Nintendohas always marched to the beat of its own Donkey Konga bongos. The company studiously avoids many industry trends — as evidenced by the fact that its big next-generation console is launchingin the middle of the current generation set byPlayStationandXbox. Its independence can be a bad thing, and the week of conversation generated byits decision to price Mario Kart World at $80shows the downsides of being out of step. But the company’s resolute refusal to just go along with what the rest of the industry is doing can be a good thing, too.
Take the company’s disinterest in generative AI. WhileSony is dabbling with AI charactersandXbox is putting out worse versions of decades-old games generated on the fly by AI, Nintendo is saying that it will justkeep focusing on good, human-made games. Refreshing! I consider the news thatNintendo is still refusing to incorporate systemwide achievements into the Switch 2to be another case where being a little old-school is a good thing.
Achievements And Trophies Turn Gaming Into Meta-Gaming
I don’t like trophies and achievements. I’ve platinumed one game in my life, and it wasAstro Bot, which was pretty easy to 100 percent and enjoyable enough that going after the optional objectives never became a pain. I don’t actively dislike trophy and achievement hunting; mostly, I don’t think about it at all. But I think that achievements and trophies unnecessarily gamify the act of gaming.
That can turn gaming into a chore. I’m not an achievement hunter, but I sometimes need to track them down for a guide. I often notice that most don’t encourage you to play the game in a fun, challenging way. Instead, they push you to look for pointless stuff that the game has highlighted so that it can have trophies.
Sometimes they’re needlessly confusing, like a trophy inLife is Strange: Double Exposurethat requires you to find several “art projects,” but is vague about what exactly counts toward the goal. Sometimes, they’re needlessly time-consuming, like whenGrand Theft Auto 4asks players to shoot 200 pigeons. Sometimes a game makes you play it all the way through, multiple times, to get the Platinum. All of this makes the experience less interesting, not more.
Achievements And Trophies Aren’t All Bad
This isn’t to say that trying to find something off the beaten path can’t be fun. A difficult objective makes you engage with a game in a new way and can help you understand it better. You get to know a game’s systems and level design really well when you’re trying to beat its most difficult challenges and, if you love a game, that kind of deep engagement is worthwhile. But these kinds of challenges can be implemented within the games themselves.
And when you’re not trying to pad out a list for a platinum — or working to keep the objectives fair so players don’t get mad — you can make them more interesting. The recentHitmantrilogy included a ton of optional objectives within each level. I didn’t care about earning the achievements on my PS5, I cared about completing the objectives in-game. Trying to finish all the levels without being noticed gave me something fun to work toward, but I was never worried about trying to get a trophy. The real trophy was the guards I knocked out along the way.
If developers want to include objectives inside the actual game, that’s great. More power to them. But I appreciate Nintendo taking the emphasis off external motivation, and placing it purely on the fun you actually get from the experience.
