Steam has Mr. Goldberg emulator which makes it possible to register the achievements in a .txt file automatically.
But what about GOG? Afaik they only provide such features if you buy from their site and use their launcher, or am I wrong?
This kind of defeats the purpose of free DRM games, I want the achievements working too if I’ll pay for it, I want the whole experience.
It seems you need to have the game linked to your account then launch it via their launcher, why can’t we just import the game and get things working as if it was bought? That’s something weird I think about GOG and that’s why I don’t believe too much they’re that much pro consumer.
I was thinking about start buying some games but if I can’t have the whole experience I don’t see a reason for it. I don’t want to be vendor locked by some launcher. Using Steam + Goldberg emu I can have everything including achievements in a very simple format that can be parsed by any simple program.
If GOG can implement achievements why don’t they embbed it with the game .exe itself?
This. I strongly believe that achievements killed my passion for gaming and replaced it with a desire to complete, or 100%. Once I realised that I began to shun achievements (turned off notifications, switched to PC, started playing games with them nonexistent or disabled) I renewed my passion and rediscovered the joy of gaming.
Furthermore, the whole reason achievements were created was wholly twofold: a sense of pride and accomplishment for the gamer, which is real and cannot be discounted by the second, which is a metrics and tracking system Xbox offered to game publishers. Since all achievements are dated and timed, Xbox was able to offer valuable insights to publishers as to how their games were played. That’s why most games gave you one for completing the tutorial and/or starting the game. That was the reference point: from there, how long did it take you to do other things?
The best example of this and its effects was Fallout 3 to Fallout 4. In Fallout 4, some players were upset you could only be a good guy. But in Fallout 3, there were none karmic achievements, for having good, neutral, or evil karma at three levels (8, 16, 24?). Since a vast majority of players got those levels at Good karma, they had the receipts to prove players mostly played good. Without achievements, they would not have had those receipts.
The reason GOG isn’t tracking pirates isn’t to spite them, it’s because they don’t want the data from them and can’t or don’t care to separate the data.
When PlayStation and Steam added achievements, I am not sure if they included the metrics for publishers or if they only copied the gamer dopamine feature from Xbox. I did not know GOG had them. I don’t use their launcher; never have.
I like how Animal Crossing did achievements on Switch. Local only and you get tickets for a vending machine for them. Only now I have 189K I’ll never spend. Oh, you also get title keywords you can select from to make your profile title (you can’t just put whatever, e.g. on my old Enya themed island, my title was Wild Child, after the song, because I’d unlocked the title keywords Wild and Child). Silly pointless game. I’m now playing the 3DS version on my MacBook, and it’s way better. Also silly and pointless. Still love it.
What games did you 100%?
Pretty much everything I owned in 2000-2020:
I deleted my first account while reducing my connection to corporations, but here’s what I got on my secondary account:
– And well, any popular game sold on Xbox 360. Call of Duty… Got WaW and BO1 completed, and BO2 half the camos toward diamond… What broke me was when I spent - no, worked - 9 hours a day, 6-7 days a week on the Modern Warfare reboot (2019), collecting as many calling cards as possible on my way to 10th Prestige L70(?) and unlocking every weapon and fancy badge… After overworking full time, and completing the Season Pass, I had four days left until the next season started. Something like two months on for four days’ break. It basically turned my passion into an addiction.
I still complete puzzle games on my mobile, but I almost exclusively play Zen or story-driven games on console and PC now
Yeah, that makes sense. Glad you moved on from that.
RPGs tend to have a lot of meaningless collectathons and I see why getting wrapped in that can lead to burn out. Games with FOMO cycles are a whole different breed, almost, or rather straight up, predatory.