Hello. I’m Mark B., and welcome to The Cheevo Initiative.
If we’re being honest, I made the conscious decision to start actively earning Achievements because a friend of mine surpassed me in Gamer Score and I decided, hell with it, I’m going to rectify that nonsense right now. While I’m not a “professional” game reviewer in the strictest sense (I’m writing a vanity column about Achievement grinding for shit’s sake), I feel like I owe it to those who read my work that I be “respectable” as a gamer, so that others know that at least my writing is coming from a place of experience. Part of that comes from playing every possible game I can, no matter how obscure it might be, so that I have a frame of reference when playing other games in the same genre. Part of that comes from simple time and experience, as I’m old and have grown up with the gaming industry (my first console was the Odyssey II), so I’ve done my best to remember a lot of what I’ve seen. With the introduction of persistent online accounts that indicate what games someone has played and accomplished things in, however, I felt like a part of that also could be tied into how high my Gamer Score is. It’s not that having a high Gamer Score magically makes me a good or respectable writer, but having a high score at least means someone can look at my Xbox Live profile and go “yup, that dude’s played a lot of games”Â.
What was interesting, though, was that once I began actively trying to earn Achievements, I started noticing certain things about the gaming industry and subculture as a whole I’d never noticed before… or at least, not to that extent. I mean, that’s not surprising; whenever you begin looking into certain parts of any form of entertainment or any sort of hobby, of course you’re going to learn new things that may impress or disgust you, so I wasn’t shocked about this or anything. I’m not the best possible person to speak on the concept of feminism in gaming, for example, but the more research I’ve done and the more exposure I’ve had to all sides of it, the more I’ve come to realize that the entire scene is a shitshow and gaming is basically still male-centric. That’s just the sort of thing that happens when you start climbing down the rabbit hole and seeing how far down it goes in general: you learn a lot of new information, good, bad, or otherwise. Achievement hunting, while not as problematic as the prior example, also carried its own lessons with it, which were… somewhat less than desirable to learn in the long run. For example…
1.) People (who don’t care about Achievements) are judgmental about Achievement Hunting:
There’s a weird sort of hierarchy involved in any sort of fandom that can basically be boiled down as such: anyone outside of the fandom thinks they’re better than anyone inside of it, and the fandom itself feels that each sublevel of time and personal investment (without anything impressive to show for it) makes you “geekier” than they are. I mean, we’ve all seen the Geek Hierarchy flowchart on The Brunching Shuttlecocks (or somewhere else), right? Where there are subdivisions of each “geeky” hobby, everyone thinks they’re better than furries, all that? On the off chance you haven’t:
Take a good look. I’ll wait.
Whether you agree with the actual structure of that list or not is largely irrelevant. The point is that this happens and likely will happen forever, regardless of whether we agree with the actual position assignments or not, and that’s a part of anything anyone likes, ever. Gaming is no different: casual and diehard gamers regard each other as losers, Western and Japanese RPG fans don’t often see eye to eye, PC versus Console is as common an argument as Console versus Console and everyone looks down on people who play Call of Duty, Halo and Madden titles. If you play Halo you’re a frat boy or a thirteen year old, if you play Pokemon you’re a child, if you play World of Warcraft you don’t bathe, we all know the stereotypes, and this is, in essence, the video gaming hierarchy. It doesn’t matter if you do it, people do it, we know this to be true, and that’s an observable fact.
Well, when you admit that you actively hunt for Achievements to people on the outside of that particular part of the gaming community, that’s about the point where, to reference the point above, you start feeling like you just admitted you speak Klingon.
I’m not even talking about discussing the concept with people who don’t play video games, mind you; if we’re being honest, someone who doesn’t play video games isn’t going to give two drizzling shits what you do with your gaming time and will likely shrug and value judge you for the hobby itself. I’m talking about people within the hobby, people who play games of various sorts for various reasons, be they casual, genre-focused, diehard and everything in between. Those people look at you like there’s something fundamentally wrong with you for actively desiring to increase your Gamer Score by any means available to you. Those people giggle when you tell them that you played a game meant for ten year olds, or shake their heads when you inform them you spent three days looking for one car, or sigh when you say that you played through a game four times to complete a specific Achievement you couldn’t figure out.
They don’t understand, and they think you’re weird for trying.
Now, I’m not saying that they’re wrong for thinking that, mind you. I rented a game that I literally played for less than fifteen minutes to add one thousand points to my Gamer Score. I get that this would inspire weird looks and snickering to my face. That said, it’s interesting realizing what it’s like to be that guy, the person on the other side of the discussion about what kinds of losers exist in our hobby. Let’s be honest with ourselves: we have all, at some point, seen someone do something that took an exceptionally large amount of effort relative to the actual benefit associated with the end result and said, “God, what a loser.” We all have.
When I went to claim my Wii on the night of release, there was a guy there, waiting for the game, who had apparently been waiting outside for somewhere approaching ten hours. He was wearing a home made Zelda hoodie and a Zelda T-Shirt underneath that, and I’m told by a mutual friend who ended up talking to him at the nearby grocery store that he had basically every handheld Zelda game in existence on his person, because he produced them and showed them off at one point. This gentleman was clearly enthusiastic about his hobby in general and Twilight Princess in specific, but it wouldn’t take much effort to look at this situation and everything associated with it and say “Wow, what a fucking loser.” I’m betting some of you read that story and thought it as you were reading that paragraph, in fact.
Admitting that I rented Megamind: Ultimate Showdown and Up just to earn a thousand points to add to my Gamer Score made me into that guy.
It’s a humbling experience, at first, I’ll say that much.
Fortunately, for those who want to undertake this sort of hobby, it turns out that…
2.) There is a surprisingly large and useful community for those who hunt Achievements:
When you’re simply looking for assistance completing a game, unless the game is so obscure that it’s impossible to find anything on it, you generally don’t have to go far. Strategy guides, GameFAQs, and review websites that also offer game guides are readily available to you, and often your only choice is who to listen to, as popular games often inspire tens, if not hundreds, of guides and walkthroughs to look through. Earning Achievements is a little harder, or so it seems at first. While the aforementioned sites often have forum discussions revolving around earning certain Achievements, and may occasionally have FAQs discussing how to earn some or all of the Achievements in the game, finding this sort of assistance consistently can be more problematic than one wants to deal with.
But it turns out that other gamers felt the same way, and built a fairly massive community specifically for that purpose.
I’m not even exaggerating, either. You have TrueAchievements, a website devoted to measuring the value of Achievements relative to how many registered members have earned them to assign a “real” value to your Gamer Score. You have Xbox 360 Achievements and its companion site PS3 Trophies, sites that catalog existing Achievements/Trophies, allow for guides to be posted on each Achievement and Trophy, and offer the option for contributors to submit full roadmaps to fully completing games. You have Easy Xbox 360 Achievements, a site that catalogs all of the “easy” games to earn Achievements in, often will full guides on how to do so. Hell, services like Raptr even keep track of your earned Achievements and Trophies (if you run the client while you’re playing, as secret Achievements and all Trophies won’t update otherwise) and advertise when you earn them on your dashboard.
Now, in fairness, this isn’t an uncommon thing by any means. The Harry Potter fandom exploded with sites that hosted fanfiction in the wake of the books, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has hundreds of sites dedicated to offering fans a place to communicate, and, well, Pokemon. Just… Pokemon. Websites and communities will always find a way to pop up to service people who love specific fandoms, hobbies, and so on, so it’s not even a little surprising that these things do exist. What is surprising is how exceptional the quality of these sites is. TrueAchievements and Xbox 360 Achievements in particular are my go-to sites when attempting to examine what I can do with a game and how feasible earning its Achievements is, and I even donated to TrueAchievements because, hell, the service is damn useful. Raptr goes beyond those services, allowing users to post links and track friends across multiple gaming platforms to see who is online on what when using the client, and it, too, is fantastic in general. All of these services give you ways to track your Achievements, see how easy it is (or isn’t) to earn specific things you’re aiming for, and allow you a platform for showing off what you’ve accomplished and how good you are at the games you play, and for the sort of person who wants to earn Achievements, this is fantastic.
At some point after the initial luster has worn off, however, you realize that…
3.) People (who do care about Achievements) are judgmental about Achievement Hunting:
While I have no problems calling names when discussing public figures or those who have made it known they are assholes so large that internet image boards would be too disgusted to post pictures, I tend to not like calling random strangers out publicly if I don’t have to. As such, I have a story to tell you, but for the purposes of this discussion we’re going to speak in generalities and vague terms because, honestly, I don’t feel like slagging someone I don’t know, but I need to use this anecdote to prove a point.
So, shortly after the initial column in this series went live, our own Crystal S. posted a link to the article on an Achievement discussion website and used it as a way to drum up discussion about the idea of Achievement Hunting, how others felt about it, and so on. It was a nice gesture on her part, and since she’s become something of a small scale Achievement Hunter herself, she was curious as to what others thought about it. This is hardly a big deal; introduce yourself to the community, showcase someone else’s work for their benefit, and ask questions that should generate a nice response.
And then, we get:
“That article and your post bothered me… for one, it’s “complete” not “clear”. And if all you do is go for easy achievements, you’re not much of a gamer. I think it’s best to play through great games, have fun, and complete them over time. Sure, it may be a little harder or time consuming, but playing one great game is infinitely better than playing 10 crappy games. With (site name), difficulty is rewarded and that’s pushed me to play some harder games. You won’t see Avatar, King Kong, CSI, etc. on my profile ever.
Play awesome games, get the achievements you can on those, and don’t worry about raising a pointless number with crappy easy games that aren’t worth the time or money.“Â
So, you would think that, within a community devoted to the idea of raising a number that most people don’t care about, the people associated would generally be a bit more… understanding, but, no. Now, I am going to make the point that several other members of the community came in and basically made the obvious point that I intend to make shortly, because by and large the community does seem to understand the point I’m going to make. That said, however, at the end of the day, the realization I came to was a simple one:
No matter what you do, someone, somewhere, will always be judgmental of how you choose to spend your free time, because someone, somewhere, always has to be better than you.
Now, let me be honest here: I honestly didn’t think anyone was going to read the last column, and for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall response. That’s cool. That said, I expected that someone, somewhere, was going to say something similar to the above, because I have been on the internet longer than a month and I know better, so the above isn’t meant as me singling out any one person to shit on them. I couldn’t care less what someone thinks of what I do with my free time, because frankly, nothing I’m doing is illegal or immoral, and if you spend a significant amount of time enjoying any hobby, ever, you do or have done something just as fucking stupid and can shut right the hell up about what I do or don’t do.
Fair enough? Cool.
Having said that, however, my point is that you will always be judged for what you do within your hobby, not only by those outside of your specific activity, but by those within it, and that can be demoralizing if you’re not expecting it when you go in. Do you want to cosplay as Sailor Moon? Meet Usagi Kou in person. Want to write fanfiction for your favorite franchise? Go take a look at the Fandom Wank Wiki and see how that turns out for some people. To bring things back to the topic at hand, want to play video games in general? Enjoy as people tell you that you’re not a “real gamer” for arbitrary reasons they made up or otherwise shame you for your choices of games, the amount of time you spend playing, and (in one especially inane case I’ve seen) comments you made years ago that no longer apply to who you are as a person. Want to write about video games? Have fun explaining the business end of a situation to a person who calls you a fanboy because they don’t like your observations and discussing historical precedent and market changes with people who proclaim specific consoles as “winners” based on personal preferences. Hey, maybe if you’re very lucky, someone will threaten your life over a game review, or people will tell you that you’re part of the problem in gaming, or, in one case, passive-aggressively accuse you of “copying” them when everything they claim you did, you did before they did.
No, not all of the above applies to me, but yes, I’ve seen it happen first hand.
I’m not saying “don’t have a hobby and have fun with it”Â, mind you, but I am saying that even within your fandom, even within the specific subset you attach yourself to, someone, somewhere, is going to be a dick. Hell, I might be a dick to you at some point, and I’m the one telling you this story. You might be a dick to someone unintentionally as well at some point because they don’t adhere to a specific belief you hold. It happens. I’m just saying, it’s going to happen, and as sad as that may be, sooner or later, someone is going to tell you that you bother them because you don’t enjoy their hobby the same way they do, and you should be embarrassed for that. It shouldn’t keep you from enjoying what you love, and it shouldn’t dissuade you from being a part of communities you enjoy… just… be prepared for it. Be aware that it’s going to happen, and remember, you decide how you enjoy yourself, not me or anyone else in your community.
Oh, and on the off chance this column is posted to the same forum and the person who wrote the above reads this, hey, sorry, but you served as a good example to others. Making value judgments against the capabilities of others because they don’t celebrate the hobby the same way you do isn’t particularly reasonable, and the fact that I am not the only person to say this thing should say a lot. Just a thought.
Of course, as you begin to really play more games in an attempt to earn Achievements, that’s when you start to realize…
4.) Developers are lazy assholes:
Achievements are a fairly new thing for developers to work with, as they’ve only really become a mainstay of gaming since the launch of the Xbox 360 back in 2005. They’re not new in the sense that, yes, six and a half years is a fairly good amount of time to get used to something, but they are new in the sense that the concept really only picked up steam in this console generation. Rewarding gamers for their progression in your game by way of adding markers of accomplishment to an online profile is a neat idea, no matter which company is doing it, and developers have certainly attached themselves to the concept with minimal difficulty. The problem isn’t the desire of developers to buy into the concept, but rather, the desire of developers to actually do anything productive with it.
I mean, yes, I could probably just post the box art for Avatar: The Burning Earth here…
…and let that be the end of it, but let us expand on that a little.
For most developers, Achievements aren’t really a big part of the development process, and that’s not really something anyone can fault them for. Making certain that the game isn’t going to ship so broken that no one can play it, or that the game is actually tolerable in the first place, certainly takes priority over how the game rewards the player’s online profile. It’s also understandable, albeit less so, when games or DLC packs come out with some or all of the Achievements glitched; in the testing cycle, making certain that player characters don’t plunge through broken parts of the environment into oblivion is more important than making sure we get our ten points for finding the Bento Box of Genital Herpes in the secret dungeon or whatever. It becomes apparent that some developers are, as the title implies, lazy assholes, however, when games come out where the Achievements are either 1.) so easy that clearing out the entire game of its Achievements can be done in one sitting, or 2.) impossible unless the gamer devotes something like a thousand hours to the game in question, and that happens a lot on both sides.
Browsing the Easy Xbox 360 Achievements website rewards you with a plethora of games that can be cleared out in only a few hours, as most of the Achievements in the games listed are either exceptionally easy to earn or to glitch out, and that’s certainly one side of the problem. Developers on this side of the spectrum simply don’t give a damn about making the Achievements in their game a little challenging to earn; if anything, if the game is bad enough they might actually consider that a secret selling point. “Buy this, it’s an easy thousand points!”Â, that sort of thing. For the most part, kids games tend to be the biggest offenders here, though that’s not as big of a problem as you might expect; the target market for said games would honestly probably enjoy getting a thousand points from a game and it might inspire them to play more games. Something like Megamind: Ultimate Showdown might have taken me all of a day and a half to complete, but a small child might take a few days at it and have to work for some of the Achievements, so in that case, this isn’t a terrible idea. On the other hand, something like NCIS, which is clearly geared toward adults who are fans of the series, giving you all of the possible Achievements in one playthrough? That’s basically the developers throwing up their hands, saying “Screw it,” and handing out Gamer Score like candy because they literally could not be bothered to give a damn. It’s a very revealing thing to see when a developer cannot even be bothered to add in one Achievement that might be a little challenging to earn, and it’s telling in a number of ways that are not very kind.
On the other hand…
Now, I know that a lot of people like playing some games, especially online-based multiplayer titles, for long periods of time. My previously mentioned friend Mike plays Call of Duty online fairly regularly from one game to the next and, as far as I am aware, has prestiged several times already in Modern Warfare 3, ignoring how many times he’s done so in prior games. That’s fine. However, and I know there are a lot of people who may well like this kind of thing, “Seriously 3.0″ and its ilk can die in a fire. Okay? That’s laziness on a scale that completely justifies the name of the developer (if you don’t get the joke, Google the Achievement name). That is, literally, the developer saying “Here are about a hundred arbitrary metrics we’ve assigned to you that will require you to play for close to a thousand hours to complete them all if you want that one last bit of Gamer Score, so hop to it”Â. It’s not “challenging”Â, it’s not “impressive”Â, it’s lazy on the part of the developer and it’s an Achievement that, at best, shows your devotion to a game… and at worst, shows that you’re a glutton for punishment. It’s not like that’s the only offender, of course; games like Rumble Roses XX and several of the Dynasty Warriors games also require you to invest literally hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into the games in order to earn all of the Achievements the games offer, because the developers basically said “let’s make this as time consuming as possible” for God knows what reason. It comes across as a vain attempt to enforce replay value of the product, which would be fine, except that all it does is annoy players who don’t want to play a game for five hundred hours. Someone who does want to do so isn’t going to be more motivated to do so because they might unlock an Achievement, but someone who doesn’t might look at your game, go “Nope” and move on with their day.
I mean, I have.
Look, creativity is hard, I understand that. It can be difficult to come up with words that are not profane to express how much you hate something, so I’m certain it’s incredibly challenging coming up with unique ways to reward players for going above and beyond what’s expected of them. I won’t question that. However, it is your job as the developer to perform this task. I am not being paid to sit down and explain why playing a specific video game is worse than being anally violated by a hobo clown. You cannot say the same thing (the “not being paid” part, though I guess you don’t have to cop to the hobo clown thing either). It is your job to do things like “come up with creative Achievements”Â. You get paid to do this. When you get to that point in the process and your answer to this is either “Attach Achievements to everything the player would do normally” or “Attach an Achievement to doing a million things most players would never want to do” you’re being lazy and that doesn’t inspire confidence that the game I just spent sixty dollars on is a masterwork. Some Achievements should be easy and others should be hard to earn, and there should be a fair balance between the two. Handing them out like candy is basically your way of saying “this is how little we cared about the game”Â, and making them impossible without forcing the player to play nothing for a year but your game is basically your way of saying “this is how little we care about you”Â.
Of course, laziness isn’t the only problem that comes up when dealing with Achievement handling…
5.) Online Achievements are almost always a bad idea:
We’re presently in a console cycle where online gaming is a highly viable market. The prior console generation dabbled with the idea to an extent, with Microsoft insisting on including a network card in their console and Nintendo and Sony adding this on after the fact, and Sega has tried this with the Dreamcast and the Saturn previously, but this is the generation where the effort was truly successful. Games generally tend to sell the best when they include both a single player and a multiplayer component, even if one or the other is a hacked down mess, so developers are aiming more and more resources into making online modes for their games. Look at games like The Darkness, Condemned 2, Bioshock 2, Dead Space 2, and the last two Assassin’s Creed titles for prime examples of shoehorning in multiplayer, and look at how many people mock the Call of Duty series for its single player campaign. Online gaming is here to stay, and for the most part, that’s not really a bad thing by any means, as it’s expanded the way in which we can play games with others. You don’t have to invite friends over if you want to play games anymore, as you can find allies and opponents online with little effort (depending on the game), and if your friends have the game too, you can save on gas. Even games that don’t have an online component can work with online connectivity; look at how Dragon’s Dogma allows sharing of characters between friends, or how some games allow you to upload actions to social media sites and you’ll see what I mean. We’re in a brave new world now, so to say, and in some respects, that’s pretty exciting.
Well, sometimes.
A lot of developers looked at the expansion of the Achievement concept and the growth of online gaming and made the logical leap that it’d be neat to incorporate online Achievements into games. You can’t fault the concept behind it… gamers want to play games online and earn Achievements for doing so, so it stands to reason that combining these activities would be an easy way to encourage gamers who want to do so. Give players the opportunity to play a game online and improve their Gamer Score, and you can have the best of both worlds, right? So many games with online components have begun tying Achievements to those components, from sports games to fighting games to first person shooters and beyond, with the idea of tying together those two elements in the hopes that gamers will get into the online play, not just for fun, but for accomplishment.
This is basically the worst possible idea ever conceived, for those who were curious.
Now, it’s not just the fact that there is an entire forum thread on Xbox 360 Achievements devoted to Broken Achievements that proves this point. The fact that there are numerous games in that list that have broken Achievements because their online component no longer works is a big flashing warning light, but to be fair, developers don’t always know that their game isn’t going to be online for years and years. Of course, the fact that this is a possibility would, in theory, make the point that maybe such Achievements are a bad idea, but developers are mostly interested in day of release sales, so you buying the game two years after the fact from the bargain bin isn’t a high point on their list of considerations. Electronic Arts doesn’t care if you buy Madden 08 after the servers are shut down. Sega doesn’t care if you wanted to play Chromehounds after the popularity (relatively speaking) died out. These aren’t concerns to them, and to be honest, that’s not really a surprising thing by any stretch of the imagination.
But let’s step away from “if the server is taken offline you can never completely clear out the Achievements for this game” and move onto some other, simpler reasons why this is a bad idea. For instance:
– What if your online component sucks? A lot of people were less than enthusiastic about the online play for Bioshock 2 and the most recent Assassin’s Creed titles; why would you force players into a position where they would have to play these games in a mode that is not very good to get the joy out of the title they want?
– What if the online component is broken? An astonishingly large amount of games launch with glitchy or buggy online components, where lag, disconnects, server outages, and more can completely kill the experience. If gamers don’t want to come back to your online mode because it sucks and you never get around to patching it, that only punishes the gamer more.
– What if no one is playing your game online? If your game isn’t expected in-house to move a lot of copies to begin with, forcing players into a situation where they have to hunt for hours to find a game to earn Achievements isn’t earning their love for your game by any stretch of the imagination.
– What if the single player is the big draw of your game? See Bioshock 2 and Assassin’s Creed above. Some people are going to be significantly more interested in single player games and the completion thereof, and forcing them into a position where they have to play online isn’t going to make you any friends.
This isn’t even including online Achievements that basically require you to be absurdly good at the game, or require you to be in an incredibly unique position ranking-wise in order to earn the Achievements (that falls more under developer laziness anyway). These are simply valid, reasonable concerns that developers don’t or won’t consider before kicking a game out the door.
At the end of the day, it’s understandable that developers would try to tie these two things together, and hey, if your server is never going to go offline and you’re going to keep patching the hell out of the game every time something gets fucked up, bully. Here’s a question to consider, though: why doesn’t Modern Warfare 3 have any online Achievements attached to it? This is a game that was destined to sell an insane amount of copies before it even released… why didn’t the developers say “Hey, let’s tack some online Achievements to the game?” Further, why does Brink, a game that’s not very well regarded, offer options for completing all of its Achievements online or offline? Is it maybe that these developers realized that the online component might not always be an option and decided to say “Let’s do this for the Achievement hunting crowd”Â? Is it maybe that the developers realized the online component would sell itself, and they didn’t feel the need to force players into a situation they didn’t want to deal with?
All I’m saying is, when there are entire groups and discussion topics on the aforementioned Achievement-based communities talking about how much they loathe online Achievements, maybe you should rethink your stance. Just a thought.
Of course, eventually, after much time and thought on the subject, you eventually make peace with the fact that…
6.) In the end, Achievements don’t matter:
Let’s be honest: your Gamer Score doesn’t mean a damn thing to most people. At best, it’s a measurement of your capability as a gamer, and can be considered a personal “high score” that indicates what you’ve accomplished in gaming. At worst, it’s an arbitrary number that indicates that you spend some amount of time playing video games, with the higher numbers dictating the lower overall social life. It’s an arbitrary metric that people, inside and outside of the community, will tell you “doesn’t matter” because it doesn’t measure anything but how many games you play and how far you progress in them. It likely won’t ever help you get a job, it likely won’t ever help you get a significant other, it likely won’t ever help you in any tangible way, and it won’t even convince other gamers that you’re any good at your chosen hobby. It’s an arbitrary thing console manufacturers came up with to attach you to their system in hopes that you’d ascribe value to it and stay loyal, not because of brand name, but because you’d lose all your Achievements if you left.
Achievements do not matter.
So fuck what anyone says about the time you spend earning them.
I am an adult. I am a man in my thirties who works a full time job. I’ve graduated college and am continuing to go to develop my skills and knowledge in my chosen field. I’m dedicated to providing personal care to a partially handicapped family member. I work my ass off, in my personal life, my work life, and on this site, every single day. At the end of the day, I enjoy earning Achievements, adding to the numerical value of this arbitrary thing, because it’s fun for me. I don’t care if I’m playing Dark Souls or Up, Dead Space or Megamind, I enjoy adding to the Gamer Score I have attached to my profile because it’s fun for me.
I do not care if you do not like that.
I do not care if you do not like the way I choose to do that.
I am an adult, and I get to decide what that means.
I know I harp on this point a lot, here, on Twitter, in the podcasts, and so on, but my point is that no hobby you have really matters, but if you have fun doing it, fucking do it. As the one guy said, you wanna be a fucking Ninja Turtle, be that shit. Seriously. There’s no point in allowing other people to make a value judgment about how you spend your free time. So long as you’re not breaking any laws or hurting anyone, no one has the right to tell you that “you’re not a very good gamer” or “you’re wasting your time on earning Achievements” because you are enjoying yourself. If you want to grind Achievements, do it. If you want to record videos of yourself doing it and post them on Youtube, do it. If you want to have the highest Gamer Score of all time, fucking do that shit and do it the best you possibly can.
If someone else tells you how you’re doing it wrong?
Well, that’s their damn problem, now, isn’t it?
And to those on the other side of the equation?
Don’t be a dick.
I’m Mark B., and this has been The Cheevo Initiative. Go have yourself some fun, whatever it is you’re doing, yeah?
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