Achievement Unlocked! – Total Numb Body Experience! (Managed to stay awake through all three hours of Magnolia. No, you can’t get that time back.)

I’m no fan of achievements in games myself. I take the line that if you get them for things you do for playing the game normally, then they’re utterly worthless, and if they’re there to artificially pad out your play time, then the developer should have put all that time they spent into coming up with all those wanky “achievements” into making a more interesting game instead.

But the thing I really object the most to is the implication that we need “achievements” to quantify our fun. I think it’s hugely condescending on the behalf of the developer to assume we need to be patted on the head and reassured every five minutes that we’ve “achieved” something. What’s wrong with failure? It’s character-building. If people aren’t allowed to fail (even at a video game) then all we do is breed a culture in society where we expect to be rewarded handsomely for mediocrity. Wait… hang on, we already have that, don’t we?