The Achievement Commandments (as originally appeared on Achieve360Points.com)

The Achievement Commandments according to the gospel of A360P

I was (and in a sense am) a longtime member of Achieve360points.com, and enjoyed many a lengthy conversation in the forums there. One day I came across an article on Digg discussing the "Ten Achievement Commandments" (the link for which is now defunct) that designers should adhere to. I posted the link on A360P, and over the period of months/years the list expanded with other gamers' suggestions for additions. Since A360P has been dying a slow death for some time, and may disappear completely at any time, I thought I'd post the list here to preserve it.

Unfortunately the links to each commandment will break once A360P does go down (and I'm not going to dig them all up). Original list from A360P follows:

This list was compiled over a long period of time, and for each commandment, until the day comes when www.achieve360points.com finally dies, you can click it to see the post where it came from. There's far too many people to list individual credit (read: I'm too lazy to go back and compile a list of who contributed what), so just click the commandment to see who posted it.

There is still a great deal of overlap here, and not all commandments are universally agreed upon.

This list was compiled over a long period of time, and for each commandment, until the day comes when www.achieve360points.com finally dies, you can click it to see the post where it came from. There's far too many people to list individual credit (read: I'm too lazy to go back and compile a list of who contributed what), so just click the commandment to see who posted it.

There is still a great deal of overlap here, and not all commandments are universally agreed upon. If this gets too long I'll repost them later in the thread and put a link here to the new list.

• Thou Shalt Not Deny Player 2 Achievement Points
• Thou Shalt Allow the Second, Third, and Fourth Players Unlock Unique Achievements.
• Thou Shalt Give Easy Mode Credit For Hard Mode Completion
• Thou Shalt Not Create Achievements Which Encourage Unnatural Play
• Thou Shalt Create Clever Secret Achievements
• Thou Shalt Not Create Achievements Which Ruin Online Play
• Thou Shalt Offer interesting ways to earn points online that benefit the experience.
• Thou Shalt Create Achievements of Opportunity.
• Thou Shalt Not give 0 point achievements for legitimate things. (I’m looking at you Kameo! 0 points for Co-op achievements.)
• Thou Shalt Give booby prize achievements.
• Thou Shalt Not Make Ridiculously Long Online Achievements
• Thou shall not attach achievements to in-game races and time trials!
• Thou shalt not make "one time through" achievements
• Thou shall not make...collection achievements.
• Thou shalt not make the hardest achievements worth a disproportionate amount of the gamerscore
• Thou shalt not release a broken achievement then just forget about it.
• Thou shall not have to purchase an accessory to get an achievement
• Thou Shall Not Make Achievements Worth Unusual Points.
• Thou shalt not have online achievements you cannot get offline
• Thou Shalt Not Create 5 Different Achievements Tied to the Same Stupid-Hard Task.
• Thou shalt not make watching the credits achievement worthy
• Thou shall not make "Beat a player ranked in the top _____ in the world" achievements
• Thou shal make it clear what is needed to get an achievement
• Thou shall make your DLC achievements in-line with the base game's achievements
• Thou shalt not make achievements that can only be unlocked on specific days
• Thou shalt not repeat the same achievements every year
• Thou shall give multiple ways of unlocking achievements
• Thou shalt not make 4 player co-op achievements
• Thou SHalt not make Achievements to be unlocked by luck
• Thou shalt not make achievements for individual accomplishments in team-based games
• Thou shall make achievement descriptions change to something creative after the player unlocks them.
• Thou shall have No stupidly mis-matched points to achievements.
• Thou shall make your achievements straightforward
• Thou shalt proofread achievements
• Thou shalt spread out your achievements across the game.
• Thou shalt not torture your customers with near-impossible challenges
• Thou shalt not force me to play through the story more than twice!
• Thou shall not make achievements that are determined by other random gamers
• Thou shalt make achievements pop when criteria has been met and not afterward.
• Thou shall have an achievement list with gamerscores that result in a low standard deviation
• Thou shall have achievements which reflect a gamers progress through the game
• Thou Shalt Make Achievements Pop Wherever and Whenever the Requirements are Met.
• Thou shalt correctly keep track of statistics for numerical achievements
• Thou Shalt Not Make "Without Dying" type Achievements
• THOU SHALT NOT WRITE ACHIEVEMENTS IN ALL CAPS.
• Thou shall design your achievements to enhance the gameplay experience rather than simply extend it
• Thou shall give a significant portion of the total gamerscore for a game for simply for beating the game