Achievements
by Nate Scheidler

I have a love/hate relationship with the latest trend in computer game design; achievements.

Achievements in Video Games

Achievements are an in-game reward system used across a broad range of games and gaming platforms to mark various goals a player has managed to reach. Some of these goals are always easy to reach.

A sample game achievement is "talk to Bob". When you load the game, Bob is conveniently placed in front of you. You say "Hi Bob!", and Bob responds with equal enthusiasm. A message blips in the corner, you have earned the talk to Bob achievement!

Most achievements exist as just a trophy marker, a little graphic or notation indicating that the challenge has been overcome. Others will provide a bonus or reward for meeting a challenge, or after a certain mix/number of challenges have been met. In Mass Effect, a player receives bonus powers on a second playthrough if they manage to gain an achievement for completing the game.

Achievements are always a mix of easy and challenging, and any given collection of achievements will include at least a few that are truly unique or unusual. Some achievements are more or less guaranteed by progressing through the game. Others require gathering specific resources to accomplish something that is possible in the game but not necessary to succeed. Still others require playing through the entire game a second, third, or thousandth time.

I'm not kidding on the thousandth... StarCraft II, a recent release by Blizzard entertainment, provides special rewards for beating online opponents by the thousand count. In fact, in order to get all the achievements in the game you will have to play it over 3,000 times. That's the hate relationship: achievements are sometimes set with such unreasonable expectations that they can spur addictive/compulsive behaviors.

Achievements in Academics

However, there is a love relationship here too, and that's really the crux of what I want to convey. achievements applied in an academic setting have potential to spur great things. By building some achievements into the coursework for your student, you're creating educational games with rewards that run parallel the grading system and can encourage students that aren't performing to their potential.

Consider this; you give the students an assignment to read chapter 7 in a textbook, and complete problems 1 through 5. Reading chapter 7 could be an achievement. Getting a C or better on problems 1 through 5 could be an achievement. Getting a B or better on problems 1 through 5 could be another achievement... so a higher grade generates 2 achievements, but a satisfactory grade is not unrewarded. Additionally, a C or better on problems 6 through 10 could be a fourth achievement. Setting the achievement marker low encourages the students to try.

You might add that after a student has gotten 10 achievements, they are exempted from a pop quiz or get a night without homework. The next benchmark is higher... 30 achievements, but the reward is even better than what is available at 10 achievements. You make one goal easily obtainable, so that everyone is able to succeed and experience the reward. As the students work harder to reach achievements, cutting back on homework and quizzes is perfectly reasonable as a reward... they're already performing well.

Achievements are tracked individually for each student, but not posted... its an individual benchmark, and you want them to care about personal success more than how they measure against other students.

Now let's take it outside of the textbook and into the unstructured. You might try these for achievements:

• Math: find and list 10 items you could buy with 4 dollars, 4 quarters, 4 dimes, 4 nickels and 4 pennies, using at least 12 of the coins
• English: take a photo of a sign with a spelling error on it
• History: locate a historic building in a different town/city

Now we've created achievements that have a unique and odd flavor, made it into a bit of a scavenger hunt, and also put the students learning into an environment of real-life applications.

So I may have a love/hate relationship with achievements in game design, but I think that's more a function of the design than the achievement itself. Everyone wants to be a winner, and achievements might help your students feel like winners too.