Most Gamers Don't Bother with Achievements

One of the big changes in the conceptualization of gaming brought on by the rise of consoles has been the introduction of the Achievement system and the GamerScore. Microsoft was first and Sony followed with its Trophies, just as some PC games aim to deliver Achievements themselves through Valve's Steam or Games for Windows Live. But it seems that even if they are packed to the gills with them, Achievements are not of too much interest to gamers themselves.

Jesse Divnich, an analyst with EEDAR, showed off at GDC the results of a study, which saw the company analyze no less than 32 million data points taken from Microsoft. 100 titles were selected at random and the Achievements situation for them was evaluated.

EEDAR found out that just 4% of the players get all the Achievements offered, while less than 10% reach an 80% level of completion. The vast majority of players get less than 10% of the whole Achievement list delivered by game developers.

Mr. Divnich also pointed out that more Achievements were unlocked for those titles, which got the biggest review scores that might mean time spent with a game is actually more influenced by critical opinion than by the attractiveness of its possible unlocks. The number of titles analyzed by EEDAR is limited but it seems that developers need to think about making Achievements easier to earn, with the aim of providing reachable goals leading to more time spent with a videogame.

The analyst also showed that the number of new intellectual properties launched in 2009 was bigger than in 2006, with the majority of completely fresh content arriving on the Nintendo Wii. 40% of newly launched role playing games were new with publisher Electronic Arts, pushing most titles based on new intellectual property.