Earlier this month, GameCyte offered a psychological examination of in-game achievements. We spoke to respected researchers from within the field, who helped us explore the reasons why gamers are so drawn to shiny trophies and higher Gamerscores. Those reasons were many, but regardless of your particular reason of choice, the fact is that more and more gamers are growing to love achievements. Now, thanks to a new report by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), we’ve got the market data to prove it, and it’s not just regular old achievements that gamers are looking for, anymore — today’s discerning connoisseur of interactive digital media craves a more diversified array of objectives.
EEDAR, which tends to go into a worrying amount of depth in its various analyses, has published their September 2008 Exposé, the company’s monthly report on today’s gaming trends, and this time around, EEDAR is tackling “Accomplishment Systems” — that is, Xbox Live Achievements and PSN Trophies. EEDAR’s report contains three conclusions which their sales data has led them to, accompanied by colorful graphs (so you know they’re true):
- Games with more achievements sell more copies.
This seems like something of a shallow assertion at first; surely gamers aren’t that drawn to achievements over the core enjoyability of a game. One could argue, of course, that a better-designed game will necessarily use achievements to better effect, but that’s difficult to prove. What EEDAR does have on its side, however, is data that shows just how great the divide is:
[In 2007,] Games with 31+ Accomplishments generated more than three times the average unit sales of games with 1-30. … In 2008, so far, we have seen this trend become even more extreme. No game titles have been released with 10 or less Accomplishments. Games with 31-40 Accomplishments are doing far worse than game titles with 41-50. 40% of 2008 games have less than 40 Accomplishments and average less than a third of the unit sales of games with 41-50 Accomplishments.
Conclusion: Don’t skimp on the achievements, designers. But it’s not just about piling in a bunch of “Score 100/Score 1000/Score 1,000,000″ objectives, either:
- Games with more diversity in their achievements sell more copies.
In compiling their data, EEDAR claims to have identified 16 different types of achievement, and categorized their analyzed games by how many different types they contain. Once again, the sales numbers and the type numbers went hand-in-hand:
So far in 2008, about half of all game titles contain 7 or more Accomplishment types, much more prevalent than in previous years. The games doing so are selling double the number of units than games with 1-6 types.
Double the number of units. Again, say what you will about cause and effect — maybe the well-designed games just know how to handle their achievements, or maybe including some good achievements will draw out the finer elements of your game design. In either case, EEDAR’s message is loud and clear, as phrased within the report: “A note to publishers and developers – ignore Accomplishments at your own peril.”
Finally, the report makes a special note as to what these figures mean for the console race:
- The 360 is handling achievements far better than the PS3.
EEDAR calls out the major differences between Achievements and Trophies, namely that the former are mandatory for every game on the system, the latter require users to be logged in to PSN (even for offline games), and as such, Sony is missing out. To sum up, the report notes:
…if a game title is released on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3 does not have Trophies, users that own both consoles will probably gravitate toward the Xbox 360 version.
Our addiction is only going to grow from here, friends. You can check out the report for yourself, here.
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