Hey devs, just a heads-up that ID@Xbox frontman Chris Charla took to Twitter today to share some thoughts on what makes a good Xbox Achievement.
While Charla was careful to frame the recommendations as best practices most applicable to Xbox, his advice may be helpful to the many devs who don't have the faintest clue about what makes for a "good" or rewarding achievement.
For example, Charla suggests that a normal playthrough of your game ought to reward the player with about half of the total available achievements, and you might want to award one during the first ten minutes of play to make players feel rewarded.
He also goes on to remind devs that achievements can often be great tools for guiding players to experiment with new paths through your game, or new ways of playing. We've taken the liberty of embedding a few of Charla's tips below, and you can read the full threads' worth over on Twitter.
If this is a subject you're deeply interested in, you might also enjoy the (admittedly well-aged) feature on effective achievement design that researcher and designer Lucas Blair published on Gamasutra in 2011.
Give an achievement in the first 10 minutes of play. Makes players feel good (and you want them to like the game and review it, right?)
— Chris Charla (@iocat) June 4, 2018
Brutal achievements (defeat the entire game without taking a hit, be #1 on the leaderboard) are going to be fun for an extremely small part of your user base. Are you sure you want to do them?
— Chris Charla (@iocat) June 4, 2018
For sure I think about 50% should be off path -- like kill 10 bad guys with one grenade, headshots etc. It's about having a balance.
— Chris Charla (@iocat) June 4, 2018