I have a problem. That's the first step, right? Admitting it? I have been infected with achievementitis. Whenever I see a game that I might be interested in playing, the first thing I check is whether or not it has achievements. If it doesn't, I don't look much further into it unless it looked particularly impressive. There are probably been a gazillion other posts like this one, but I need to get this off my chest.

I've thought about this for a bit now, and I think it stems from a sense of accomplishment. I want to know, x number of days or weeks down the road, that I finished something. I guess it doesn't have to be Xbox Live achievements, ie. Torchlight, where there are only Steam achievements, but I'll still play it once and a while. I would rather get Xbox achievements, but Steam achievements function in the same basic way, so they're good too. Then there's those in-game achievements that every iPod, 360-game-wannabe game has. Those don't fly with me, hardly worth mentioning. They don't mean NOTHIN.

The record of what I've accomplished doesn't have to be in achievement form either. Online games are A-OK with my weird achievement whore-iness too, for obvious reasons. I play or have played WoW, Runescape, League of Legends, and others with no problem.

The weird thing with all this is that there are certain exceptions, but I can't justify those in any meaningful way. For example, I will play any DS, iPhone, or nostalgic game without even thinking about achievements. My decision to play those is completely based on how fun they are to play. It's gonna be really awesome when Apple adds their achievement system to the iPhone. The games are already fun, and they'll scratch the achievement itch too. Obviously, all games should be judged based on the "fun factor", but telling myself that doesn't seem to help. What can I do about this problem?? 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: ACHIEVEMENTS. I contemplated replacing the overzealous use of the word "achievement" in this post with "ach." but it just looked real weird, so... yeah.