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Tag: achievements

  • Xbox One Rewards You For Watching TV

    Xbox One Rewards You For Watching TV

    (image)

    You may be familiar with the above icon that pops up out of nowhere during game play on your Xbox 360; it usually signifies that the player has achieved some notable feat or challenge (i.e. points). The numbers and letter signify that 1000 game points have been achieved, which contribute to the user’s Gamerscore.

    What if you want to go beyond that? What if you wanted simply be rewarded for watching TV shows and ads? Don’t worry, Microsoft has you covered – and the more involved you are with the media that your Xbox One provides, the more you will get out of it.

    Major Nelson, the Director of Programming for the Microsoft gaming network Xbox Live, said in July that, “Other Xbox One applications such as video and music apps can now use Achievements to bring you awesome sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions.”

    Not only that, but you will be known for your actions, as Xbox One will give you digital medals and badges to which a user can proudly display to their online buddies, or whoever they want to invite over.

    The Xbox Wire Staff said on November 8th in a press release that, “Xbox One is empowering partners to bring media achievements and exclusive Snap experiences, as well as many other things to entertainment apps, offering everybody the opportunity to achieve badges or rewards for the media they consume in addition to gaming.”

    So how do you exactly earn these medals? Microsoft provided an example of earning the “n00b” Achievement for starting up the Machinima app for the first time; you get the “addict” Achievement for launching it ten times in 30 days. If you’re tinkering with Amazon Instant Video, you can earn the achievement that involves watching 10 titles before the end of 2013, or “watch[ing[ an Amazon Original pilot with the second letter of the Greek alphabet”, sound fun already?

    In a statement given to Ars Technica, Microsoft noted that Achievements can be unlocked by customers simply by “watching TV shows and movies or rating content” on apps including “Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crackle, Amazon Instant Video, and Redbox Instant.”

    These points will not be going towards an Xbox One user’s existing Achievements and Gamerscore, so hardcore players won’t have to worry about couch potatoes racking up points that reflect upon a user’s gaming skills. “Don’t worry, watching a zillion hours of House of Cards won’t impact won’t impact your Gamerscore. We know that is sacred.” Said Microsoft.

    Xbox One comes out November 22nd.

    (Images via JustAchieveIt.com, Ars Technica)

  • Xbox One Might Give You Achievements For Watching TV

    The Xbox One announcement was all about one thing – TV. It’s clear that Microsoft is positioning its next console as more than just a game machine, but it might be bringing some game elements to television broadcasts.

    Gamesindustry.biz reports that Microsoft has recently applied for a patent that would hand out achievements to TV viewers. Similar to how achievements encourage players to complete specific objectives, TV achievements will be used to incentivize viewers to watch more content. Here’s the description:

    “Television viewing tends to be a passive experience for a viewer, without many opportunities for the viewer to engage or have interactive experiences with the presented content. To increase interactive viewing and encourage a user to watch one or more particular items of video content, awards and achievements may be tied to those items of video content. Additionally, by tying the awards and achievements to particular items of video or advertising content, viewers may be encouraged to increase their viewership of the content, thus increasing advertising opportunities,”

    Speaking of advertising opportunities, the patent application says the Xbox One may use Kinect to get viewers to interact with the program. One of the examples has the viewer holding up a particular object that may coincide with what’s on the screen. The TV show would then reward the viewer with an achievement for being a blind loyal consumer.

    The most interesting part of the application is a little section that says TV achievements may not just be points that go towards a Gamerscore. Instead, Microsoft may offer users digital and physical rewards for watching shows and scanning in items.

    For now, this is just a patent application. There’s no guarantee that this will show up on the Xbox One. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it after Microsoft put so much emphasis on television at its unveiling event.

  • The Xbox 360 ‘Achievement Unlocked’ Sound, Visualized

    You spend countless hours seeking it. You do crazy things to obtain it. You play games over and over again for a chance at it.

    It, of course, is the elusive (depending on the game) Xbox 360 achievement. Think about that glorious sound. How it reverberates in your ears – the satisfaction of winning points where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

    Well, this is how that achievement unlock sound looks like.

    Yes, looks. As Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson explains, he contracted Born of Sound to make him a “sound-form” based on this special sound. A sound-form is basically a visual representation of sound, specifically how it moves through the atmosphere.

    Now, this is what I’ll see in about 5 more hours when I finally beat Bioshock Infinite in 1999 mode.

    [Major Nelson]

  • Your Xbox 360 Achievements Aren’t Totally Worthless Anymore

    If you’ve been consistently building up your Xbox 360 Gamerscore for years, you’re about to get rewarded…kind of.

    Microsoft has just launched an all new rewards program for Xbox gamers. It’s called MyAchievements and allows your Gamerscore to be used for some modest prizes.

    “You’ve been faithfully building your Gamerscore for years now. To reward you for your dedication, we’ve created MyAchievements for Xbox LIVE Rewards Gold members. The MyAchievements level that you earn – CONTENDER, CHAMPION OR LEGEND – depends on your Gamerscore. The higher your score, the bigger the reward!” says Microsoft.

    Once you join the Xbox LIVE rewards program, here’s how it will work:

    Once you hit 3,000 Gamerscore, you’ll start receiving a “special gift” on your birthday. According to fine print, that gift will retail at around $0.25. That’s the “Contender” level. When you hit 10,000 Gamerscore, you’ve become a “Champion” and will receive the birthday gift plus a 1% rebate on Xbox LIVE Marketplace purchases accumulated every month. The top tier is called “Legend” and you hit it when you reach 25,000 Gamerscore. At that level, your Marketplace rebate is bumped up to 2%.

    When you think about all the hours it takes to accumulate a 25,000 Gamerscore, you start to realize just how modest these rewards really are. But oh well, guess you can’t complain about getting something for free.

    You have to be a member of Xbox LIVE Gold to apply for the rewards program. You don’t have to start from scratch, as any achievement points you’ve earned up to this point will count towards your level.

    [h/t The Verge]

  • Mozilla Open Badges Enters Public Beta

    Mozilla has been playing around with the idea of Open Badges since 2010. If you’re not familiar with the concept, think of it like game achievements applied to what you see, learn and do on the Web. Mozilla has partnered with some major players over the past year and has been testing the concept with them. Now it’s time for Open Badges to take on its next big challenge – a public beta.

    Matt Thompson, communications director for Mozilla, announced on the Mozilla blog that the Open Badges Infrastructure has entered into public beta. Badge issuers and developers now have access to the software that will allow them to build badges. The point is that people will build badges to recognize achievements made “online or out of school” according to the Open Badges Web site.

    The Open Badges program has already been around in some form for the past year with major players like NASA, Disney-Pixar and 4H developing for the program. To make the deal even sweeter, you can also link up Open Badges with Mozilla Persona that adds a “reputation layer” to your online ID.

    The new features coming with the Open Badges public beta today are as follows:

    New tools for badge issuers. A new and improved badge issuer API makes it easier for any organization to award their own digital badges for learning, skills or achievements.

    New ways for users to manage their badges. Improvements to Mozilla’s “Badge Backpack” make it easier for users to store, manage, import and group badges earned from multiple sites through a single location.

    New tools for badge displayers. A new displayer API will make it easier to display digital badges across the web, from personal web sites to social networking platforms.

    New documentation and privacy features. Including an updated privacy policy, terms of use and FAQs for developers.

    Erin Knight, Mozilla’s Senior Director of Learning, provided some more clarification on the launch of the beta. She says that Mozilla is going to start speeding up the new releases for Open Badges to every two weeks. The hope is that they can get from beta to version 1.0 by the end of the year.

    If you want to start working with Open Badges right now, check out the developer documentation and source code. You can also learn more about Open Badges and maybe even earn your first badge.

    I’ll be the first to say that Open Badges is a really unique concept that gamifies how we display our real world accomplishments. By turning our accomplishments and skills into a digital achievement, more people might be pushed to achieve something greater. We already have people spending ungodly amounts of time to earn achievements in video games so the same should be true for a person spending a lot of time to learn astrophysics.

  • [EXCLUSIVE] Would Reaching 1 Million Gamerscore Be The “Greatest Gaming Goal Ever Accomplished?”

    To some, gaming is a casual hobby. To these people, it’s fun, but none of their life goals involve feats achieved with a controller in their hand. Ray Cox is not one of these gamers.

    Cox is a Guinness World Record Holder, his claim to fame being the guy with the highest Gamerscore on the planet. I’ve been playing Xbox 360 for a good while, although admittedly casually at times. In my time, I’ve racked up somewhere around 25,000 gamerscore. Cox just broke through the 700,000 barrier. The put that into context, the average retail game (barring extras and DLC) has enough achievements to net the player 1,000 gamer points. Start to calculate how long some games take to complete (while grabbing all the achievements), and you can see what an accomplishment this really is.

    “Day after day, game after game, it wears on you and tests your will on a daily basis,” says Cox.

    And his ultimate goal is to hit 1,000,000 gamerscore. He chronicles his progress on his site, the aptly titled 1milliongamerscore.com. Cox has been racking up achievements since day one. Literally. When then 360 launched in North America, that’s when he began his quest:

    “Xbox 360 launch day in North America is when I unlocked my first achievement, so technically, that is when my journey began.”

    But when he started, 1 million wasn’t really a thought yet. He just wanted to beat everyone else:

    “At the time I had no goals or thoughts of striving for such a score (1,000,000) but I did want to establish myself as the top guy. It was around 250,000 gamerscore when I thought to myself that a million might be possible one day.”

    One million is still quite a ways off, however. It took Cox 2,312 days and 1,060 different games (retail, arcade and Windows 7) to hit the 700,000 milestone – on an achievement from Mass Effect 3. He really wanted to hit 700,000 on the particular achievement, so much so that he put off unlocking other achievements until he hit it. He compiled a video of his travels from 600,000 to 700,000, which you can check out below:

    One of my first questions (and a lot of other people’s I presume) is how the journey to 1 million affects other aspects of his life. He says that he’s had to sacrifice a lot to get to where he is:

    “When I’m not gaming, I’m mostly spending time with my long time girlfriend. I’ve had to sacrifice a lot to reach this goal. I’ve had a lot of talks with my girlfriend and we’ve come to the conclusion that I have entered the point of no return with my score. I must reach this goal, I’ve come too far just to give up now and over the years she has grown to support me,” he says.

    And about the unavoidable haters out there?

    “I’ve learned to deal with that as I’ve heard it all over the many years now,” he says. “The internet age is mostly a bunch of people being judgmental about people they don’t know. Especially the gaming community.”

    It took Cox about 7 months to go from 600,000 to 700,000 gamerscore. If you extrapolate that out, he’ll hit the million sometime around December 2013. That, of course, all depends on whether or not he keeps up the same pace. But what happens when he finally hits the million? I asked him about what’s next:

    “That’s a very good question that I have no answer for just yet. Celebration, a long vacation, and a good break from gaming will be first thing in order. I’ve had various job offers across the board on my journey so far. I feel like I should be able to land a good job in the gaming industry when all is said and done. Some people already have but someone will recognize my dedication and how driven of a person I am. That carries over to anything I do.”

    Cox obviously loves games. You can’t commit yourself to something like this without a deep down affinity for it all. But why 1 million? What does that number mean to him? He says that there are all kinds of gaming records out there like high score in a single game or gaming marathon times. That’s “simple stuff,” he says.

    “I’m on an over 6 year marathon so far and if I do make it to the million, I fully believe that will be the greatest gaming goal ever accomplished.”

    Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

  • Guinness World Record Holder For Highest Gamerscore Hits 700,000

    UPDATE: Check out our exclusive interview with Ray Cox about his quest for 1,000,000.

    ORIGINAL ARTICLE: When is comes to gaming these days, you’re either an achievement lover or you’re not.

    I would even call myself that – maybe even a whore. I love to go out of my way in games to unlock special, secret, or supremely difficult achievements. Whether you call them achievements or trophies or whatever, I feel that they add another dimension to any game. Instead of just playing the game to enjoy the game and eventually beat it (which is satisfying enough), you can play the game to do other cool stuff as well. It’s really a win-win in my book.

    And of course, if you’re and Xbox 360 player, unlocking achievements leads to a higher gamerscore. My gamerscore probably sits somewhere around 25,000 – but then again, I go through periods where my gaming activity is almost next to nothing.

    I doubt that Ray Cox goes through any such periods.

    Cox, or Stallion83 to the Xbox world, is the Guinness World Record holder for highest gamerscore. Earlier this week, he announced on his site that he had hit a major milestone: 700,000.

    Let’s put that into perspective. There are exceptions, but your average Xbox 360 game comes stocked with achievements totaling 1,000 points. Some games add more opportunities for gamer points through DLC and such, but let’s just stick with 1,000 per game. The amount of time that it takes to complete a game (while playing for achievements) depends on the particular game that you’re playing – but some tougher games can take 20, 30, even 40 hours of gameplay time to grab most of the achievements.

    In short, for someone who has played their fair share of Xbox, a 700,000 gamerscore is absolutely mind-boggling.

    And he doesn’t want to stop there. He’s on a quest for 1,000,000. According to his site, 1milliongamerscore, his quest began in November, 2005. It took him 2,312 days to hit 700K.

    Here’s the video he compiled to celebrate the milestone.

    And if you’re wondering if that was a pain in the ass to make, well, it was:

    The video was pain in the rear end to make. Ever since I hit 600,000 gamerscore back in August of 2011 I’ve basically recorded every shred of video game footage. Hundreds of hours all packed onto my HDD. Most of the achievements were buried in files that were 3 to 4 hours long. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And it took a ton of work to finally get done. I hope you all enjoy it.

    The achievement that got him to 700K, as you probably saw, was “Insanity” from Mass Effect 3. Cox said that he hit 700K on that achievement purposefully, even avoiding other achievements in the game in order to time it up perfectly.

    He hit 600,000 back in August of 2011, so by my math, he’s looking at breaking through 800,000 in October of this year and his prized 1,000,000 sometime around December of 2013.

    [h/t VentureBeat]

  • XBLA Achievement Guidelines Changing Soon (Rumor)

    Ever since Microsoft has introduced the achievement system in 2005 with the launch of the Xbox 360, it has proven to be one of the most popular additions to gaming. There’s something about completing an objective and hearing that little “blip” noise that fills you with a sense of accomplishment.

    The rules for achievements, however, have remained pretty stagnant over the years. Retail games have a maximum allotment of 1,000 gamerscore with 50 achievements. Those numbers can be increased through DLC, but it’s largely the same.

    XBLA games have seen even less change as they have been only allowed to offer 200 gamerscore since launch. Xbox 360 Achievements received a rumor from a trusted source that Microsoft is going to change the rules for XBLA soon.

    The new rules allow a base gamerscore of 400 with a max of 30 achievements being offered. DLC for these games can offer up to 100 gamerscore and 8 achievements per quarter. In total, this allows XBLA games to offer 800 gamerscore and 62 achievements over its lifespan.

    While Xbox 360 Achievements speculate the change may be due to Microsoft acknowledging that there are people who won’t buy DLC if there are no achievements, the change may also be due to competition.

    While the actual gamerscore counts for Xbox 360 users, the actual number of achievements counts for a lot more. While the achievement is still the most popular form they appear in, Sony and Steam have been offering more in their form of achievements lately. It’s especially apparent on Steam with titles like Team Fortress 2 having achievements numbering in the hundreds.

    This would also be great for XBLA games that also appear on the PSN. It’s annoying to see games like Beyond Good and Evil HD only have 12 trophies on the PSN. Microsoft is the leader when it comes to achievements so whatever they change will reflect on other platforms.

    This is still just a rumor for now, but we’ll keep you updated if there are any changes or confirmations.

    Do you think Microsoft should increase the achievement limit for XBLA titles? Or is it just fine the way it is? Let us know in the comments.

  • Facebook Offers New Tools For Game Development

    If you thought that games were just a way for Facebook to make some easy money, think again. The company is serious about it and are offering tools for developers to add even more options for achievements and high score rankings.

    When Facebook launched “now playing” stories in news feeds, they saw a 60% increase in new users installing games via these news feed stories. The Facebook developer blog detailed today what they’re going to do to capitalize on that momentum.

    The three changes coming to Facebook games is the ability to display achievement, passing and high score stories to news feeds. This will increase visibility of Facebook games and encourage repeated plays through competition.

    The achievement story will be a self-contained news feed post featuring the achievement that a friend just obtained.

    Facebook Game Development

    The passing story will compare high scores between friends and alert them if a friend has passed their high score in a game.

    Facebook Game Development

    The high score story is pretty straightforward as it publishes a post whenever a friend gets a new high score in a game.

    Facebook Game Development

    All three stories share one thing in common – they encourage people to play games through a link in the post that will take users to install the game. Stories will also get more circulation as they get more clicks, likes and comments.

    To encourage more play time in games, Facebook encourages developers to run weekly high score tournaments. They also encourage achievements to be described in such a way that make it easier for people to understand.

    Check out the blog post for the specific code you can implement in Facebook games to make them compatible with these new changes.

  • PlayStation 3: These Are The Top 10 Platinum Trophies

    Ah yes, the platinum trophy, the reward gamers earn when they obtain every other trophy (achievement) in a PlayStation 3 game. I only have one platinum trophy, so I am obviously either a bad gamer or a lazy gamer – for my pride, I’m going with the latter. Some gamers, however, have obtained a lot of platinum trophies and this list is for them.

    Sony has revealed on the PlayStation blog the top ten platinum trophies that gamers earned since the reward system was implemented in 2008. The results are somewhat surprising. The list from the most earned platinum to the tenth earned platinum are as follows:

    1. Assassin’s Creed II
    2. Modern Warfare 2
    3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
    4. God of War 3
    5. Resident Evil 5
    6. inFamous
    7. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
    8. God of War (GoW HD Collection)
    9. Borderlands
    10. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (The Sly Collection)

    The PlayStation blog also points out a few things that are common among the games on this. The first is that all of the game on this list are good. Now, you may not think they are very good, but rest assured, everybody else does. As the blog points out, the average metacritic score for the above games is an 89. While critical reception doesn’t automatically mean the game is good or not, it serves as a good indicator.

    The major common theme is that the majority of these games are single-player affairs. Even a game like Borderlands that focuses on four-player co-op action has trophies that can be obtained through a single-player run. The same goes for Modern Warfare 2 where most of its trophies are obtained through the campaign.

    Finally, these games are pretty old. The prices have dropped enough now so that everybody can get in on these games. As the blog points out, when newer games drop down in price, expect to see more recent games populate this list.

    All this makes me want to attempt the platinum in God of War again. I just have one trophy left – beating the game in less than five hours.

    Oh, if you were wondering what game I had a platinum trophy in, it’s Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Despite owning all of these games, I’m pretty lazy when it comes to getting achievements or trophies.

    Do you have any of these platinum trophies? Are you going to attempt to obtain any of the platinum trophies in these games now? Let us know in the comments.