Bioshock did it right by showing the non plot specific achievements and hiding the spoiler chapter ending ones. As I played along I was really curious to read what the chapter ending achievements would be called or titled. I was anticipating the secret achievements as a compass to try to guide myself through the morally ambiguous game — although the good and bad ending tell you which way Ken Levine leaned at the very end.

As for my favorite achievements I like the quirkier ones, one of my favorites is the “I can’t quit you, Dom” from Gears of War. I’d like to see XBL have a place where you could put up an achievement badgethat you earned in place of your gamer tag pic. I’d love to hang a Half Life 2 “trusty weapon” achievement there.

You are absolutely correct that the designers should be the ones driving you to replay the game at a more challenging level. There shouldn’t need to be the carrot of meaningless geek points dangling in front of you. The sense of satisfaction is only matched by the quality of the achievements and some of them are poor. Sometimes they make it feel like a job and that’s never good.

“I’d rather have a slightly less immerse experience that lends to replayability than vice versa in this case.”

Then show achievements only on the second play through. Solves both issues.

I never said discovery wasn’t fun. If the designers of Dead Rising need a Microsoft requirement to encourage you to experiment in their game they failed as designers.

I think we agree that discovery is fun and replayability is good. I think we disagree on the approach a designer should take to encourage both.

I totally agree with you about the ability of achievements to pull one out of the game but there are a lot of elements in Half Life that pull you out of the game – loading screens, UI, repeating dialogue, not being able to see your feet, etc. I’d rather have a slightly less immersive experience that lends to replayability than vice versa in this case.

Yes, the frying pan discovery was fun, but I wouldn’t have experimented as much as I did had it not been for the achievement basically telling me: “Hey, go experiment. There’s some damn wacky stuff we let you do.” And so yes, they ruin one of those interactions, but they clue the player into the world of dozens more. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this because it appears we have different definitions of what is fun. That’s okay. Fun is highly subjective.

When I play 360 games, I don’t really check until I’m done with the game to look at the achievements and how I get them. I don’t understand how a person can be dictated on something to get a gamerscore. Makes it sound like you can’t play the game you want to play it like, which isn’t true at all. Maybe if you’re that obsessive to try and get every achievement… but why would you if you hate it? Save that for when you have nothing else to do. In none of my games does it say “do this and you’ll get your achievement”, no. You do that by yourself, and if you torture yourself by killing the game to get said achievement, then that’s your problem, not the system itself.

Achievements in Half Life 2 actively hurt my game play experience and detracted from the over all game. Half Life 2 handles things a bit differently from other single player achievements in that if your objective is to say “light 15 zombies on fire with a flare” it will pop up a reminder after you have reached 5 and 10 reminding you how close you are. The problem in this is that lighting zombies on fire with a flare, is not fun, yet they are dangling this carrot in front of the players face. Half Life 2 for me was a deeply engrossing and personal single player experience; it felt like a world I was dropped into and asked to make my way through on my terms. This achievement meta-game within the game not only had me doing things that weren’t fun, but also pulled me out of the experience and really hammered home, “hey this is just a game.”

Similarly Bioshock with such achievements Max Out an Upgrade Path achievement dangles another bitter carrot in front of the player. Maybe I want to experiment and try a few things from each track, but as a first time player I have no idea how many upgrades I am going to come across. If I want that achievement maybe I need to sink all my upgrades into this one path that I might not enjoy.

“Yet I never would have thought that I could put masks on the zombies if not for this achievement.” That sounds like a bad achievement going by your next point “Frying a zombie’s face with a hot skillet was a fun discovery”. Putting a mask on a zombie loses out on 90% of the fun when the game tells you to do it. The fun is the discovery as you stated yourself.

People can counter well you don’t have to look at the achievements and they are right, I don’t. But like 90% of the population I will and if my brain does the math and calculates “hey if I just alter my play style by this much I can snag 10 gamer points” I am going to do it. Gamer points shouldn’t dictate playing style, designers should.

I think you nailed it by saying achievements should extend the experience. That means all single player achievements should be secret until you beat the game. If you happen to do something during your first play through that satisfies the criteria for an achievement then sure you get one but otherwise all are hidden until completion.

This would not apply to multiplayer games or arcade games.