Yeah, yeah, I’m aware this isn’t really news of note, but having newly discovered this font of hilarity, I thought I’d mention it.  Choice Yahtzee quote:  “I don’t really think that America is populated entirely by assholes and cowboys; I know that some Canadians live there too”.

Research study shows that Canada is awesome, and all game developers should move there immediately.  Full text is available here.

1. Achievement Points
2. ???
3. Profits!!! 

Apparently the EEDAR has figured out that acheivements points are good.  This has been apparent to basically anyone who owns a 360 since the dawn of time, but it’s nice to see in an official looking report.  The report says that Metacritic scores go way up on titles which have a large number of achievement points, as well as a larger variety.  Games which have online achievement points generate 50% more income than those who do not.  Furthermore, a user will prefer to buy a title on platform which as acheivement points (I know I do, if it’s on the 360, I get it on the 360).  A more interesting finding is that if you have achievement points which include a viral marketing component, or some type of content creation, profit is on average 50% higher.

An acheivement is a very powerful reward scheme, because unlike gameplay mechanisms, you can only unlock it once, and that’s it, forever.  Each point is also unique, they are not generic rewards such as extra lives.  What this means is you remember rewards you get, especially if the mechanism in which you got it was particularly offbeat and unique (e.g. hitting the guard with the can he tells you to pick up in Half-Life 2, or taking a picture of Spencer Cohen’s body in Bioshock).  Furthermore the points themselves extent their reach in the other direction as well, by demonstrating your glorious victories to your friends through Xbox live (which cleverly has badges which sync to the system available for facebook and blogs).

Having a larger variety of interactive tasks therefore incentivizes your players to keep exploriIng the world you’ve crafted.  Strategic use of an achievement can introduce a player to an entirely new area of exploration that they may not have considered.  A player will start by picking the low hanging fruit when they try your game, and indeed it’s good to have some early hand-outs, but the fruit is sweet, and as long as you don’t make it impossible to get more of them (I’m looking at you Burnout), they will keep coming back for more.  Eventually they turn into freakish, bizarre creatures like myself, who will stay up to all hours of the morning, killing peasants over and over again because I need more Minions to squeeze 10 more little fetid GP out of your game with my clammy, blistered hands, cackling to the moonlight as I go.  By the way, as a general rule, do not make achievement points which require hours of repetitive action, it isn’t fun, and actually detracts from an otherwise highly entertaining game.

What this means is that the rewards structure of achievement points, while in a sense existing ‘outside the magic circle’, in effect has impact on the game itself, and should therefore be considered as part of the design, not merely an afterthought (as it seems to be in many titles).  So to all you developers out there, do a good job, hire Tim Schaefer to plan your Achievement strategy if you must, but give it serious consideration.  If anyone needs me, I’ll be trying to nail the rest of the gold medals on Portal.

I can’t believe the rumours were true.  I don’t know the full story behind the motivations and the details of the break-up, but it appears that Microsoft now owns a minority equity share in the new privately held company, Bungie LLC.  Microsoft retains rights to the Halo franchise, but Bungie is now free to do as they like.

Personally, I think this hurts Microsoft.  The teams that make your games are the best assets you can hold onto, and you can make much more money as a company when you’re the publisher, developer, and console manufacturer.  For all the talk, it would seem that Bungie felt that Microsoft was constraining their creative control over their products.  Just over a week after releasing the title that will put Microsoft’s Entertainment Division in the black for the first time, to announce the split is a bad image.  Still, it would looks like there’s not a lot of hard feelings, and the two companies will have a strong relationship in the future.  If the choice was between letting Bungie leave and maintaining a strong relationship or refusing and having your key players quit and start it anyway, losing that relationship, the former is obviously better.

So here’s to you Bungie, it was fun while it lasted, and hopes that you create in the future as many wonderful things as you had while you were here.

Note:  Everything said here is speculation, I don’t actually know anything. =)

http://www.godmodeonline.com/d/20070924.html

 Oh, it hurts to even think about.