spy: You make a good point. A game should do all of the encouraging on its own or at least be half capable of it, or it really isn't such a great game. The problem is, achievements are so popular right now. People really want them. They play games they hate just to get a few easy gamer points. I doubt achievements were made for this, but right now, that's how they're being used. Developers are reacting to the gamer being greedy "more more! bwahaha!" by racking their brains for stuff to achieve. Some of the ideas are good. Some are poo.

I was just thinking about this, and I'm effing glad that most PC games don't have achievements. I like to play games in certain ways, and I don't necessarily want to deviate from them unless it's beneficial.

going for achievements is optional, some people find it fun to, as some people mentioned, push the game, or themselves to the limits to see if they can achieve them, such as using a worse gun to get a lot of kills rather than just going for the easy option and using the best gun throughout the whole game. however if you do not want to do this you dont have to go for the achievements, you are not 'forced' to do pointless grind or use worse equipment, it is a personal choice that for a lot of people helps lengthen the life of games

I think they're nice to have, but they're not anything vital.

achievements are the new high score. When arcades still roamed the earth, the dinosaurs and cave men would compete for high scores to get their name on the screen, arcade owners would try to keep the machines powered up all the time to keep the high scores from being erased. Achievements replaces this system with one based around completing goals rather then racking up points.

Achievements are only bad when people use them to assign worth to someone. Like on the xbox forums people with a high gamerscore are more respected, or on the world of warcraft forums people with a low arena score are spit on.

I like achievements, personally. When faced with the option to buy a game for the 360 or PS3, I typically opt for the 360 version because, hey, I can get some achievements. Now PS3 is doing their trophy thing. Clearly, Sony recognized that achievements do attract a certain type of gamer.

And now PC game developers want a piece of the cake.

I'm not a fan of achievements, especially when those achievements have been tied to unlockable content. EA Sports does this to horrible degrees on consoles, and I can't bloody imagine what the whole damn appeal is to it, especially since if I want something unlocked badly enough I'll probably just find the hack or the cheat code required to do it rather than spend hours upon hours of my perfectly valuable free time grinding in the part of the game I just flat out don't find fun.

I find achievements utterly stupid and pointless. i don't care if they are there in a good game, as long as it does not hamper the game play and fun factor put them in. I barely notice them anyways, as I don't care for the little ego boosters.

Achievements are better in Mass Effect because you get a VERY GOOD reward for completing them. Still, most achievements I earn, are usually from just playing the game without even looking at them, like most achievements they are just there as a "to-do list" - and to fit to playstyles, if you play a certain way, you unlock certain achievements.

Miniges:
Is PC gaming just trying to appeal to consal peasents or to a wider audience? If so, what's the appeal in the first place?

Yes, damn those pesky "consal peasents". Lewl!

Actually, the appeal of achievements is the same for those who enjoyed spending hours at an arcade and write down their names on highscore tables. It's the rekindling of an old tradition that was mostly disappearing from videogames. The only difference is that achievements now adjust to specific achievements rather than a lenghtly set of trials the players overcome.