Achievement Unlocked

Lately I have founded myself lost in an endless quest to build up an insurmountable number of achievement points, and it has taken up any and all free time I had ever had this semester. Unemployed and currently registered with twelve credits my days may not seem busy but they truly are thanks to Microsoft's clever "gimmick," achievement points. Achievements points are basically brag rights given to you, the gamer for completing specific tasks assigned to each achievement. They are points that are accumulated to your overall gamer score displayed on your profile, so why are they so important?

It's easy to see how they cannot matter. Who gives a flip about a high-score, right? Untrue, if you are a hardcore gamer. Almost any gamer can relate trying to beat the preset high scores or a friend's high score proving what exactly? Maybe that you were the better gamer, lucky, or just more determined to prove them wrong. Honestly when one of my dorm mates picked up an Xbox 360 I was not fully aware of the achievement points and when I started to see them pop up I merely rooted on my roommates to attain more. Fast forward a couple of weeks later and a couple of co-op missions on the newly released at the time, Gears of War I was earning my own achievement points, and the addiction soon came to be.

I began pursuing more cog tags and putting forth extra effort to earn the achievements and my roommate began to question what the big deal was. Now, he did not mind a couple of points here and there but he had not become resolute about them. After hitting the 1,000 point milestone after Gears of War and LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth (both great titles by the way) I became a "conquistador" on a mission to surpass one of my good buddy's gamer score. Every waking moment that I spent not eating, procrastinating, or doing homework was spent picking up achievement points.

Well the road to glory isn't always easy and I was roughly 5,000 points away from his gamer score. I believe the gap is at a 100 point difference right now after going through about seven or eight games but there's a lesson to be learned here. When you find an addiction such as achievement points you'll do anything and everything, giving up whatever time you had for other activities to use and abuse just to feed yourself the savory satisfaction you believe you received from the hunger. I have seen the horrors of this addiction and I am disgusted yet somewhat impressed at the same time by the scores that I have witnessed; 20,000, 30,000, and even 40,000 and up, holy crap.

Prior to my entire conquest I was in an argument with my soon to be conquered friend that achievement points were a complete gimmick and useless, and that video games are meant to be played for entertainment, even if the achievement points added some replay-ability. What's the definition of irony again? On a side note, would you live your life with more risks, effort, and seriousness and less procrastination if you earned lifetime achievement points? Quite honestly maybe some of us would if it was a tangible idea, but instead I think we'll have to settle for living life as if we did. No, I'm not trying to dig up some deep seeded underlying message I've gathered from being an achievement point addict, just digressing. Hah, well the quest is soon to be over and I'll be able to chill out and play some other consoles; next addiction please, with a side order of insomnia.