Xbox Live brought about a way for gamers to prove their individual successes with any game on the console. Some were easy – part of the storyline of the game, some were rewards for going above and beyond – some were rewards for doing something very secretive. The end-result is that some gamers tried to milk every last drop from their game in order to collect all the achievements for a game, and thus, a higher gamerscore for their profile.

In a last minute dash of experiment, I decided to make an Xbox Live Achievements system for a website, starting with a section that hasn’t officially been released yet. The idea is that:

• Members collect points for contributing to the site


• Members can see just how much they’ve helped, even compared to other members


• Members who earn over an X amount of points get rewarded

This provides the user with a few basic reward mechanisms. For completing an achievement, the achievement pops up top centre of the screen for a few seconds, showing how many points it earned them, and which achievement it actually is. Their forum profile lists a table of all their current achievements, and totals.

How successful this does is yet to be seen. Aside from the obvious gimmickry, it provides the site’s staff the ability to easily reward members with valuable rewards, and the quick ability to show other members exactly why one of their fellow members are about to receive a brand new iPad, or a £20 iTunes voucher, or something to say thank you in a big way. (for the record though, such rewards haven’t been decided – I am not going to promise an iPad for getting 5000 points just to find out someone Slashdot’s this, and suddenly 200 people qualify. Not that someone would do that anyway).

There are basic rules to define an achievement – an achievement:

• Must be obtainable by anyone. An achievement to be the author of 50% of the articles on a site is going to be near impossible if there are 200 articles on the site.


• Must have a value to indicate the effort required for the achievement – reviewing 100 maps just for 5 points is just daft, especially if another member just gained a prize for adding three galleries for 10 points.


• Can’t be revoked. If someone achieves something, they shouldn’t have it taken away from them, even if they become an aggressive troll.

Now, I certainly don’t think this is going to transform the site overnight, if at all. A lot of members seemed to like the idea, but a lot are also Xbox owners. The system is built in such a way that it is not dominating – if someone doesn’t like the achievements, chances are they won’t see much of the system anyway, but it is there for those who do. Implementation was quick and straightforward, so if this does nothing in the long run, then it’s not the world’s biggest shame.