Achievements and HighScores
You just got the best score on Halo out of all your friends and you brag about it for a couple months. Your friend gets a high score on a Batman Arkam Asylum challenge map, in fact he got 14th in the world. He brags about it for a couple months. Another friend got a score of 500,000 on Bubble Bobble. No one even knows what that means, yet it’s a classic.
Achievements in gaming have changed over the years. Now we have actually “achievements” and “trophies” but I am talking about score and records. Today we brag amongst our friends about games that are current, and if it’s 2 years after it’s release then it’s ancient and no ones competing anymore. People compete all the time on old classic games and arcade systems, but that’s for world records, and those who discuss their scores that aren’t world record material can only be found on internet forums. Why is this?
The older games required getting better at repetition as they did not have the complexities of today’s games and saves. Instead, a lot of older games had only a few levels that got progressively harder, and fast, such as Pacman does. Getting a little bit better at a game means you made great progress, and everyone can relate or remember such popular games. Today’s games come out so often and so fast, no game really seems to become a classic or something we will care about scores or challenges in another 10 years. The most memorable games of our time will be remembered for stories or how addictive they are, but they don’t have any scoring system in them so no one will ever compare such things, but certain things such as beating Halo on legendary will carry on for it’s difficulty. There is no world record for such achievements though, but only in speed runs and not as many seem to care for that unless once again it’s something such as Mario Bros the original.
With challengers for older games and high score attempts, I can’t help but feel such a classic competitive class will die out one day and only a few remaining will really care enough to keep trying and the rest of us will look back and say, “I remember when the Donkey Kong high score was beaten some 40 years ago. What happened to it?” My final thoughts on this matter is that I hope others will join and help keep the old classic scores alive and well, and I hope new games will arise and be able to fill a void I feel has been missing since the 1980s. Games that we really can go around and say yea, I got 120,000 points, and have your friend say they got 40,000 higher. I have no problem with achievements in gaming, in fact they are great! And I don’t mean the stupid things that popup on your screen, but something such as getting 10 kills in a row no deaths on your favorite FPS, or finally beating a hard mode NPC in Mario Party. We all have personal gaming achievements and I love hearing peoples’ stories. Having such a wide range of scores and levels though is what I feel we need again as achievements always exist, and I will be there when said games come out with those large scores, and I will gladly battle your for the higher score.
Achievements in gaming have changed over the years. Now we have actually “achievements” and “trophies” but I am talking about score and records. Today we brag amongst our friends about games that are current, and if it’s 2 years after it’s release then it’s ancient and no ones competing anymore. People compete all the time on old classic games and arcade systems, but that’s for world records, and those who discuss their scores that aren’t world record material can only be found on internet forums. Why is this?
The older games required getting better at repetition as they did not have the complexities of today’s games and saves. Instead, a lot of older games had only a few levels that got progressively harder, and fast, such as Pacman does. Getting a little bit better at a game means you made great progress, and everyone can relate or remember such popular games. Today’s games come out so often and so fast, no game really seems to become a classic or something we will care about scores or challenges in another 10 years. The most memorable games of our time will be remembered for stories or how addictive they are, but they don’t have any scoring system in them so no one will ever compare such things, but certain things such as beating Halo on legendary will carry on for it’s difficulty. There is no world record for such achievements though, but only in speed runs and not as many seem to care for that unless once again it’s something such as Mario Bros the original.
With challengers for older games and high score attempts, I can’t help but feel such a classic competitive class will die out one day and only a few remaining will really care enough to keep trying and the rest of us will look back and say, “I remember when the Donkey Kong high score was beaten some 40 years ago. What happened to it?” My final thoughts on this matter is that I hope others will join and help keep the old classic scores alive and well, and I hope new games will arise and be able to fill a void I feel has been missing since the 1980s. Games that we really can go around and say yea, I got 120,000 points, and have your friend say they got 40,000 higher. I have no problem with achievements in gaming, in fact they are great! And I don’t mean the stupid things that popup on your screen, but something such as getting 10 kills in a row no deaths on your favorite FPS, or finally beating a hard mode NPC in Mario Party. We all have personal gaming achievements and I love hearing peoples’ stories. Having such a wide range of scores and levels though is what I feel we need again as achievements always exist, and I will be there when said games come out with those large scores, and I will gladly battle your for the higher score.