Last night I finally sat down and played a bit of Sanitarium for the first time.  I’ve never felt a strong need to play it because Adkit2′s 2009 playthrough is one of my favorite Let’s Plays and I’ve watched it through countless times, night after night.

It’s definitely an interesting experience 

feeling through the clunky hit boxes for myself 10 years later, and finding little details that I didn’t pay attention to in the Let’s Play.  Plus, after watching a pivotal scene play out so many times, those progress achievements feel pretty sweet. source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/185435894049

Some short mood clips made in Famitracker to be played on the original Nintendo Entertainment System source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/186820711099

Blind’s latest album takes me to deep dark places and its exactly where I want to be. source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/186866959138

I’ve seen some people who can’t stand video game achievements, I’ve seen others who won’t play games without them and won’t play another game until they’ve hundred percented all the cheevies.  Like most aspects of my life I fall in the middle, and to a more casual side of the matter.  I definitely gravitate to games that mark my achievements, but I also have little problem ignoring cheevies that I don’t accomplish after a casual play through.  With that angle being disclosed, here’s two features that I wish achievement systems would adopt.

1. Categorization.  

Pretty much all video games can be played in more than one way.  The most basic way is start to finish, which can be reflected through progress achievements; “You’ve reached this stage of the game, Here’s your notice.”  There are also stats achievements; “You did the mundane thing X number of times. Here’s your token.”  And challenge achievements; “You exceeded X goal, clearly mastering Y skill.  Here’s your badge.”  Even obscure achievements; “Well that never happens.  Here’s a cookie.”  

I don’t see why achievement systems don’t already reflect this.  The trophy page always seems to be built around 100% or bust, despite the fact very few people (especially me) are even going to attempt to get the “Speed Running” achievement for each level of your physics based game.  I like achievements because they can make me feel good.  They make me feel achieved… er… accomplished.  However, if there are a subset of them that I regularly ignore, I’d like to be able to disregard them from my stats.  Please and thank you.

Here’s another preface for my second feature request.  It can only be applied at the platform, or achievement service level, and one has to acknowledge that achievements can’t be taken too seriously.  I know all platforms strive to fight against cheaters, but really I don’t think it’s extensively worthwhile.  The higher the value we place on achievements the harder cheaters will try to find illegitimate ways of gaining them, and they will.  There is no sure way to bar someone from something in a digital medium.  So clearly this feature is going to be a stretch, but if you can’t get behind the idea that all achievements are exploitable then you might as well consider this the end of my article.

Still here?

Thanks for hearing me out.

1. Achievements from pre-recorded footage.

I am in the camp of folks that will sometimes not play a game because I can’t get online and even if there is offline support for achievements, they always seem to screw up so I might as well wait.  And yet I don’t think I have a single device that doesn’t support screen recording.  I’d love to be able to link a cheevie service to my Twitch or YouTube vid and have it acknowledge some achievements.  This would have the bonus effect of allowing me to retroactively add achievements for games I played that didn’t support them until much later.

Clearly this wouldn’t work for many stats based achievements, but any achievement that can be acknowledged from a menu or visual cue, like a life counter or stage title screen, should be trackable.  The system would parse a video frame by frame, and with Google Image-like AI it could be taught to recognize the visual cues of certain achievements.  It could even learn to apply certain standards to other games that might not support regular achievements.

You might be thinking “But anyone can upload a video, if you’re going to be that lax about it, why not just mark off a public checklist”.  You’re essentially right.  If there’s a cheevie service that gives me acknowledgment just at my word, I’m down with that.  However, there still is legitimacy to uploading footage, after all, the speed running community does exactly this.  Some community scrutiny is required, and some cheaters do get through the system, but as previously declared: this will always be the case.

There’s my long spiel for two rather mundane ideas.  There’s probably legitimate reasons why I’ve never heard anyone mention either before.  But I’m putting it out there.  Whether or not someone reads through this schlock or not, that’s a different matter.

source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/185247441974

Best part about living downtown: if you need live music, typically all you have to do is walk down the street and you’ll find it.  Great show at The Tavern. source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/185186455519