20 Years of !Bleep Bloop!

General Discussion
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Twenty years ago today (Nov 22nd), the Xbox 360 made it’s debut. It’s arrival kickstarted what would become the normalisation of “Achievements” across all platforms (persistent trend buckers/setters like Nintendo notwithstanding).

A divisive addition since they arrived; some people quickly became addicted to obtaining them to the point of calling themselves “hunters”; other’s scoffed at such exploits and saw them as nothing more than a passive distraction from just enjoying a game for what it is.

For some, their gamer-score became a point of pride or a number they could point to so nobody could mistake them for anything but a “l33t g4m3r”.

I was 18-19 when they first arrived and fresh off the thrill of experiencing what online console multiplayer could be with Halo 2 on the tail end of the previous generation. That early adrenaline hit of Bleep Bloop, and seeing my number go up higher than my friends, was certainly part of it for me.

I can’t say when my drive to make number go up and play online shooters went away but I want to say I was 23. Whenever the scene started to fill up with co-operative creative games like Little Big Planet, Mod Nation Racers, Minecraft etc. I kind of just never went back. Co-Op PvE shooters also get a pass, Left 4 Dead etc. Competitive just paled in comparison for me.

So these days Achievements for me, for certain games, feel like collecting a Sticker Book; some I’ve completed without trying, others remain allusive. The odd game from a developer I adore or an ongoing series with multiple titles, the collector in me is driven to try and complete the whole package. Examples would be getting them all in every Supergiant Games release or because Uncharted 1 was my first “Platinum Trophy” I now feel I have to do that for all Naughty Dog games.

What they do most for me now, is unlock memories. They’ve become a record of my gaming history, I can click a square with a number in it and suddenly I remember where I was when I was playing that game, and a tapestry of memories surrounding the era come bursting forth. I’ll even remember bands or movies I had forgotten. It’s back up in case of dementia (certainly runs in this family, always on the back of one’s mind :stuck_out_tongue: )

Below you’ll see what 20 years of achievements look like from my perspective. Even the gaps in the calender remind me of what I was doing in those years.

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Games per platform

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Achievement/Trophy per platform

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Simultaneously proud and embarrassed to say I’ve gotten all achievements (DLC not included or counted) in 62 titles; 51 of which are Platinumed Playstation Titles. (161 counting flash games on Kongregate from my console/pc-less era but I wish I could exclude those from my meta-statistics in hindsight). Most of these are just “play the game” to get em all but I’d say roughly 12 are ones I actively wanted to obtain all of.

Being lured by 12 out of 1000 games aint so bad, I don’t have a problem, I can stop when I want to, ssshh!

What do achievements mean to you? Has that opinion remained the same or changed over time? Did you love them and grow to hate them or vice versa? Do you feel passive towards them and don’t even realise they’re there some times? Do you scoff at fools missing the forest for the trees?

Sound off below whichever part of the venn diagram you land in and if anyone has any memorable white whale moments or memories pertaining to achievements I would love to hear them too <3

Oh and uh, Happy Birthday Xbox 360! You were Microsofts last great console and I guess that’s going to stay that way since everything is an Xbox now apparently.

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I have all the achievements on exactly one game. It is also the only game I play that is allowed to connect to some kind of “game server.” In all other respects I play games on my time in my way and do not care to connect to anyone else’s scores or activities. However, this is probably due to having been a ‘gamer’ for a long, long, time when things like that weren’t even possible, so when they were the ‘new thing’ it was easy to just ignore them.

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SOCOM. Ughhh…..that was my first encounter with rank and achievements. People cheated. Guys would hunt you to death in the game if you knocked them out of top spot. It was ugly.

But, personal achievements in Steam or on console are different. I kinda like opening them up. I just finished Power Wash 2 were I carefully washed certain things first or last to open many of them.

I just consider them an extra challenge and usually jot them down so I can open them. The mystery ones….they can sometimes be quite humorous. Sometimes too serious.

I have still not unlocked the permadeath achievement in NMS.

My daughter is now running thru Outer Worlds 2 on my Xbox. She has opened 2 achievements I missed…they pop up in my Xbox app. Each time one pops up I’m like…ughhh….I missed that one….:sweat_smile:

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I’ve never bothered with achievements. For me, the whole beauty and attraction of computer games is when they’re not competitive. In real life, there are thousands of possible games - and they’re all about being better than someone. Defeat and victory - winners and losers. I don’t enjoy losing - but I don’t particularly enjoy beating people, either - I find it pretty distasteful.

Some years ago I did see one achievement that amused me - I can’t remember where it was, though - perhaps Stanley Parable on Steam? I don’t know.

You got the achievement for getting 100% of the game’s achievements. Maybe need to think about that one for a while…

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Ditto on the latter. I have no feelings on losing as it’s more or less life’s default. There will be loss, gotta get used to it sooner than later. Or maybe acceptance is a better word. I don’t like it but I accept it.

You have Sony to blame for that.

Microsoft set a standard protocol of 50 achievements for full priced games and I think 12 for smaller shorter titles you’d find on XBLA. This was to give each game some sort of similar value within the achievement meta.

When Sony introduced their version, Trophies, they decided that getting all achievements would award the player a Platinum Trophy, so at a glance you could see how many games you had gotten 100% of the Achievements/Trophies in.

For a while, this achievement was consigned to just the playstation, and I believe they are still not present on the Xbox eco system, however on PC, this bonus 51st achievement is still present if the game is Multiplatform.

Thus, the “get all other achievements”, achievement, has spread out of the Sony Ecosystem and onto PC.

My favourite Stanley Parable (deluxe edition, aka Stanley Parable 2 ) achievement is to not play the game for ten years. Easily cheatable with a date change and offline mode but I look forward to getting it legitimately some day :joy:

These are the ones I haven’t gotten either, permadeath and survival. They were added after launch too so they’re in their own little section on console (on consoles DLC/achievements added later are in their own little sub sections from the main game).

I’ve started two permadeath saves over the years, the latest being this time last year. I actually was doing pretty well.

What always happens there is, I take a break and then I’m too scared to go back because I don’t remember where I was, what I was doing and I’m afraid I’ll forget how to play carefully and walk right off a ledge.

I have good memories of Socom on PS2 with the headset and giving voice commands to the squad and taking turns with my brother.

In Europe, the PS2 modem was not released until long after it had its time in other territories, I never even seen one in the wild. A friend had gotten one on vacation and I remember using it to play Metal Gear Solid 3 Online. More or less everyone in Ireland was still stuck on 56k til around 2004ish. We used to feel great envy over those with an ISDN connection across both sides of the pond.

The broadband rollout in Ireland was quick and fast and came just in time for the XBL experience.

My first online multiplayer experience was actually Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight on PC in 97-98 with the expansion pack on dial-up. I didn’t know what a ping was or why everyone was angry at mine for being so bad :joy:

Sounds like you’re talking about No Mans Sky :stuck_out_tongue:

If not, I’m curious as to what game this is. I’m just going to assume it’s the server that saves your Angry Birds high scores if you don’t spill the tea :wink:

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So , I see these achievements as personal accomplishments that help me experience every aspect of the game. I care not for comparing my achievements against those of other people.

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There are times I do this but it’s in very specific unique circumstances and a game like that hasn’t crossed my desk in easily a decade.

I used to compare with friends on Telltale games to see where our choices splintered off or lined up.

I got to do that again recently with Dispatch and I can see that my friend took an entirely different route than me.

I look forward to the next time we meet so I can ask them all about it

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Indeed. And that’s after several years of railing on about how farming nanites via reporting discoveries was too much a key part of the game for it to be denied to players who didn’t want to plug in to their matrix.

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Here’s another nostalgic fool like myself except they’re laser focused on the Friends List and how it landed different as a new experience for a lot of people just entering adulthood, before social media changed our outlook on these kind of things.

While I don’t share their nostalgia for the friends list, it’s definitely the last time I remember using one to chat and link up in games.

I do miss that blade gui though.

Some nice comments here too, one person put it well…

All these things are done better now but the magic of first impressions is gone.

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Achievements also influenced IT recently, GitHub and Fandom Wikis use them as gamification to attract users to become aware of and use their products’ features. “You have made your first commit! Your first page edit! Added your first picture!” :1st_place_medal:

I didn’t grow up with game achievements, I vaguely noticed them when I started using Steam (Portal, NMS, Space Engineers) and Minecraft.

Today, I scan the list of achievements as a ToDo list. E.g. I take the achievement “beat the tutorial endboss without entering the planet’s atmosphere” as a hint to send drones.

Same, I’m sometimes simply too spiteful for Achievements… Like “Oh yeah? Well I don’t care about your 100%! Whatcha gonna do about it, slap me with a trout through the screen? You don’t tell me how to have fun! So there.”

E.g. in contrast to Permadeath, travelling through a galactic core in NMS is easy, but I never have, simply out of spite. First the core was totally overhyped, followed by a flood of spoilers and cheats, to this day there are Reddit answers that you must go through one of the six (?) innermost stars and you must properly click the path to get there yadda yadda, and for all that effort, it basically just restarts the game. Yeah nah. :person_shrugging:

Yeah, I know what you mean. Do I even own any competitive games? I played Overwatch Quickplay for a while and “at my skill peak” I confidently stepped into Competitive once and baaarely got silver!? For context, it goes bronze (you get bronze for just having an account), silver, gold, platinum, diamond, or so. :person_facepalming:

I just checked, and the first (this year) and only game I ever got 100% on is…The Last Campfire?? Ugh. That’s one of the games where you get achievements simply for completing each chapter… How am I supposed to get tryhard 1337 gamer street cred with that?! :sweat_smile:

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That reminds me, there are different gamer personalities who have different goals, and wanting achievements interacts with that, in how important they are for you.
The question that game developers need to ask themselves is: my target group gets a feeling of success by beating whom?

  • beat others - Humans are your only “worthy” opponent, they help you improve by not falling for the same trick twice and by finding your weak spots. PvE is boring, you want PvP. Real opponents also provide free entertainment, which causes conflict if the duel turns into griefing.
  • beat yourself - You are content beating your own highscores and collecting achievements independently of others. Often PvE or solo, PvP is secondary. Can coexist in a group with other types. Subtypes are completionists, hoarders/lootgoblins, and speedrunners.
  • beat the game designer - You enjoy solving puzzles and exploration. Having the achievement is less important, having found the solution yourself brings the feeling of success. Quite incompatible with other playstyles because other players means spoilers.
  • beat nobody - You play games for social reasons, you want to chat with remote friends and the game is just a backdrop. You maybe organise meetups and raids and enjoy the others’ happiness about the raid more than the win itself. Incompatible with PvP, can coexist with others.

(You can be a blend of these, or have different priorities in single- vs multiplayer, of course.)

Whether Achievements are interesting at all depends on your personality. They never give Achievements for “has motivated 5 players to return to the guild by chatting” or “has obsessively looked behind every door and corner in case there’s something even though there never is” or “skipped 90% of the game to fastforward to the end condition”. :wink: Counting chapter completions, item pickups, and kill/death ratio is simply the most reliable to detect, so those get to be Achievements.

PS:

In Minecraft multiplayer there’s an achievement poker minigame for when the endgame is getting boring: You need a randomiser that picks an ingame achievement category and the players place bets who “has the best cards in hand” in that respect. It can be “has mined most blocks” or “has tamed most animals” or “died of drowning most often” or “most fall damage”… ;-D

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I’m not sure about the usage of “recently” here… I’m not sure if it was Stackoverflow that introduced it, but I’m pretty sure they had it from the get-go, and that’s decades ago now…

As for the topic, reaching 100% achievements is absolutely nowhere on my list to check when playing a game. I mostly play for immersion, and nothing breaks it more than “oh, wait, there’s this achievement completely unrelated to any sensible goal my character could potentially have at this moment, I’ve gotta go get that!”

I am still in the attempt to actually just play through some games in my library. I am so entirely not goal oriented when gaming, and games tend to be so long nowadays, that I rarely ever finish anything. Citicen Sleeper 1+2 were about the only games that I played to the end credits in… well, over a decade, and those are short (actually just about perfect, for my tastes). The last time I committed to actually finish some games was when playing through Metroid Zero mission, followed by Super Metroid, followed by Metroid fusion. I think I had one successful run of FTL to my name, and I did play through the story of NMS once, but other than that, I think there’s nothing since I got married.

I do think I’m missing out due to this lack of committment in some games, though. For many, I can tell pretty fast that I won’t be having a good time trying to finish. So Ive kinda put in a stp buying games until I finish at least some that I think I’ll have fun finishing. I had started with Original Sin 2, but then remembered pretty quickly why I never played much past the introduction the last time, and dropped that one again (contrary to most, I feel like the fundamental design template of “modern” CRPGs introduced by Bioware with the first Baldurs Gate is broken, and that Bethesda broke the other successful design template with Oblivion).

So currently I’m at Legend of Grimrock. Finally down to level 9 and getting eaten by Ice Lizards after a couple of weeks, not that much more to go yet, might even finish it before the year is over. But I’ve got nowhere near 100%. Entirely skipped the optional level, because why would my band of desperate stragglers with the primary goal of getting out of this rock even bother with that? Not entirely sure what will be next. Avernum is currently a front-runner, I remember having a good time starting it around 3 times only to get distracted by something else, but I am a bit intimidated by its length…

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For a short period I worked customer support for Xbox Live and Xbox Hardware issues. By short, I mean I walked before I finished the training.

workplace woes

The whole thing was very Americanised and used frat house style hazing as a “fun” way to punish tardiness. Five minutes late because of a bus breaking down or an accident on the road? Don’t worry, we aren’t mad at you but now you have to sing singstar in front of the entire staff or we’ll dock you. And we picked take on me. Good luck with that high note.

Don’t even get me started on how hazing someone for being late was making everyone late to their shift or training by another, roughly, three minutes… The logic was lost to their power trip.

I went straight to HR and was like, hi I have extreme social anxiety and I was just forced by threat of a pay dock to live my worst nightmare in front of strangers I was just getting to know…

That was when I learned that Human Resources actually have no humanity and are just there to cover the higher paid employees asses. (Early twenties, had never encountered HR before, lesson learned).

Before all of that though, I found the training itself to also be extremely out of touch with the client base.

They introduced us to the type of customers we might expect.

The four types of “gamer” and it was like something written in the late 80s. E.g, only girls use Xbox for watching movies and don’t play games.

Each type also came with one of those Xbox Avatars they introduced mid generation, and of course the girl gamer (who doesn’t play games) was wearing all pink and had pigtails. Also all four types were viewed through a consumer retention lens

I was quietly seething but needed the money. Not bad enough for forced Karaoke though. I quit and paid my next month’s rent and handed my landlord notice that I’m gonna have to move back home and replan :joy:

I remember checking the company (was a third party Microsoft outsourced to) on glass door afterwards and the employee turnaround and complaints were insane.

I want to say they were called Steam Global Services but I might have that first part wrong. Might have been Stream.

Back to Achievements…

Some of my favourite games are the ones that just give them to you, so you don’t have to be bothered by them and can just enjoy the game as is. No Mans Sky is legendary for this and makes sense for the type of game it is.

For games like elder scrolls, outer worlds etc, I don’t even bother looking. The incomplete list acts as a complete list for me, in that it can show what route I took and where my playstyle focus was.

My favourite part about not looking at a list is when you go out of your way to do silly stuff and be a nuisance in an open world and suddenly the game is like, "oh yeah, we see you, we anticipated you were going to do this "(or our play testers did it enough it inspired an achievement).

I just finished Outer Worlds 2 last night and out of curiosity I looked at what I didn’t get. A lot of them are very specific and tied to weapons or abilities I never even picked up or used.

I feel no urge to go in and get these though maybe a second playthrough I might.

Whereas recently I finished Hades 2 and, because I have a combo going with SuperGiant Games (all achievements for all their releases, sometimes twice if I picked it up on PC too) I feel I have no choice but to get them all…

I think maybe I might have some form of mild OCD when I consider this :smiley:

Im like this with a lot of those type of games, especially roguelikes. I rarely finish them, and if I do one successful run, that’s usually it for me. I think I came close to beating FTL once on a run and called that quits.

Meanwhile, my friend and his partner are obsessed with FTL and play it religiously and seeing how hard they can make it for themselves after each successful run.

Same with 4x games. I’ll get a win condition once or become powerful enough that the path to victory seems inevitable and then I may walk away from it for years if not forever.

Those same FTL friends will replay,restart and try whole new approaches with a 4x game every time. Their biggest ongoing one is Stellaris.

I do return to the original shogun total war and it’s sequel every few years when I’m feeling the urge for Japanese feudalism.

Suikoden 1 and 2 were games I’d read about but rental store in my village never got them and I never saw them in stores. Very limited copies manufactured for Europe from what I understood.

I finally got to experience them somewhat with the HD re-releases and I got far in both but have spent too long away from them that I find it a chore to try get myself to return to them. But I really should before I buy more games :face_with_peeking_eye:

This is why I love forever endless games with no end goal in sight. Minecraft, no mans sky, etc. you can just drop in and do what you want with no worry about time constraints or meeting goals set by the game designers. You can just do what you like and drop out just as easy to return to reality and responsibilities.

I made it to the centre of NMS once, my first playthrough. Once I realised it just put me in a new galaxy and asked me to do it again, I started a new game (could only have one save at the time) and I’ve stayed in Euclid ever since. I like visiting player bases and the vast majority of folks seem to stay and build in Euclid.

Reminds me of how Top Trumps works a little. I didn’t know about this but I have never played Minecraft with others or on a public server (console split screen not counted).

I did briefly play on a public server in 2013 on PC but I kept to myself and did my own building. A friend joined me briefly but eventually stopped. I have to admit, it broke my heart a little any time I walked by their castle knowing they’d never be back again :sweat_smile:

Fast forward a few years and I have a good friend who plays valheim and enshrouded with me whose all in on the building aspect and does things that puts my own builds to shame. I’ve had a valheim server running for the last few years non stop , if anyone ever wants to take a wander through our world Id be happy to have yas.

I just can’t convince them to get into Minecraft, they don’t like the blockiness though they do watch videos of insane community builds etc.

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Interesting…I have never steamed anything on my Xbox other than game trailers. And I definitely do not have pink hair or pigtails….though I do have salt and pepper hair, but it’s natural.

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The first issue 360s had temperature / cooling problems. They ran so hot they would melt their own solder. You could definitely steam things on them - rice, or potatoes, for instance.

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I remember that guy who was in all the marketing leading up to the launch, talking about his concave design and how he was very proud (can’t recall their name but they were lead designer for the consoles form, if not it’s architecture).

He was very quickly never seen again in any public promotion once those first red rings began to surface.

(edit: I tracked down the video I was remembering. It was J allard, he was the executive producer at XBox at the time and I just remember him biggin up the concave design A LOT. He may have had nothing to do with that though )

They probably should have spent a little bit more time Looking Inside of it…

This also reminds me it was this awkward period when game developers tried to emulate being rockstars or celebrities. Those J Allard close-ups have big Cliffy B Energy :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m also wondering if this is why Microsoft has completely ignored the 20th birthday of one of their legacy machines. They fear the flood of red ring comments raining on their parade?

Maybe 25 is more their style? We’ll know next year since Xbox officially turns 25.

Or is it just true Microsoft fashion of forgetting their previous products exist?

I swear these last few win10 updates I’ve received after the supposed pulled support have really slowed my computer down with multitasking :sweat_smile:

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Now it’s a box. You can still steam rice on it.

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Well, they said they weren’t sending support, so it stands to reason that whatever they are sending is going to be harmful…or at the least not useful.

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Hokay, It’s “Stop me if you’ve already heard this” time.

There is a technology known as a “Trusted Platform Module” (TPM). It securely encrypts the data running through your computer’s processor. It was developed as a security feature - it can prevent data theft, and it can stop rogue software like viruses and malware from running. TPM modules used to come as a separate, optional chip that plugged into your motherboard, but for the past 10 or 12 years, both Intel and AMD have built the TPM into the main processor chip.

TPM comes in two versions, the old, obsolete, version 1.2, and the current verion 2. Only processors made in the last five or six years have version 2.

Windows 11 requires your computer to have TPM 2. Wilthout it, Windows 11 won’t install, and it won’t run. Which means that if your computer wasn’t made in the last five or six years, chances are it can’t be upgraded to Windows 11.

Microsoft’s answer to this problem is “Buy a new computer” (seriously).

There are millions of people out there with ten or 12 year old PCs - which are probably a bit creaky, but they still work OK. Microsoft are arbitrarily demanding that all this perfectly viable hardware goes in the bin, and the owners spend thousands on new computers - because Microsoft are going to remotely turn their old ones off. They won’t do it all at once - that would be too obviously bullying - they’ll do it by attrition. Over time, Windows 10 users will find their computers get slower and slower, until they’re unusable.

Why are Microsoft doing this? Well, Microsoft’s argument is that TPM provides a valuable layer of security - and undoubtedly it does.

However, there are many people in the industry who point to the fact that TPM gives Microsoft total control over the software that is allowed to run on your computer. This means that at some point in the future, Microsoft can decide you’re only allowed to use software purchased from the Microsoft store. They can decide you’re not allowed to install Linux. TPM gives them total control.

And some will argue that Microsoft wouldn’t dare to do something so blatantly self-serving and anti-competitive. But then they wouldn’t dare to force you to buy a new computer, would they?

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So fun add on to this story

My previous PC was Win 10. I had 2 hard drives. I wanted to dual boot both Win 10 and Linux so I could ease into Linux because of the whole TPM issue. I had the old version.

But, every single windows update cut my access to my Linux drive.

I finally left the side of the case open and physically disconnected the Win drive so I could boot into Linux

So when I built my new PC, with the newer TPM, my son said, Throw that Win 11 software garbage away! He put me on Linux and I have been there ever since.

Now, they say Microsoft is putting AI into every aspect of Windows. It will run everything on your PC.

That’s one big bleep bloop accomplishment I will pass on.

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