Well, same reason anyone gets annoyed when someone else gets for free what you worked hard at, especially because game center publicly keeps track of these achievements.
The thing that I got from playing the game is not the recorded achievement, that has no value at all. The thing that I got was the experience and enjoyment of achieving a goal. No one can take that away from me, regardless of what they get. If you play Dungeons and Dragons for years, and you build your character up to 12th level, and someone else in a different city decides to run a campaign with his friends where their characters all start at 12th level, do you get mad because it's taking away your accomplishment?
Perfect. I wasn't too sure about Treasure Trove but im glad you brought up the idea of experimenting with setups so Im going to definitely buy it.
If that person goes around telling people he's up to the 12th level, that'd probably piss me off, yeah. 'cuz it's like, hey, you didn't do "anything", and yet you're making people think your non-existent progress is as impressive as mine is. Kind of like the difference between someone who hacks the game for the fun of it (messing with values and stuff), and another who hacks the game to get to the top of the leaderboards and get false credit for that. Yeah, no one really looks at the game center achievements, but I can understand why it would tick someone off. Hey FM? Can I get my cut of that c99?
I care because that's several hours of my life I'd have not spent in that particular way if the achievements weren't, well, achievements. If a week from now, it only takes $1 to get that particular set of GC chits and I spent several hours AND sabotaged my final score, yeah, I'd feel, as I said, pretty silly. Because while I don't care all that much, I certainly would not have gone for those achievements outside of their difficulty. If all I cared about was the experience, there are a lot more fun ways to play the game than the Fly/Termite/Stick/Mushroom machine on Office Easy for nearly 6 hours of game time. I'm just expressing my hope that in addition to the leaderboards, the achievements are also turned off during Treasure Trove games, because even if we are to assume you are so wise, I still don't want to earn the achievements for myself with unlimited funds.
I think it's weird that you would invest hours of your life (worth hundreds of dollars) just because someone flips some bits in an online database. Don't you feel kind of a slave to something completely meaningless? This reminds me of people who spend lots of real money so they can have the perfect farm in FarmVille. WTF? I play games because I enjoy playing them. It seems a lot simpler and more straightforward than worrying about whether I get credit for achieving some goal. It's good for games to have goals because they are more enjoyable to play when you have something to aim for. But it's the doing that makes it enjoyable, not what you get.
That's annoying because high scores are useful for understanding what is possible in the game and measuring your own progress. But if I knew the scores were forged and I could just ignore them then I don't see any reason to care. Psychologists say some people are other-referenced, they really care a lot about what other people think of them. I guess those are the people who care about not just the process of playing a game or pursuing achievements, but about displaying and showing off their accomplishments. It just all seems very strange to me.
Exactly. But I don't enjoy my trip to the Statue of Liberty less because someone else has a little souvenir too. Even if I traveled thousands of miles to buy it, and they live in Jersey City and just took the ferry.
I just think it's weird that someone will waste time telling me they know the why of why I do something better than myself. Don't you feel a slave to your poor sense of self worth to make meaningless snipes at others when, objectively, all gaming is equally praiseworthy or equally meaningless. This goes for FarmVille as well, it's all equally valid, or it's not. You don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to argue why your particular choices in wasting time and money for no gain is superior to another person's choices. It's ALL vice.
Unless other people didn't know, and someone else takes the credit for being supposedly better than you. If people could be purely rational, it wouldn't matter at all, but everyone cares to some degree what other people think. The level of caring just varies. I get it. But like I said, everyone cares to some degree about what others think, even if they can't feel it, and trophies are often a way to boost one's confidence.
B To you and everyone who knows you personally, your souvenir represents the long trip you've taken. To someone else, all it is is an indication that you've been there. But, say you earned a unique trophy for all your troubles, can you honestly say that you wouldn't feel the least bit of satisfaction from showing it off? A closer comparison would be a student who worked hard to earn his A+ on an exam (Which would represent success both to him and everyone else), only to find that everyone else in the class also got it, albeit by cheating. Of course, he wouldn't regret that he studied, but the fact that he's indistinguishable from the rest of those lazyass students is sure to reduce his sense of achievement. Logically, it doesn't make a difference what grade everyone else got or how they got it, but it's human nature to feel bummed about it. Does that make sense? These achievements - on some level - are kind of like the grade you get for your hard work. Once you complete the achievements, you don't want them cheapened.
I think you're wrong. I don't think I do. Maybe the answer is that I'm just unusual. But I actually think that most people who play an iOS game, even if they enjoy receiving achievements as a "souvenir" of their accomplishments, don't care about comparing their achievements to someone else's, or whether other people get those achievements more or less easily than they do. If I had a choice to play a game either unlocking everything as I go, or unlocking everything from the beginning all at once, I might choose one or the other depending which I would enjoy more, but I wouldn't worry about whether my choice affects whether other people are impressed by my results in a game. Yes. I have some of those sitting around gathering dust, actually. I might display them because people might find them interesting. But not as a matter of satisfaction or self-esteem. Perhaps I am lucky to have enough real accomplishments in my life (things that I think have objectively helped others) to be proud of. I might mention my grades or degrees in order for someone to judge my credibility on a subject. They are useful for that. Just as seeing someone's high scores in a game helps validate that they know what they are talking about. But I don't think they have anything to do with my self-esteem. I'm sorry for belaboring this. It's probably not worth discussing further. I just always find such views as expressed here very surprising. It's hard for me to judge how common they are.
Check out the comments from FoursakenMedia the past few pages. he mentioned Praying Mantis and a bunch of other things. He submitted the work to Apple and the update should come to our phone anytime soon within a week or 2.
Maybe not when it comes to games, but you do have to care to some degree what people think of you, one way or the other. The feeling of social embarrassment is one example of that, but that's irrelevant to this conversation You're not wrong about that. It's just that some people are like that, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. That's all I'm getting at. A lot of people get satisfaction from boasting about their scores (although they may refrain for modesty's sake), in which case I doubt it has anything to do with proving their credibility whatsoever. It just feels good to be noticed by others. That's why I've taken a lot of interest in psychology. I'm a person with Asperger's, and have trouble relating to others in a lot of ways, which tends to make me obnoxious to a lot of people sometimes, but I've come to understand the mechanics of human nature pretty well, if I may say so. No issue here; I enjoy an intellectual discussion. One semi-related thought I thought I should share: The scores and achievements aren't about proving (to yourself or anyone else) how good you are at a game. I think it's more about what you're capable of in general. At least that's how I see it.
Yay! So after this update I can play Bug Heroes again? I haven't been able to because of that crash on start-up :/
No, I just don't. I care what I actually do (e.g., I would rather contribute more to human society, rather than less) but not what people think of it. But really the main point was that even if people want to be valued or appreciated, worrying about who has which achievements in an online game is a silly way to apply that principle. I can see that, say, if you are a dedicated schoolteacher and improve many children's lives, you might also want people to appreciate that. But that's a long way from worrying about whether other people correctly value your Game Center achievements.
