My mother has an auntie who was a huge soccer enthusiast as a young lady. Many years ago we met in a family gathering, and she told me about her favorite Pelé memory (pretty much every Brazilian alive in the 50’s/60’s has one of those to share, either about him or Garrincha). As always with such accountings, it was preached in almost religious fashion:
“I was at Vila Belmiro [Santos’ legendary home field] for a Santos x Portuguesa game. [Actually I can’t recall for sure if it was the “main” Portuguesa or the Santista one, but still.] As the game started Pelé got his first ball a couple steps shy of the box, pointing to the right wing, face-to-face with the left centre-back. In two swift, explosive moves he dribbled the defender out and, ballistic precision, hit exactly the post cross without a hint of movement on the goalkeeper’s side. The ball bounced back into the box, and as it wasn’t a score–despite how beautifully unpredictable the whole thing was–rival fans in the stands started to offend him with racial slurs–it used to happen all the time back then, it was much more common than now. ‘Macaco! Macaco!’ Pelé raised his right hand with his palm wide open towards them, as if saying ‘wait for it’. Next time he got the ball he simply proceeded to do the exact same moves, but now scoring the goal.”
This is what I would call a “real-life game achievement”: a deed memorable enough to be worthy being passed on generations to come orally (there was no camera capturing that, mind you).
Last Friday the awesome Nathan Brown got me thinking about that with his article on reward systems in videogames, and as I started digging for my personal origins to that feeling my brain ironically handed me back such a “another person’s memento” (now I’m kinda glad to have put that down before we both completely forget about it, honest to god).
Anyways, it seems such achievements were always there–one could even trace them back to those cave paintings (e.g., “the day our gods helped us on the hunt”); but then it was a hundred percent organic–and for the most part only alive in a couple witnesses’ minds. Back in my early days as an apprentice hardcore gamer, for instance, I vividly remember the moment I managed to jump over the castle’s entrance in Castlevania and triggered the related treasure–it was a complete accident, since I always did that for fun (and a so exciting one that I tried to get back to it walking and entered the castle anyways); or the day a friend got to school deliriously mumbling about the Maridia tube in Super Metroid being actually breakable–we were 4 or 5 guys stuck in the same part of the game by then; or the afternoon I got past the final section of Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads blindfolded (ok, it wasn’t exactly like that, but that’s a story for another day).
Back to Pelé, that memory was much more relevant to my mother’s auntie than the fact he scored 1k+ goals throughout his career; and giving it some thought made me realize why most vg achievements are boring: they keep tracking stats, not memorable moments.
Stats are important, of course, and can even be fun to track on their own. It’s always interesting to realize your in-game avatar has eaten 150 fruits–and has impaled themselves even more in the process of looking out for them. But even those can work better when they’re able to evoke any emotional meaning–even the slightest one.
For instance: WayForward’s remake of A Boy and His Blob has a button exclusive for giving the charming partner a hug; the animation loop for that is so delicious (kudos to the person who worked on it) that you can picture players doing it to show it to someone else, before a tricky parachute leap of faith (especially if they are kids afraid of doing so) or simply out of sheer pleasure. The game tracks that and eventually the “Show some love (Hug the blob 5 times)” achievement will pop-up–rewarding the player for doing something theoretically “useless” gameplay-wise, but still meaningful in a totally different sphere.
Ideally, a memorable achievement shouldn’t rely on counting stuff at all; but I do recognize many of those would require some sorcery on the code side to be properly put to work–I bet my most cherished recollections of Journey or FTL: Faster Than Light wouldn’t be doable (although I’d be happy with ANY achievement related to the legendary thief KazaaakplethKilik, please).
That said, when they DO work though… they go a long way being worth the trouble. As for me, getting the doll back from the Living World to the already-dead child in Guacamelee! was the best part of it; the same can be said about helping The Last Stag to reconcile with his past by finding the final station in Hollow Knight, Stag Nest. And to this day I can’t help smiling endearingly at those achievements whenever I realize they’re there as a log of those moments.
Just in case anyone is wondering about the legendary thief KazaaakplethKilik: https://julianozucareli.substack.com/p/just-another-memorable-emergent-plot?s=w