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Team Fortress 2: How Achievements Affected the Way I Played

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Team Fortress 2: How Achievements Affected the Way I Played Andrew Resnick DGD 501 – Introduction to Game Design We 6:15-8:50PM Dr. Elena Bertozzi Paper 2: Digital Game Analysis – Team Fortress 2: How Achievements Affected the Way I Played In the highly popular and crowded online first-person shooter genre, one of the few games that stands out from the rest is Team Fortress 2 (TF2). Developed by Valve and released on October 10, 2007, TF2 is a team-based online multiplayer first-person shooter that features two teams (BLU and RED) competing over an objective. What makes the game unique is that each player can choose to play as one of nine classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Due to the class-based nature, teamwork is imperative, but it also means that there's a role out there to satisfy almost any player's preference. The roles are broken up into Offense (Scout, Soldier, Pyro), Defense (Demoman, Heavy, Engineer), and Support (Medic, Sniper, Spy). Despite being released over four years ago, TF2 remains extremely popular, due in large part to its numerous free updates.1 These updates have done everything from fixing bugs, adding new maps, adding new game modes, adding new items, and more. I began playing TF2 because of Valve's The Orange Box, which bundled together TF2 alongside Half-Life: Episode Two, and Portal. I had never played the original Team Fortress or Team Fortress Classic, but I loved everything of Valve's I had played and pre-ordering The Orange Box allowed me access to the TF2 beta. I was immediately hooked. Although there is an Arena mode where killing is the sole objective, the main three game modes of TF2 are capture the flag (CTF), control point (CP), and payload (PL). That being said, as with any shooter, killing the opposing players is always highly 1 As of this writing, TF2 has enjoyed 359 updates since release, 19 of which are considered "Major Updates" according to Valve. beneficial regardless of the mode played. As such, that was often my main goal – that is, until the first major update, the Gold Rush Update, released February 24, 2008. Among other things, the Gold Rush Update introduced three new weapons for the Medic, but in order to unlock those weapons for use, you had to complete a certain number of Medic-related achievements. The way I and others played the game after that update was drastically changed. If I wanted to use these new weapons, I now had not only to play as the Medic, but also had to complete tasks I might not otherwise attempt, let alone complete. Whether that was a good or bad thing is up to debate. At the time, some of the achievements had been criticized for encouraging players to engage in behavior that is unhelpful to their teams (Remo, 2008). Achievements were nothing new. Microsoft popularized the modern implementation of achievements through its Xbox 360 Gamerscore system back in 2005, and although the company also attempted to bring that over to the PC through its Games for Windows Live system in 2007, it wasn't until Valve's The Orange Box brought achievements to its Steam platform that achievements on the PC were fully embraced. But before the Gold Rush Update, achievements were merely superficial, possibly rewarding points (as is the case with Microsoft's Gamerscore), but never actually rewarding the player with something substantial that impacted gameplay. Valve's implementation of unlockable weapons through achievements was understandably met with mixed emotions. But the designers at Valve knew what they were doing. Up until that point, the Medic was one of the least played classes in the game, despite the fact that they are key to a team's success. Valve created the Gold Rush Update with the intention of changing gameplay, encouraging Medic usage, and rewarding those who play the game (Remo, 2008). As Derek Smith (2011) describes, achievements "can be used as the proverbial dangling carrot to get people to do things that are tedious or obviously not in their best interest". Although Valve's gameplay data showed that when players chose the Medic, the whole team scored better (Remo, 2008), Derek Smith's analysis is very on point. The new Medic achievements coerced me into choosing the Medic in order to attain the new items (the dangling carrot). And I wasn't the only one – every server I joined for days after that update was riddled with Medics. According to Valve's gameplay data when the update was released, "Medic usage hit an inflated peak usage of 32 percent of all players in all games" (Remo, 2008). For a game with nine classes, 32 percent is a pretty substantial amount. Epic Games' Cliffy B termed achievements "nerd cred" (Smith, 2011). Achievements relate to bragging rights for many gamers. Some people will purchase a multi-platform game on the Xbox 360 simply because of the achievements, and the existence of Steam achievements, or lack thereof, has even influenced some of my purchasing decisions for indie games I was on the fence about. But with the Gold Rush Update, Valve made achievements more than just "nerd cred"; the company attached clear intrinsic value to the achievements. Reach Medic Milestone 1 by achieving 10 of the achievements in the Medic pack and unlock a new syringe gun, called "The Blutsauger". Reach Medic Milestone 2 by achieving 16 of the achievements in the Medic pack and unlock a new medigun, called "The Kritzkrieg". Reach Medic Milestone 3 by achieving 22 of the achievements in the Medic pack and unlock a new melee weapon, called "The Ubersaw".2 Suddenly, achievements gave you more than just points; they gave you usable in-game items! As 2 When the Gold Rush Update was first announced, Valve said you would need one third of the 36 new Medic achievements to unlock the first item, two thirds for the second, and all 36 for the third weapon, but they subsequently changed that before release, so more people could enjoy them. Brandon Sheffield (2011) states, "the more interesting achievements are those that encourage alternate paths or play styles, or reward exploration." I think Sheffield should have added "or gives you virtual loot" to that, but that's the thing – even all these years later, I don't know of any other game that rewarded you with actual items for completing achievements. Achievements are often put in to artificially increase replayability, especially in single-player games. Sometimes there are actually achievements that are counter to each other and thus force the player to play the game again if they want to attain all the achievements.3 Valve didn't stop with the Gold Rush Update. The second, third, and fourth major updates all continued the trend of unlockable items for their respective classes, Pyro, Heavy, and Scout. Despite The Pyro Update being released three months later (May 21, 2008), I actually unlocked all three Pyro weapons before I unlocked all three Medic weapons because Pyro had always been one of my best classes. Once A Heavy Update and The Scout Update were released (August 19, 2008 and February 24, 2009, respectively), I began to fall behind. Like the Medic update, I was suddenly tasked with playing classes I often ignored, and thus it was difficult for me to unlock the weapons. But why did I care so much? If I didn't care to play a class, why would I care if I unlocked weapons for that class? I don't really have a solid answer for those questions, except that maybe "nerd cred" did finally play a role. And that's when it happened – TF2 stopped becoming an online first-person shooter to me. It became a quest for unlocking new items. I didn't care how I went about unlocking those new items, I just wanted them unlocked. Although I still occasionally played the game like I should, I 3 Dragon Age: Origins is the prime example of this, wherein there are achievements for each decision point in the game, as well as for completing each origin story. It is literally impossible to attain all the achievements in one playthrough. often did anything but. I changed my play style to suit the needs of the achievement I was seeking. One of the Scout achievements, Belittled Beleaguer, tasked me with killing an opposing player that has my team's intelligence while holding theirs. Normal CTF behavior would implore me to run back to base once I acquired their intelligence, yet now I had a different motive – I didn't care that it wasn't in my best team's interest, I was going to run around with the intelligence until the opposing team picked up mine, and then attempt to get the kill. Was it wrong to do that? Since the main objective of CTF is to capture the opposing team's intelligence and I was directly hindering that, many would argue that yes, it was indeed wrong. But I didn't care! I wanted my damn achievement! I wanted my new item! Suddenly, a person who used to try his hardest to have the best kill-to-death ratio he could, didn't care at all about kills if it meant being one step closer to unlocking the next item. But even then, some achievements were just too difficult and/or time-consuming to complete under normal circumstances. And that's when I found them – achievement servers! People actually created maps for the sole purpose of aiding in achievement completion and people hosted servers with just these maps running 24/7.
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