Game developers just want to have fun.

So when the folks at Propaganda Games were amused by recklessly killing their own teammates during the making of “Turok,” they thought it might be funny and different to include an Achievement for doing so.

They were wrong.

After a backlash from angry Xbox Live gamers late last year, the company recently decided to patch the game on release day to exclude the teammate-killing reward. With “Turok” out in stores this week, I got Associate Director Tim Lewinson on the phone yesterday to talk about the controversial Achievement. Here’s a taste:

Multiplayer: I’m assuming you guys play a lot of multiplayer games on Xbox Live. It never occurred to you that gamers might find that kind of Achievement irritating?

Lewinson: Well, here’s the thing. A lot of folks got uptight about it when the Achievement list was leaked. They were yelling on the forums about how we’re awarding anti-social behavior. Won’t somebody think of the children and all that nonsense so, you know, to our credit we listened to the fan-base, and we patched the Achievement to remove that team-killing portion, so everything’s well in the universe once again. Never let it be said that we won’t listen to the fan-base and if there’s something that they feel really strongly enough about, we’re always willing to go back and take a second look.

Read on to learn more of Lewinson’s thoughts on taking feedback from gamers, how Public Enemy sneaks into the game and what a romantic guy he really is…

Read more…

Earlier this week, Harmonix Senior Designer Dan Teasdale answered our burning questions about “Rock Band.”

But we also wanted to know how the team came up with the Achievements for the game. Continuing our series of finding out where Achievements come from, Teasdale answers our questions about “Rock Band”’s range of Achievements, including how they differ from “Guitar Hero II“’s Achievements and the possibility of Achievement-laden downloadable content.

But for Teasdale, personally, he said he’d like to see a new kind of Achievement:

“I’d love it if there was some form of additional Achievement-like system in the future that was more like a badge of honor or a way for people to see your play style… Imagine if you could view someone’s Gamercard and see that they’d beaten me in a “Meet the Developer” tournament, or chosen to team up with the Scryers in “World of Warcraft,” or even was an “Early Adopter” and played a certain game in the first week of release. You can’t do these with Achievements, since you could never get 100%, but with a badge of honor system as well as Achievements, things could be much more flexible.”

More material like that follows in what may well be our last “Rock Band” post of 2007!

Read more…

Remember “Dead Rising“?

How could you not: Capcom’s zombie action-adventure title was one of 2006’s bestsellers, enamoring gamers with its classic storyline and everything-is-a-weapon, sandbox-style gameplay.

Another thing the Xbox 360 exclusive had were amusing and fun-to-get Achievements. How did they come up with them?

Game designer Goda Hidehiro gave us his answers via e-mail (which were translated from Japanese). Here’s an excerpt about the easiest Achievement in the game:

Hidehiro: It would be “Freefall” or falling 16 feet. I imagine that those Achievements are achieved without the player knowing about them. I’m glad that [one] serves as a good hook to draw people’s attention, so that the player might think, “This game has some weird Achievements.”

Read on to learn about Hidehiro’s favorite Achievements, why he thinks gamers are obsessed with Achievements and what he’d like to see in “Dead Rising 2.”

Read more…

Lately, I’ve been investigating the origins of Achievements — from some of the toughest (”Call of Duty 4” and “Gears of War“) to the absolute easiest (”Avatar: The Last Airbender — The Burning Earth“).

But the one game that got me thinking about how Achievements are chosen in the first place was “Double Dragon.” Earlier this year, the classic, quarter-eating brawler made its way onto Xbox 360 consoles. While many a gamer has no doubt conquered the title countless times, could they get all 12 Achievements in the XBLA version?

I’m guessing — no. There was one in particular that got my attention: “Untouched: Complete mission 1 in a single player game without being hit.” It’s worth 20 points. And some of the other ones are nothing to sneeze at either. “Hero” requires you to play the entire game without using a continue.

So I decided to ask Razorworks, the U.K.-based developer who ported the game, about how they picked the Achievements.

Last week, two programmers from the company answered my questions via e-mail (and declined to be named for unspecified reasons).

They did tell me that only 8% of people who’ve bought “Double Dragon” have gotten the “Untouched” Achievement.

Read on for the rest.

Read more…

The latest game in the “Avatar” series is a Gamerscore whore’s dream.

About two weeks ago, a video made its way around the Internet showing how one can get 1,000 Achievement points in “Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Burning Earth” … in about two minutes. The player was shown performing a 50-hit combo, and in the process gets all five Achievements.

After learning about the tough Achievements in “Call of Duty 4” and “Gears of War,” I decided to ask THQ what was up with the easy ones in “Avatar.” Jon Cartwright, Director of Production at THQ’s Australia studio, lays it out for us.

An excerpt from Cartwright’s responses:

We weren’t overly surprised that adults could get the Achievements as quickly as they did. If someone’s been playing fighting games for years then the Achievements in “Avatar” are not going to challenge them too much. But again, we’re not targeting that gamer. We tried to focus on the thrill a young kid would get when he/she receives his/her first Achievement.

Read more…

Achievements just don’t make themselves up. They had to come from somewhere.

First we had Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, explain to us how the development studio came up with the Achievements for “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.”

Now continuing our on-going Achievement series, Cliff Bleszinski (a.k.a. “CliffyB”), Lead Designer at Epic Games, gives us a brief rundown via e-mail on the Achievements for the best-selling title “Gears of War” (which recently came out for the PC).

While Bowling was a fan of skill-based Achievements in “Call of Duty 2” and “Call of Duty 4,” Bleszinski wanted to spread the Gamerscore love to not-so-skillful “Gears” players:

“A good achievement is one that rewards experimentation or unique behavior. Even giving players an award for even attempting to play a game in a cooperative fashion at its most rudimentary level is a great motivator for inexperienced gamers to share a title with others.”

He also talks more about the hardest “Gears” Achievement and how there should be real-life rewards for high Gamerscores…

Read more…

Where do Xbox 360 Achievements come from? We’re going to find out, one game at a time.

First up, the Achievements of “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.” Last week I asked Infinity Ward’s Community Manager Robert Bowling via e-mail about the Achievements in “Call of Duty 4.” A fan of Achievements himself, Bowling and the team behind the best-selling title take Achievements very seriously:

“I don’t agree with Achievements that don’t require skill, like ‘Play multiplayer for 8 hours straight.’ That’s not an achievement, that’s a pain; it’s one of those Achievements people will typically get simply by starting up a game and just leaving it sit while they sleep.”

Bowling also goes on to talk about the lack of Achievements for online multiplayer, the hardest Achievement in “Call of Duty 4″ and his own “Achievement-cation” he recently took…

Read more…