Abstract
Problem: Are achievements a positive addition to games, or have they lost their way?
Approach: Tim Cain traces the evolution from tracker variables in 90s RPGs (Fallout, Arcanum) through the "ego page" in Temple of Elemental Evil to modern achievement systems, examining what makes them work or fail.
Findings: Achievements work best when they're aspirational — a thumbs-up from the designer acknowledging skilled or creative play. They fail when they become mandatory checklists, reward non-aspirational actions, depend on other players, require specific classes, or have missable windows.
Key insight: Achievements are at their best as a direct communication channel between designer and player — "hey, I saw what you did there, good job" — and at their worst when they become a soulless, required checklist that tells players what to do rather than celebrating what they chose to do.
Origins: Tracker Variables
In the 90s and early 2000s, Tim used extensive tracker variables in RPGs like Fallout and Arcanum. These tracked player actions globally — what the player did, said, found — enabling story reactivity, NPC reactions (like barking "you don't have clothes on"), and endgame slides. The end slides showed the long-term consequences of player actions, projecting 10–30 years into the future. Players loved them, and they became widely adopted.
The Ego Page
In Temple of Elemental Evil, the team expanded tracking beyond story variables into a journal page called the "ego page." It recorded personal bests: highest-level monster killed, most damage dealt in a single attack. This created fun comparisons between different character builds — a glass cannon might top the damage chart while a tank character might claim the highest-level kill. Tim found this entertaining and rewarding to look at during play.
What Makes Achievements Work
Achievements evolved from this tracking tradition, functioning like quests given from the start with no in-game context — assigned to everyone, sometimes invisibly. Tim likes achievements when they are aspirational: requiring genuine skill and effort from the player.
Good Achievement Design
Tim outlines several examples of aspirational achievements:
- Kill 100 ogres — works if the main storyline only contains about 50, forcing players to seek out optional, hard-to-find encounters like a hidden ogre clan accessible only through a secret valley or cave
- Collect 20 rare treasures — discovered through environmental storytelling (a dead adventurer's note), creating an organic scavenger hunt
- Pickpocket an item worth 10,000+ gold — requires targeting a wealthy, well-guarded NPC, demanding thought and preparation from both designer and player
The common thread: these achievements are a direct communication channel between designer and player, bypassing in-game context entirely. No NPC quest-giver, no lore justification — just the designer saying "I saw what you did there. Good job."
Where Achievements Go Wrong
Tim identifies several patterns that make achievements feel hollow or frustrating:
Non-Aspirational Achievements
One game awarded an achievement for surviving a 100-foot fall — requiring players to find a precise height and have enough health. Tim asks: "Why are you encouraging players to die? Why is falling an aspirational thing?" This completely misses the point of the system.
Multiplayer-Dependent Achievements
Achievements requiring team coordination ("you and your team did X") frustrate Tim because success depends on other people's cooperation, not the player's skill. Getting the achievement feels more like luck than accomplishment.
Class-Locked Achievements
Requiring a specific class to earn an achievement forces players to play something they may not enjoy, purely for completion's sake. Tim sees this as antithetical to player agency.
Missable Windows
Achievements obtainable only during a specific map state or moment — where the window closes permanently — demand meta-knowledge that's unfair to expect from players. By the time a player realizes the achievement exists, it may already be too late.
The Decline: From Optional to Required
The biggest shift came when achievements became mandatory. Steam required them through its API. Xbox and PlayStation certification processes demanded certain numbers and types of achievements. What was once a creative, optional layer became just another compliance checklist.
Tim sees this as a universal pattern: things that move from optional to required "lose sight of their original goal." Achievements went from being a creative way of thinking about play to a "soulless, point-based checklist."
The Completionism Problem
Tim dislikes how achievements make players feel they haven't "really completed" a game without 100% achievement completion — especially when some achievements are poorly designed, class-locked, or missable.
Current State
Tim's position is nuanced: some games still do achievements well, some don't, and many fall somewhere in the middle where he starts engaging with them, loses interest, and stops paying attention. But the underlying system — tracking what the player does — he loves. He prefers using that tracking for story reactivity and endgame slides rather than achievement pop-ups.
The shift he laments: achievements went from "hey player, I like what you're doing" to "hey player, I'm going to tell you what to do, and you have to do it."
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQC4LnEA8I