11 ms·

Achievement Porn

219 points by pmichaud 17y ago

jff 17y ago
See here's the thing, ragging on the education system is so overdone, such an easy target, such a bullshit "I wasn't the best so it didn't matter anyway" thing, that as soon as somebody does it in these inevitable articles, I tune out. Seriously, every time somebody in one of these articles tries to get their pseudo-philosophical think on about education or achievement or whatever, they dive straight for AND OF COURSE WE ALL KNOW SCHOOL IS SO MEANINGLESS FNAR FNAR.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  Hold on, I'm not sure that's fair. Yes, everyone knows that school is insane, marijuana is safer than alcohol, you shouldn't have different tax treatment for corporate and individual health insurance, et cetera et cetera EXCEPT WE DON'T ALL KNOW THAT AND THEY'RE STILL DOING IT.
  - derefr 17y ago
    Perhaps we can just make an Encyclopedia of Common-yet-Dangerous Misconceptions, word it and print it up to look, and have the status cues of, a religious text (but also with convincing info-graphics and cites), and distribute them like phonebooks door-to-door?
    - Enra2 17y ago
      "Let's call the product Revipedia. The purpose of Revipedia is to be like Wikipedia, except that it serves as a reliable source on all topics, no matter how technical or controversial, and no matter how detached from reality the centrist mainstream may be." http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/revipedia-how-to-defeat-us-government.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/reviped...
rick_2047 17y ago
I don't agree with the author on one point, not all achievement in a game are "fake". Well, that actually depends on your perception of the definition of what is fake. In my opinion, if you actually solve a problem, a puzzle or a quiz in a game that amounts up to a "real" achievement.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- barrkel 17y ago
  Please explain what you mean by "real achievement". At a minimum, I would think that it must include making people's lives better, directly or indirectly. By that metric, solving a puzzle - e.g. sudoko - is fake, as the puzzle could be solved much more efficiently e.g. by a computer program, and the human effort put into solving it could be much more productive - and "real" - elsewhere.
  - pohl 17y ago
    That's a good question. Does building muscle mass by lifting weights count as a real achievment? Being fit makes that person's life better (and possibly others, since wellness travels along social networks). Repeated problem solving is cognitive exercise, so perhaps it can also be "real". The trick would be to be honest about the benefits of said exercise. Imagine someone who only worked their biceps, but deluded themselves into thinking their achievement were greater.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      I make a distinction between exercise and work. The things you do repeatedly, all else being equal, are the things you get better at. Do actual physical labour, and you'll get stronger; do fake physical labour in a gym, and you'll also get stronger. But modern life doesn't need much in the way of actual physical labour. FWIW, I've never been in a gym in my life, and view the religion of the church of the gym with some bemusement, but I'm not particularly unfit - right in the middle of normal BMI, and I enjoy cycling as a means of commuting, rather than exercise. Mental work, on the other hand, there is an abundance of. There's no end of things a motivated person can put their mind to and affect real people positively. Cognitive exercise is at best a cultural experience - such as games - or mental chewing gum for those waiting periods, but as we grow more connected with gadgets etc., there are fewer excuses to waste effort with no substance.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
this is a wonderful article. anytime there is some sort of measure of achievement you have to be careful that it isn't easier to bend the measure than to actually achieve. the comparison to school is great and can be seen in even sharper relief in Japan and Korea's "Cram Schools" the existence of which is predicated on hacking the school system.
tumult 17y ago
I got a 360 recently to play an arcade scrolling shooter port. Microsoft requires game publishers to have a certain minimum number of those popup achievements in the game before they approve it for production. Cynically, the publisher (a medium-sized Japanese company) created achievements for it like "Cleared level 1" "Shot an enemy" "Cleared level 2" "Died" "Defeated a boss" "Touched a power-up" "Score was a multiple of 200" "Watched the credits" stuff like that. There are also achievements for picking certain items in the options menus, not touching the controller for a certain amount of time during gameplay, starting the game (yeah, just starting the game), scrolling the selection cursor off the screen, etc. Awesome.
- proxy 17y ago
  http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked
  - jim-greer 17y ago
    Play it on our site and the achievements are permanent and public: http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unlocked http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unloc...
    - zackattack 17y ago
      LOVE kongregate and armor games
- randrews 17y ago
  That's actually what most of the arcade game achievements are like, in my experience: stuff you would never do during the game, but is weird enough to warrant the game noticing, like in Geometry Wars, doing a certain (difficult) thing in the game without firing a single shot. One game, Chime, has an achievement just for buying the game. Since all the proceeds go to charity, I guess they felt you deserved a few points for buying it.
maurycy 17y ago
That's why I literally love capitalism. The market does not give a heck about your little silly titles. You might be a God of the Universe, but if you cannot bring a profit, you're out.
- barrkel 17y ago
  And the corollary: you may be a master of the universe, and bring in lots of profit, yet not actually add substantial value. As the article says, moneymaking is its own treadmill, its own fake achievement.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    By this rational everything is a fake achievement, so just off yourself and save us this boring shit from being on the HN front page. The majority of our life is doing useless, thankless tasks. Simply by spending 15 minutes in the shower every day I will have wasted an entire year of my life in the shower. By sleeping in 1 hour on Sunday I wasted 1/2 a year of my life, equally anyone spending an hour in church also wasted a year of their life (unless on the off chance god exists, then they only probably wasted a year of their life worshipping the wrong god). Those two teeth cleaning's my insurance company covers per year, assuming I'm only in the average of an hour, I just wasted almost 7 days of my life despite no medical evidence the procedure does anything, but if I get the maximum done yearly, well that's 12 days. Why should I brush my teeth the 2 minutes morning and evening recommended by my dentist? that wastes 81 days of my life. Just doing 1 minute morning and night only wastes 40 days. Why should I sleep the recommended 8 hours a night when just getting 6 hours has no appreciable difference on longevity or health? That's a whole 6 1/2 years saved if I just sleep 6 hours.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
      Right. You could say that. That said, I'm sure that feels a little ridiculous to you. That money can be a treadmill, though, is as old as time. Haven't you seen A Christmas Carol? Scrooge and Marley made money like bandits.
Slashed 17y ago
I have always thought that achievement is when one accomplishes his/her goal, be it $1B worth startup or a level-up in a game. Though, I think the author is talking about useful achievements. This gets a bit tricky: it's all about how you see the world. In my opinion, I would make a useful achievement when I influence people to take some action. This could be: subscribing to my webapp or even making people follow me on twitter, if that was my goal. The key word here for me is - influence. Nevertheless, achievement is all about reaching your goal. At least that's how I see it.
mixmax 17y ago
This gem is from the posters resume page: So this guy dies and goes to Heaven, and when he gets to Heaven, he’s trying to explain to God how he spent his life. Wait, wait, God says. Let me get this straight I gave you a body able to swim oceans and climb mountains Yeah, the guys says. and you sat in a cubicle? Right. I gave you creativity, and you made widgets? Yes, the guy says. The one thing I withheld from you, the only thing you could never get more of, time, you traded away for? Money, the guy says. link: http://www.petermichaud.com/resume/ http://www.petermichaud.com/resume/
- rortian 17y ago
  Yeah this guy seems so full of it. Why is climbing a mountain not a fake achievement?
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    Agreed, climbing a mountain serves no purpose other than to say you've climbed a mountain. I climbed aboard a plane and got much higher than any mountain climber did on land, and I did it at a far more economical price. If you believe sitting in a cubicle is meaningless, then don't sit in a fucking cubicle, it's common sense. I can't stand office work, it's just something I cannot do because it feels like a laborious chore, rather I choose to work outside in construction because despite working the same hours as anyone else, it doesn't feel like I'm forcing myself to do it. However, I'm certain lots of people don't enjoy moving equipment that weighs hundreds of pounds, so to each their own. In my life I work my job so that I can afford a nice home to live with my wife, to spend time with family, to travel to foreign cultures and to take care of animals. This is what I like, and this is what I do. My life fulfils me, that's why I live it this way, if someone ignorantly wants to believe that my actions are not real achievements then so be it. Obviously their grand achievement in life will be of wasting time caring about what other people are thinking and doing.
    - rortian 17y ago
      I think that is well put. It is fairly trivial to project (in the mathematical sense) most any human activity in a way that makes it seem useless or worse than. Strangely these projections tend leave the projector in a still elevated position.
tybris 17y ago
Who decides what's useful and not? Perhaps the future will adapt to exploit the skills of gamers and those who never pursued these "fake" achievements will be useless. I'm not a gamer, but I could think of a number of ways how to make humans solve relevant tasks through games.
- te_platt 17y ago
  You do. The author is calling on you to asses what you choose to achieve.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    Normally spelling corrections are somewhere around Argument Level -1, but I just wanted to point out that when you wrote: "The author is calling on you to asses what you choose to achieve." I read it at a glance as The author is calling on you asses to choose what you want to achieve. A moment later I understood you meant assess, and while the two statements mean much the same thing, the one I misread is far more memorable :-)
    - te_platt 17y ago
      That's funny. It's pretty sad when a spelling mistake improves my writing.
CoryOndrejka 17y ago
"Any achievement in a video game is a fake achievement" This is a great soundbite to build an essay around but ignores two decades of learning, cognitive, and psychological research. There are too many examples to try to pack into a comments, but among the most obvious: - 3D games are have been demonstrated to have positive effects on spatial perception and to allow rehearsal-based training for real-world activities (http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~daniela/SeriousGames4thePolice_AhmedBinSubaih-1.pdf http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~daniela/SeriousGames4thePolice_Ah...) - Medical education in virtual worlds has also demonstrated the efficacy of training in synthetic worlds (http://www.jmir.org/2010/1/e1/ http://www.jmir.org/2010/1/e1/) - Massively multiplayer games' positive impact on literacy (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.4968&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114...) Easy to go on and on, but the short answer is that it is preposterous to dismiss technologically mediated achievement as somehow fake. The author's other points about variable-reward based training and the lure of positive feedback are also well researched fields. Since Skinner we've seen evidence that small amounts of positive reinforcement with some randomness -- called variable reinforcement -- generates the largest behavioral changes and longest engagement, so it should come as no surprise that achievement games -- like gambling -- engage a large number of people. Of course, the 30,000' view of the article -- that variable reward games can consume a large amount of time and may not be making the player's life better -- is true. However, the simple assertions that games are fake and hurt their players are simply not supported by the data. For a very deep analysis of MMO players, you may want to peruse Dmitri William's work on the EQ2 data: http://dmitriwilliams.com/research.html http://dmitriwilliams.com/research.html
- gridspy 17y ago
  How about : Any achievement the game rewards you for is a fake achievement. Whenever I go up a level in WoW, or gain a kill in Quake, or beat a boss and pick up his loot I have a fake achievement. Sure, there are some real achievements in there, but they are not provided by the game world - they are almost a side effect. Most likely they are not the reason that people are playing these games, but they are a useful excuse to continue playing. Consider how much real achievement we would see if all the motivated hackers put down WoW and started up their development environment of choice. I'm not saying that games aren't cool (I love computer games and have been strongly addicted in the past) but don't delude yourself into thinking that they are more productive than applying yourself directly to the task you are trying to master. I might get HN points (i.e Karma) from posting this comment. That is not my goal, I don't care about those. My goal is to inspire fellow hackers enough to pay attention to my cool start-up (Gridspy). HN doesn't give me "pay attention to me" points - I don't think that is really possible.
grandpa 17y ago
Seneca wrote about this in _De Brevitate Vitae_ about 2,000 years ago, and unlike TFA, actually said it well. Those who do not study philosophy are condemned to blog mangled versions of it.
- derwiki 17y ago
  I've never heard of "De Brevitate Vitae", so TFA's blog-mangled version of it still seems useful. It also sparked this discussion on it.
  - wallflower 17y ago
    Usually referred to by the title, "On the Shortness of Life" http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practical-guide-for-entrepreneurs/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101... http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/24/on-the-shortness-of-life-an-introduction-to-seneca/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/24/on-the-short...
sgoranson 17y ago
Trying to define what should be meaningful for other people is pretty arrogant and an insular perspective on life. My personal take on reality is that the whole shebang is a "meaningless treadmill", but I'm willing to accept that it might not be true for the next guy.
- bd 17y ago
  The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever. Because this is just a ride." -- Bill Hicks
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    Isn't that just Zen Buddhism? Was Hicks a Buddhist?
    - gruseom 17y ago
      It certainly isn't just Zen. There are many spiritual traditions that quote could plausibly derive from. It sounds rather more Vedantic to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29).
  - hardik 17y ago
    Could not help notice that this was also quoted in (in fact, was a subject of) one of Pete's older articles.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  I agree. My take on this essay is that it is but an early milestone on the path to enlightenment. It asks an interesting question, but ends in a total cop-out, where the author literally claims that divining the meaning of life is "easy": The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Easy for him, maybe. It's fine to make the limited argument that certain games devolve a bit too quickly into flavorless tickling of the brain's pleasure centers. So long as you are clearly arguing about taste in game design, not about the ultimate meaning of life. But when you decide to delve further, to the point that you've argued not just that crack cocaine and MMORPGs are ultimately meaningless, but also that education, money, casual acquaintances, success, and writing comments on HN are ultimately meaningless, shouldn't you keep going until you get to the end? Which would be something like: All achievement is porn; that is, it is ultimately empty. Although I would never phrase it that way; I prefer a more classical phrasing, like this [1]: Life means suffering. The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Now that is a general principle. --- [1] I cribbed these lines from http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html , because that's what came up in Google. There are probably a few other sources... ;)
castis 17y ago
He may just be upset because he's no good at video games.
Alex3917 17y ago
Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both. Examples: School, corporations, scientology, military, world of warcraft, etc.
- matt1 17y ago
  What's the difference between "leveling up" and rising in a meritocracy? Ideally in any organization those talented enough to run it will rise to the top and "level up". If education and training help you achieve that, what's the problem?
  - Alex3917 17y ago
    Merit is continuous and not discrete. When you take a continuous function and try to make it look discrete, what you'll notice is that there is 'some extra' between the actual merit curve and the stepwise function that touches it. These so-called meritocracies are just a way to skim that extra off the top. Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous. School is the same way, you just don't realize it because that's the way it's always been presented to you.
    - starkfist 17y ago
      Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous. There are widespread teaching systems for musical instruments that work exactly like this. Especially for piano and orchestral instruments. There are organized competitions for different "levels" and books of exercises and pieces also divided into levels. Even within orchestras, there is leveling - you're either violin 1 or violin 2, within those groupings you're first chair, second chair, and so forth. I always found the piano contests a bit ridiculous, but with an orchestra you do need some sort of leveling system to filter people into the various roles.
metamemetics 17y ago
I strongly agree with the proposed existence of the Achievment treadmills. However, I think the difference between "fake" and "real" achievement treadmills are completely arbitrary, created by a societal average and either accepted or rejected by the individual. If society as a whole started valuing number of facebook friends over net income, then facebook would no longer be a a "fake" treadmill. I think it's still a good article because it could be interpreted as advocating narrowing in on what achievment treadmills you feel are "real", and avoiding distracting achievement treadmills you consider are "fake". Really it all comes down to avoiding cognitive dissonance, when you observe yourself acting in a manner that is contrary to your beliefs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
- billswift 17y ago
  It isn't really that they are arbitrary, rather there is a continuum - some "achievements" are clearly fake and others clearly real, but there is a grey area in between where it depends on the specific situation and goals of the person involved.
J3L2404 17y ago
Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy HN, I think "Achievement Porn" is a danger on this site - I've recently recovered from an unproductive karma obsession. Although necessary for HN, karma is of little value (over a minimum threshold), except maybe for credibility reference for certain comments. The occasional binge can be instructive - everything in moderation I suppose(including moderation).
Androsynth 17y ago
I recognize this, it was auto-generated by the Arrogant Crank's Mad-Lib Blog Tool. Seriously, plug in 'work life balance' and this could be the year 2000, 'too much tv' and its 1990... Will this be all we hear for the next decade as social games take over and Jesse Schell is proved correct?
shawnps 17y ago
I disagree with his statement that learning is not itself an achievement. I enjoy learning on its own, and see it as an achievement in itself. I often learn things without the goal of applying them to anything in life, just the goal to learn them and know about them.
ekiru 17y ago
Although I don't disagree that one's achievements in a computer game aren't necessarily meaningful(although this is a personal decision), I disagree entirely with his assertion that all computer games are "treadmills that are impossible to fail at". Anyone who plays any game with a competitive focus will know this is false. It's very possible to fail at Starcraft or Warcraft III. I certainly fail at WC3. I'm not absolutely horrible, but if I played with any remotely good player, I would lose quickly every single time. It's not just possible to fail, it's normal for almost everyone to fail. In fact, if you consider losing a single game to be failing in that game, exactly 50% of all multiplayer SC or WC3 players fail. In free-for-all FPS games, the frequency of failure is even higher.
xenophanes 17y ago
Anyone else expect the article to be about an idea for a new porn site where you unlock achievements? I clicked the link wondering if you made progress by watching stuff, or had to submit videos of doing stuff (which, from the perspective of the site owners, could be a way to encourage users to submit free content).
- vl 17y ago
  Yep, I clicked on it thinking guy is going to propose new business model for porn.
d3vvnull 17y ago
Any achievement has scope and context. What one achieves in any activity may or may not transcend that activity. The meaningfulness of the activity itself may not carry beyond the individual or beyond a select group. So I think, ultimately that the achiever has to make the final judgement as whether achieving the goal really matters to the achiever and whether it matters that the achievement is important to others. Also, treadmills are not entirely useless, even in the metaphorical sense. I may not visibly being going anywhere, but my mind may be active and going through a process of re-wiring and preparation for other challenges.
elptacek 17y ago
Very interesting. These two articles explain a few things for me: 1. Why I can't ever seem to get into video games (or games in general). 2. Why the hobbies I do enjoy use skills that are difficult to acquire and take a lot of effort to master. 3. Why we have such a hard time motivating our son to practice viola and stick to martial arts. Most of the reward he's heard over the years has come in the form of, "Wow, you're really smart." As a verbally gifted child, he has already acquired an expansive vocabulary that impresses adults. Zero effort for him; big payoff. 4. And, possibly, why our daughter seems to be acquiring skills at a faster clip than the boy does. She seems to have tapped into that other kind of reward, for effort. Makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the remarkably different response people have expressed to her verbal abilities, which is typically criticism. If you're curious, both of our children play video games, but the boy is a great deal more "into" them than the girl. Where he will use up all of his computer time and beg for more, I've seen her go days without using the computer at all. Video games are a political hot button for parenting; like watching television, the kind of parent you are is open to public scrutiny based on how many hours per day you let your kid engage in the activity, or even at all. You don't have to be a parent to see the value of achievement in habilitation, but it does help. I've met my share of 30-yr-old gamers who still live in their parents' basements. Personally, I believe that if my kids aren't independent by 20, I'll have failed as a parent. There is a real, deep joy that you get from looking at an object you have formed with your hands or the home you've made with your salary. Even if you just sit in a cubicle. We're wired this way for a reason, right? Otherwise we'd perish. And it's not a bad idea to consider the concept of types of achievement. The advertising industry surely does. They feed us this tripe and most of us eat it without bothering to sniff it first.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Games are typically spatial based (shooters mostly) or strategic based and for whatever reason (genetic or cultural) boys are more interested in these topics than girls. Girls have been shown to be more interested in reality based games (playing house etc.) which is why games like The Sims are such a hit. Constrastly boys look for an escape/imaginative games which sums up most games and is why your son plays more games than your daughter.
aoriste 17y ago
I had read the first article already, and this one provided an interesting commentary. What struck me most, however, was the striking parallel it makes to a distant, hazily defined, mmo game that a friend and I talk about creating in our twilight years. This game would simply be a massive simulation of a fantasy setting, replete with deep and meaningful (in an in-game sense) game-object detail, but which would offer no prefabricated achievement structure. The trick, as we see it, would be to actually get people to play this "game". Without any transparent and crudely imitable notion of "advancement", we doubt that anybody other than space cadets like ourselves would enjoy the game. Essentially, the game would be about being in the world and living there, and not about winning contests and completing quests. It is not as if there would not be things to do - quite the contrary, the player liberty might be overwhelming - too many people would ask: "What do I do in this game?" - translation: "how do I succeed here?"
- endtime 17y ago
  So, real life, but with unicorns and a lower poly-count?
  - aoriste 17y ago
    quite - real_life++, and, yes, probably with a much lower poly-count.
- vilya 17y ago
  Isn't that exactly what "Second Life" is?
contagionhealth 17y ago
Most "achievements" are ways to mark time until we die, and make us feel better about what we spent our lives doing up to that point. Whether they are artificial or perceived benchmarks or 'real' accomplishments is not as important as what we do after we think we've accomplished something, no matter how big (starting a company) or small (high score on Minesweeper, because there's always something else to 'achieve.' Achievement porn or success - the definition (and the embodiment) is up to you.
jfi 17y ago
Pete – Great post! I understand your point that a site like StackOverflow awarding points, rep, badges, whatevers, is pointless and some people pursue them without stepping back to ask why (which is a bullsh*t pursuit on their part). I would argue that some members that answer programming questions posed to them actually do take passion / interest in what they are doing AND their actions contribute to society (in this case – to the programming community in general and for the person asking the question specifically). It could also be a way for interested developers to initiate conversations, etc. Where would you draw the line on something like this? When do you think taking part in a service like StackOverflow crosses the line into fake achievement / pointlessness? Interested to hear your thoughts, thanks!
zach 17y ago
Need I mention the real-world achievements of those (no, not me) who have attained the rank of Eagle Scout? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eagle_Scouts_%28Boy_Scouts_of_America%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eagle_Scouts_%28Boy_Sco...
freebsd_dude 17y ago
gradubation...lol
endtime 17y ago
Behavioral economics taken to a horrifying extreme. I thought that's what he was warning of - until I got to the conclusion and realized he was condoning it. Yuck. It's like a bad episode of Sliders.
spektom 17y ago
I wonder whether video game developers are also wasting their life? (I'm not a video game developer)
chrischen 17y ago
> Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.” (Disclaimer: I'm assuming he's talking about any achievement in a game, whether it was placed there by the creators or naturally occurring). Life is a game. What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? A game is usually something with predefined rules of which you'll need to manipulate and work around to do something. A video game is a new type of game, which also provides audio visual stimulation, as well as mental (however little). It's true that fake achievements that are setup so that anyone who plays the game can achieve them, like leveling up, is pointless. But when a game is skill based and competitive, you can position yourself against others. And as far as I know, every game opens up the potential to compare your performance with other peoples' in a task with predefined rules. What's life if it isn't full of rules? There is really no line between virtual and reality. Everything you do is in reality, even your imagination, because it will carry over where ever you are in this world. > The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Is it a real, true prerequisite for a tangibly effective activity? Alternatively, am I totally okay with doing this just because I like doing it, laboring under no illusion that it benefits me or anyone else? What does the Olympics do besides motivate and inspire people (and bring in money to the host city)? Can't (video) games theoretically do the same things? Whether or not an activity makes a positive difference in your life, or anyone's else's life is relative to everyone's priorities. There is no absolute universal law which defines what "benefit" is. Whether or not it benefits people depends on whether or not it can get what people want. And what people want these days vary. I think the author is confusing what he wants and what he thinks is beneficial to be what other people want and think are beneficial. It's a matter of preference if I want to walk on a treadmill or go for an actual walk. Whichever one is better is highly subjective. Everything you do is in this world, has consequences and benefits in this world. And as I have argued, games, video or otherwise, are simply isolated well defined subsets of our universe which are also analogous to the universe (both are defined by rules).
- cousin_it 17y ago
  > What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? Easy. The difference is morality. In real life the consequences of your actions can hurt other people. The "life is a game" position is amoral, as numerous writers have noted and as your Predator drone example eloquently shows.
davidfstr 17y ago
Marketers and game designers are just catching onto the notion of achievements (fake or otherwise), and are planning on harnessing it. Take a look at this DICE presentation that follows these lines: http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-of-games-dice-2010/ http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the...
vilya 17y ago
The author decries meaningless achievements without ever saying what he considers to be meaningful. This is nothing more than a load of badly thought through opinions that the author attempts to pass off as insights.
billswift 17y ago
I think the author is talking about the feeling of achievement. And that the only reason people care about (have the goal of) video games is that feeling. Basically, he seems to be arguing against wireheading, while those here arguing that all achievement is fake or that all achievement is real are effectively claiming wireheading, living in a permanent VR simulation, or similar is just as good as the real world.
TheTarquin 17y ago
It seems to me that this essay is based on a strained analogy and a whole bunch of convenient equivocation. His whole "achievement" link to video games seems to be a largely rhetorical one. What if those were called (as they are on some systems) trophies? Starts to make the rest of his essay sound a bit strange. Furthermore, to compare arbitrary accomplishments in games and saying that the only thing which distinguishes them from achievements in life is that the video game ones are too easy or in some way "false" is to ignore that they're fundamentally different kinds of undertakings. To play a video game is to, as Merlin Mann says, "move your hands a little and make small decisions". The activity is essentially medatative or recreational in nature and the results further that goal. The point of these "achievements" is to relax and have fun. The point of the "achievements" in real life is to better ourselves or our circumstances. Furthermore, the in-game "achievements" are rigorously structured, those out-of-game are radically open-ended. Both the structure and purpose of the two kinds of achievements are completely different. To conflate them and then deride video-game achievements for being inferior misses the point. It's like people who say that Guitar Hero doesn't make you a good guitarist. Well, duh. But no one's making the argument that it will. We don't play Guitar Hero to get good at guitar. We don't play video games to accomplish anything.
Aron 17y ago
1) People are driven to accumulate achievements. 2) People are a bit confused about which ones lead to their long term happiness and prosperity, and which don't. 3) Owners of a service can increase the stickiness of their service by embedding an achievement system. 4) Are the service owner's goals aligned with yours? Partially, but not in a deep sense. It all highlights the need for improvements in our psychological defense kit needed for modern society, along with for example, general awareness of how marketing functions to manipulate us (another thing with good and bad).

219 points by pmichaud 17y ago

jff 17y ago

See here's the thing, ragging on the education system is so overdone, such an easy target, such a bullshit "I wasn't the best so it didn't matter anyway" thing, that as soon as somebody does it in these inevitable articles, I tune out. Seriously, every time somebody in one of these articles tries to get their pseudo-philosophical think on about education or achievement or whatever, they dive straight for AND OF COURSE WE ALL KNOW SCHOOL IS SO MEANINGLESS FNAR FNAR.

Eliezer 17y ago
Hold on, I'm not sure that's fair. Yes, everyone knows that school is insane, marijuana is safer than alcohol, you shouldn't have different tax treatment for corporate and individual health insurance, et cetera et cetera EXCEPT WE DON'T ALL KNOW THAT AND THEY'RE STILL DOING IT.
- derefr 17y ago
  Perhaps we can just make an Encyclopedia of Common-yet-Dangerous Misconceptions, word it and print it up to look, and have the status cues of, a religious text (but also with convincing info-graphics and cites), and distribute them like phonebooks door-to-door?
  - Enra2 17y ago
    "Let's call the product Revipedia. The purpose of Revipedia is to be like Wikipedia, except that it serves as a reliable source on all topics, no matter how technical or controversial, and no matter how detached from reality the centrist mainstream may be." http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/revipedia-how-to-defeat-us-government.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/reviped...

rick_2047 17y ago

I don't agree with the author on one point, not all achievement in a game are "fake". Well, that actually depends on your perception of the definition of what is fake. In my opinion, if you actually solve a problem, a puzzle or a quiz in a game that amounts up to a "real" achievement.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
barrkel 17y ago
Please explain what you mean by "real achievement". At a minimum, I would think that it must include making people's lives better, directly or indirectly. By that metric, solving a puzzle - e.g. sudoko - is fake, as the puzzle could be solved much more efficiently e.g. by a computer program, and the human effort put into solving it could be much more productive - and "real" - elsewhere.
- pohl 17y ago
  That's a good question. Does building muscle mass by lifting weights count as a real achievment? Being fit makes that person's life better (and possibly others, since wellness travels along social networks). Repeated problem solving is cognitive exercise, so perhaps it can also be "real". The trick would be to be honest about the benefits of said exercise. Imagine someone who only worked their biceps, but deluded themselves into thinking their achievement were greater.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    I make a distinction between exercise and work. The things you do repeatedly, all else being equal, are the things you get better at. Do actual physical labour, and you'll get stronger; do fake physical labour in a gym, and you'll also get stronger. But modern life doesn't need much in the way of actual physical labour. FWIW, I've never been in a gym in my life, and view the religion of the church of the gym with some bemusement, but I'm not particularly unfit - right in the middle of normal BMI, and I enjoy cycling as a means of commuting, rather than exercise. Mental work, on the other hand, there is an abundance of. There's no end of things a motivated person can put their mind to and affect real people positively. Cognitive exercise is at best a cultural experience - such as games - or mental chewing gum for those waiting periods, but as we grow more connected with gadgets etc., there are fewer excuses to waste effort with no substance.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

this is a wonderful article. anytime there is some sort of measure of achievement you have to be careful that it isn't easier to bend the measure than to actually achieve. the comparison to school is great and can be seen in even sharper relief in Japan and Korea's "Cram Schools" the existence of which is predicated on hacking the school system.

tumult 17y ago

I got a 360 recently to play an arcade scrolling shooter port. Microsoft requires game publishers to have a certain minimum number of those popup achievements in the game before they approve it for production. Cynically, the publisher (a medium-sized Japanese company) created achievements for it like "Cleared level 1" "Shot an enemy" "Cleared level 2" "Died" "Defeated a boss" "Touched a power-up" "Score was a multiple of 200" "Watched the credits" stuff like that. There are also achievements for picking certain items in the options menus, not touching the controller for a certain amount of time during gameplay, starting the game (yeah, just starting the game), scrolling the selection cursor off the screen, etc. Awesome.

proxy 17y ago
http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked
- jim-greer 17y ago
  Play it on our site and the achievements are permanent and public: http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unlocked http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unloc...
  - zackattack 17y ago
    LOVE kongregate and armor games
randrews 17y ago
That's actually what most of the arcade game achievements are like, in my experience: stuff you would never do during the game, but is weird enough to warrant the game noticing, like in Geometry Wars, doing a certain (difficult) thing in the game without firing a single shot. One game, Chime, has an achievement just for buying the game. Since all the proceeds go to charity, I guess they felt you deserved a few points for buying it.

maurycy 17y ago

That's why I literally love capitalism. The market does not give a heck about your little silly titles. You might be a God of the Universe, but if you cannot bring a profit, you're out.

barrkel 17y ago
And the corollary: you may be a master of the universe, and bring in lots of profit, yet not actually add substantial value. As the article says, moneymaking is its own treadmill, its own fake achievement.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  By this rational everything is a fake achievement, so just off yourself and save us this boring shit from being on the HN front page. The majority of our life is doing useless, thankless tasks. Simply by spending 15 minutes in the shower every day I will have wasted an entire year of my life in the shower. By sleeping in 1 hour on Sunday I wasted 1/2 a year of my life, equally anyone spending an hour in church also wasted a year of their life (unless on the off chance god exists, then they only probably wasted a year of their life worshipping the wrong god). Those two teeth cleaning's my insurance company covers per year, assuming I'm only in the average of an hour, I just wasted almost 7 days of my life despite no medical evidence the procedure does anything, but if I get the maximum done yearly, well that's 12 days. Why should I brush my teeth the 2 minutes morning and evening recommended by my dentist? that wastes 81 days of my life. Just doing 1 minute morning and night only wastes 40 days. Why should I sleep the recommended 8 hours a night when just getting 6 hours has no appreciable difference on longevity or health? That's a whole 6 1/2 years saved if I just sleep 6 hours.
  - Psyonic 17y ago
    Right. You could say that. That said, I'm sure that feels a little ridiculous to you. That money can be a treadmill, though, is as old as time. Haven't you seen A Christmas Carol? Scrooge and Marley made money like bandits.

Slashed 17y ago

I have always thought that achievement is when one accomplishes his/her goal, be it $1B worth startup or a level-up in a game. Though, I think the author is talking about useful achievements. This gets a bit tricky: it's all about how you see the world. In my opinion, I would make a useful achievement when I influence people to take some action. This could be: subscribing to my webapp or even making people follow me on twitter, if that was my goal. The key word here for me is - influence. Nevertheless, achievement is all about reaching your goal. At least that's how I see it.

mixmax 17y ago

This gem is from the posters resume page: So this guy dies and goes to Heaven, and when he gets to Heaven, he’s trying to explain to God how he spent his life. Wait, wait, God says. Let me get this straight I gave you a body able to swim oceans and climb mountains Yeah, the guys says. and you sat in a cubicle? Right. I gave you creativity, and you made widgets? Yes, the guy says. The one thing I withheld from you, the only thing you could never get more of, time, you traded away for? Money, the guy says. link: http://www.petermichaud.com/resume/ http://www.petermichaud.com/resume/

rortian 17y ago
Yeah this guy seems so full of it. Why is climbing a mountain not a fake achievement?
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  Agreed, climbing a mountain serves no purpose other than to say you've climbed a mountain. I climbed aboard a plane and got much higher than any mountain climber did on land, and I did it at a far more economical price. If you believe sitting in a cubicle is meaningless, then don't sit in a fucking cubicle, it's common sense. I can't stand office work, it's just something I cannot do because it feels like a laborious chore, rather I choose to work outside in construction because despite working the same hours as anyone else, it doesn't feel like I'm forcing myself to do it. However, I'm certain lots of people don't enjoy moving equipment that weighs hundreds of pounds, so to each their own. In my life I work my job so that I can afford a nice home to live with my wife, to spend time with family, to travel to foreign cultures and to take care of animals. This is what I like, and this is what I do. My life fulfils me, that's why I live it this way, if someone ignorantly wants to believe that my actions are not real achievements then so be it. Obviously their grand achievement in life will be of wasting time caring about what other people are thinking and doing.
  - rortian 17y ago
    I think that is well put. It is fairly trivial to project (in the mathematical sense) most any human activity in a way that makes it seem useless or worse than. Strangely these projections tend leave the projector in a still elevated position.

tybris 17y ago

Who decides what's useful and not? Perhaps the future will adapt to exploit the skills of gamers and those who never pursued these "fake" achievements will be useless. I'm not a gamer, but I could think of a number of ways how to make humans solve relevant tasks through games.

te_platt 17y ago
You do. The author is calling on you to asses what you choose to achieve.
- raganwald 17y ago
  Normally spelling corrections are somewhere around Argument Level -1, but I just wanted to point out that when you wrote: "The author is calling on you to asses what you choose to achieve." I read it at a glance as The author is calling on you asses to choose what you want to achieve. A moment later I understood you meant assess, and while the two statements mean much the same thing, the one I misread is far more memorable :-)
  - te_platt 17y ago
    That's funny. It's pretty sad when a spelling mistake improves my writing.

CoryOndrejka 17y ago

"Any achievement in a video game is a fake achievement" This is a great soundbite to build an essay around but ignores two decades of learning, cognitive, and psychological research. There are too many examples to try to pack into a comments, but among the most obvious: - 3D games are have been demonstrated to have positive effects on spatial perception and to allow rehearsal-based training for real-world activities (http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~daniela/SeriousGames4thePolice_AhmedBinSubaih-1.pdf http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~daniela/SeriousGames4thePolice_Ah...) - Medical education in virtual worlds has also demonstrated the efficacy of training in synthetic worlds (http://www.jmir.org/2010/1/e1/ http://www.jmir.org/2010/1/e1/) - Massively multiplayer games' positive impact on literacy (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.4968&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114...) Easy to go on and on, but the short answer is that it is preposterous to dismiss technologically mediated achievement as somehow fake. The author's other points about variable-reward based training and the lure of positive feedback are also well researched fields. Since Skinner we've seen evidence that small amounts of positive reinforcement with some randomness -- called variable reinforcement -- generates the largest behavioral changes and longest engagement, so it should come as no surprise that achievement games -- like gambling -- engage a large number of people. Of course, the 30,000' view of the article -- that variable reward games can consume a large amount of time and may not be making the player's life better -- is true. However, the simple assertions that games are fake and hurt their players are simply not supported by the data. For a very deep analysis of MMO players, you may want to peruse Dmitri William's work on the EQ2 data: http://dmitriwilliams.com/research.html http://dmitriwilliams.com/research.html

gridspy 17y ago
How about : Any achievement the game rewards you for is a fake achievement. Whenever I go up a level in WoW, or gain a kill in Quake, or beat a boss and pick up his loot I have a fake achievement. Sure, there are some real achievements in there, but they are not provided by the game world - they are almost a side effect. Most likely they are not the reason that people are playing these games, but they are a useful excuse to continue playing. Consider how much real achievement we would see if all the motivated hackers put down WoW and started up their development environment of choice. I'm not saying that games aren't cool (I love computer games and have been strongly addicted in the past) but don't delude yourself into thinking that they are more productive than applying yourself directly to the task you are trying to master. I might get HN points (i.e Karma) from posting this comment. That is not my goal, I don't care about those. My goal is to inspire fellow hackers enough to pay attention to my cool start-up (Gridspy). HN doesn't give me "pay attention to me" points - I don't think that is really possible.

grandpa 17y ago

Seneca wrote about this in _De Brevitate Vitae_ about 2,000 years ago, and unlike TFA, actually said it well. Those who do not study philosophy are condemned to blog mangled versions of it.

derwiki 17y ago
I've never heard of "De Brevitate Vitae", so TFA's blog-mangled version of it still seems useful. It also sparked this discussion on it.
- wallflower 17y ago
  Usually referred to by the title, "On the Shortness of Life" http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practical-guide-for-entrepreneurs/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101... http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/24/on-the-shortness-of-life-an-introduction-to-seneca/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/24/on-the-short...

sgoranson 17y ago

Trying to define what should be meaningful for other people is pretty arrogant and an insular perspective on life. My personal take on reality is that the whole shebang is a "meaningless treadmill", but I'm willing to accept that it might not be true for the next guy.

bd 17y ago
The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever. Because this is just a ride." -- Bill Hicks
- jimbokun 17y ago
  Isn't that just Zen Buddhism? Was Hicks a Buddhist?
  - gruseom 17y ago
    It certainly isn't just Zen. There are many spiritual traditions that quote could plausibly derive from. It sounds rather more Vedantic to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29).
- hardik 17y ago
  Could not help notice that this was also quoted in (in fact, was a subject of) one of Pete's older articles.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
I agree. My take on this essay is that it is but an early milestone on the path to enlightenment. It asks an interesting question, but ends in a total cop-out, where the author literally claims that divining the meaning of life is "easy": The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Easy for him, maybe. It's fine to make the limited argument that certain games devolve a bit too quickly into flavorless tickling of the brain's pleasure centers. So long as you are clearly arguing about taste in game design, not about the ultimate meaning of life. But when you decide to delve further, to the point that you've argued not just that crack cocaine and MMORPGs are ultimately meaningless, but also that education, money, casual acquaintances, success, and writing comments on HN are ultimately meaningless, shouldn't you keep going until you get to the end? Which would be something like: All achievement is porn; that is, it is ultimately empty. Although I would never phrase it that way; I prefer a more classical phrasing, like this [1]: Life means suffering. The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Now that is a general principle. --- [1] I cribbed these lines from http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html , because that's what came up in Google. There are probably a few other sources... ;)

castis 17y ago

He may just be upset because he's no good at video games.

Alex3917 17y ago

Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both. Examples: School, corporations, scientology, military, world of warcraft, etc.

matt1 17y ago
What's the difference between "leveling up" and rising in a meritocracy? Ideally in any organization those talented enough to run it will rise to the top and "level up". If education and training help you achieve that, what's the problem?
- Alex3917 17y ago
  Merit is continuous and not discrete. When you take a continuous function and try to make it look discrete, what you'll notice is that there is 'some extra' between the actual merit curve and the stepwise function that touches it. These so-called meritocracies are just a way to skim that extra off the top. Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous. School is the same way, you just don't realize it because that's the way it's always been presented to you.
  - starkfist 17y ago
    Look at it this way, if you went in to take music lessons and your music teacher told you that in order to get to 'level 3' trumpet player you'd need to spend X years and Y thousands of dollars, you'd instantly see it was ridiculous. There are widespread teaching systems for musical instruments that work exactly like this. Especially for piano and orchestral instruments. There are organized competitions for different "levels" and books of exercises and pieces also divided into levels. Even within orchestras, there is leveling - you're either violin 1 or violin 2, within those groupings you're first chair, second chair, and so forth. I always found the piano contests a bit ridiculous, but with an orchestra you do need some sort of leveling system to filter people into the various roles.

metamemetics 17y ago

I strongly agree with the proposed existence of the Achievment treadmills. However, I think the difference between "fake" and "real" achievement treadmills are completely arbitrary, created by a societal average and either accepted or rejected by the individual. If society as a whole started valuing number of facebook friends over net income, then facebook would no longer be a a "fake" treadmill. I think it's still a good article because it could be interpreted as advocating narrowing in on what achievment treadmills you feel are "real", and avoiding distracting achievement treadmills you consider are "fake". Really it all comes down to avoiding cognitive dissonance, when you observe yourself acting in a manner that is contrary to your beliefs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

billswift 17y ago
It isn't really that they are arbitrary, rather there is a continuum - some "achievements" are clearly fake and others clearly real, but there is a grey area in between where it depends on the specific situation and goals of the person involved.

J3L2404 17y ago

Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy HN, I think "Achievement Porn" is a danger on this site - I've recently recovered from an unproductive karma obsession. Although necessary for HN, karma is of little value (over a minimum threshold), except maybe for credibility reference for certain comments. The occasional binge can be instructive - everything in moderation I suppose(including moderation).

Androsynth 17y ago

I recognize this, it was auto-generated by the Arrogant Crank's Mad-Lib Blog Tool. Seriously, plug in 'work life balance' and this could be the year 2000, 'too much tv' and its 1990... Will this be all we hear for the next decade as social games take over and Jesse Schell is proved correct?

shawnps 17y ago

I disagree with his statement that learning is not itself an achievement. I enjoy learning on its own, and see it as an achievement in itself. I often learn things without the goal of applying them to anything in life, just the goal to learn them and know about them.

ekiru 17y ago

Although I don't disagree that one's achievements in a computer game aren't necessarily meaningful(although this is a personal decision), I disagree entirely with his assertion that all computer games are "treadmills that are impossible to fail at". Anyone who plays any game with a competitive focus will know this is false. It's very possible to fail at Starcraft or Warcraft III. I certainly fail at WC3. I'm not absolutely horrible, but if I played with any remotely good player, I would lose quickly every single time. It's not just possible to fail, it's normal for almost everyone to fail. In fact, if you consider losing a single game to be failing in that game, exactly 50% of all multiplayer SC or WC3 players fail. In free-for-all FPS games, the frequency of failure is even higher.

xenophanes 17y ago

Anyone else expect the article to be about an idea for a new porn site where you unlock achievements? I clicked the link wondering if you made progress by watching stuff, or had to submit videos of doing stuff (which, from the perspective of the site owners, could be a way to encourage users to submit free content).

vl 17y ago
Yep, I clicked on it thinking guy is going to propose new business model for porn.

d3vvnull 17y ago

Any achievement has scope and context. What one achieves in any activity may or may not transcend that activity. The meaningfulness of the activity itself may not carry beyond the individual or beyond a select group. So I think, ultimately that the achiever has to make the final judgement as whether achieving the goal really matters to the achiever and whether it matters that the achievement is important to others. Also, treadmills are not entirely useless, even in the metaphorical sense. I may not visibly being going anywhere, but my mind may be active and going through a process of re-wiring and preparation for other challenges.

elptacek 17y ago

Very interesting. These two articles explain a few things for me: 1. Why I can't ever seem to get into video games (or games in general). 2. Why the hobbies I do enjoy use skills that are difficult to acquire and take a lot of effort to master. 3. Why we have such a hard time motivating our son to practice viola and stick to martial arts. Most of the reward he's heard over the years has come in the form of, "Wow, you're really smart." As a verbally gifted child, he has already acquired an expansive vocabulary that impresses adults. Zero effort for him; big payoff. 4. And, possibly, why our daughter seems to be acquiring skills at a faster clip than the boy does. She seems to have tapped into that other kind of reward, for effort. Makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the remarkably different response people have expressed to her verbal abilities, which is typically criticism. If you're curious, both of our children play video games, but the boy is a great deal more "into" them than the girl. Where he will use up all of his computer time and beg for more, I've seen her go days without using the computer at all. Video games are a political hot button for parenting; like watching television, the kind of parent you are is open to public scrutiny based on how many hours per day you let your kid engage in the activity, or even at all. You don't have to be a parent to see the value of achievement in habilitation, but it does help. I've met my share of 30-yr-old gamers who still live in their parents' basements. Personally, I believe that if my kids aren't independent by 20, I'll have failed as a parent. There is a real, deep joy that you get from looking at an object you have formed with your hands or the home you've made with your salary. Even if you just sit in a cubicle. We're wired this way for a reason, right? Otherwise we'd perish. And it's not a bad idea to consider the concept of types of achievement. The advertising industry surely does. They feed us this tripe and most of us eat it without bothering to sniff it first.

nopassrecover 17y ago
Games are typically spatial based (shooters mostly) or strategic based and for whatever reason (genetic or cultural) boys are more interested in these topics than girls. Girls have been shown to be more interested in reality based games (playing house etc.) which is why games like The Sims are such a hit. Constrastly boys look for an escape/imaginative games which sums up most games and is why your son plays more games than your daughter.

aoriste 17y ago

I had read the first article already, and this one provided an interesting commentary. What struck me most, however, was the striking parallel it makes to a distant, hazily defined, mmo game that a friend and I talk about creating in our twilight years. This game would simply be a massive simulation of a fantasy setting, replete with deep and meaningful (in an in-game sense) game-object detail, but which would offer no prefabricated achievement structure. The trick, as we see it, would be to actually get people to play this "game". Without any transparent and crudely imitable notion of "advancement", we doubt that anybody other than space cadets like ourselves would enjoy the game. Essentially, the game would be about being in the world and living there, and not about winning contests and completing quests. It is not as if there would not be things to do - quite the contrary, the player liberty might be overwhelming - too many people would ask: "What do I do in this game?" - translation: "how do I succeed here?"

endtime 17y ago
So, real life, but with unicorns and a lower poly-count?
- aoriste 17y ago
  quite - real_life++, and, yes, probably with a much lower poly-count.
vilya 17y ago
Isn't that exactly what "Second Life" is?

contagionhealth 17y ago

Most "achievements" are ways to mark time until we die, and make us feel better about what we spent our lives doing up to that point. Whether they are artificial or perceived benchmarks or 'real' accomplishments is not as important as what we do after we think we've accomplished something, no matter how big (starting a company) or small (high score on Minesweeper, because there's always something else to 'achieve.' Achievement porn or success - the definition (and the embodiment) is up to you.

jfi 17y ago

Pete – Great post! I understand your point that a site like StackOverflow awarding points, rep, badges, whatevers, is pointless and some people pursue them without stepping back to ask why (which is a bullsh*t pursuit on their part). I would argue that some members that answer programming questions posed to them actually do take passion / interest in what they are doing AND their actions contribute to society (in this case – to the programming community in general and for the person asking the question specifically). It could also be a way for interested developers to initiate conversations, etc. Where would you draw the line on something like this? When do you think taking part in a service like StackOverflow crosses the line into fake achievement / pointlessness? Interested to hear your thoughts, thanks!

zach 17y ago

Need I mention the real-world achievements of those (no, not me) who have attained the rank of Eagle Scout? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eagle_Scouts_%28Boy_Scouts_of_America%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eagle_Scouts_%28Boy_Sco...

freebsd_dude 17y ago

gradubation...lol

endtime 17y ago

Behavioral economics taken to a horrifying extreme. I thought that's what he was warning of - until I got to the conclusion and realized he was condoning it. Yuck. It's like a bad episode of Sliders.

spektom 17y ago

I wonder whether video game developers are also wasting their life? (I'm not a video game developer)

chrischen 17y ago

> Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.” (Disclaimer: I'm assuming he's talking about any achievement in a game, whether it was placed there by the creators or naturally occurring). Life is a game. What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? A game is usually something with predefined rules of which you'll need to manipulate and work around to do something. A video game is a new type of game, which also provides audio visual stimulation, as well as mental (however little). It's true that fake achievements that are setup so that anyone who plays the game can achieve them, like leveling up, is pointless. But when a game is skill based and competitive, you can position yourself against others. And as far as I know, every game opens up the potential to compare your performance with other peoples' in a task with predefined rules. What's life if it isn't full of rules? There is really no line between virtual and reality. Everything you do is in reality, even your imagination, because it will carry over where ever you are in this world. > The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Is it a real, true prerequisite for a tangibly effective activity? Alternatively, am I totally okay with doing this just because I like doing it, laboring under no illusion that it benefits me or anyone else? What does the Olympics do besides motivate and inspire people (and bring in money to the host city)? Can't (video) games theoretically do the same things? Whether or not an activity makes a positive difference in your life, or anyone's else's life is relative to everyone's priorities. There is no absolute universal law which defines what "benefit" is. Whether or not it benefits people depends on whether or not it can get what people want. And what people want these days vary. I think the author is confusing what he wants and what he thinks is beneficial to be what other people want and think are beneficial. It's a matter of preference if I want to walk on a treadmill or go for an actual walk. Whichever one is better is highly subjective. Everything you do is in this world, has consequences and benefits in this world. And as I have argued, games, video or otherwise, are simply isolated well defined subsets of our universe which are also analogous to the universe (both are defined by rules).

cousin_it 17y ago
> What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? Easy. The difference is morality. In real life the consequences of your actions can hurt other people. The "life is a game" position is amoral, as numerous writers have noted and as your Predator drone example eloquently shows.

davidfstr 17y ago

Marketers and game designers are just catching onto the notion of achievements (fake or otherwise), and are planning on harnessing it. Take a look at this DICE presentation that follows these lines: http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-of-games-dice-2010/ http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the...

vilya 17y ago

The author decries meaningless achievements without ever saying what he considers to be meaningful. This is nothing more than a load of badly thought through opinions that the author attempts to pass off as insights.

billswift 17y ago

I think the author is talking about the feeling of achievement. And that the only reason people care about (have the goal of) video games is that feeling. Basically, he seems to be arguing against wireheading, while those here arguing that all achievement is fake or that all achievement is real are effectively claiming wireheading, living in a permanent VR simulation, or similar is just as good as the real world.

TheTarquin 17y ago

It seems to me that this essay is based on a strained analogy and a whole bunch of convenient equivocation. His whole "achievement" link to video games seems to be a largely rhetorical one. What if those were called (as they are on some systems) trophies? Starts to make the rest of his essay sound a bit strange. Furthermore, to compare arbitrary accomplishments in games and saying that the only thing which distinguishes them from achievements in life is that the video game ones are too easy or in some way "false" is to ignore that they're fundamentally different kinds of undertakings. To play a video game is to, as Merlin Mann says, "move your hands a little and make small decisions". The activity is essentially medatative or recreational in nature and the results further that goal. The point of these "achievements" is to relax and have fun. The point of the "achievements" in real life is to better ourselves or our circumstances. Furthermore, the in-game "achievements" are rigorously structured, those out-of-game are radically open-ended. Both the structure and purpose of the two kinds of achievements are completely different. To conflate them and then deride video-game achievements for being inferior misses the point. It's like people who say that Guitar Hero doesn't make you a good guitarist. Well, duh. But no one's making the argument that it will. We don't play Guitar Hero to get good at guitar. We don't play video games to accomplish anything.

Aron 17y ago

1) People are driven to accumulate achievements. 2) People are a bit confused about which ones lead to their long term happiness and prosperity, and which don't. 3) Owners of a service can increase the stickiness of their service by embedding an achievement system. 4) Are the service owner's goals aligned with yours? Partially, but not in a deep sense. It all highlights the need for improvements in our psychological defense kit needed for modern society, along with for example, general awareness of how marketing functions to manipulate us (another thing with good and bad).