I have trapped myself in the dumbest possible situation re: gaming

I like to think of myself as a smart person but sometimes I am very very dumb.

I own all three major modern consoles, Xbox Series X, Switch, and PS5 and while Xbox has been my primary platform since the release of the first Xbox in 2001, I have generally split my gaming time at about 50% XBox, 30% PlayStation, 15% Nintendo, and 5% PC/portable. Those numbers change over time depending on what I happen to be playing and I have a tendency to favor one platform over another in a given period (so I might have a couple months where I finish 5 PlayStation games and don't play anything on Xbox) but over the course of the year things tend to fall into the percentages above.

Until this year. This year I've played almost entirely Xbox. Part of that has been my focus on playing Game Pass games, which is fine, but not all of it. I've played games that aren't on Game Pass (Rogue Legacy 2 is spectacular!), they've just almost all been on Xbox.

Why?

A stupid achievement streak.

The site Trueachievements.com has been around for a while. It tracks your achievements and creates a "true" score from them by factoring in how rare they are. It's kind of neat just as an overall achievement tracker that lets you get into your stats and see all kinds of information. One of the things it tracks are "streaks" of achievements, which is how many days in a row you've won at least one achievement. Generally my top streaks have been 20-40 days, interrupted when I go somewhere without my Xbox or am just too busy to play something,

My current streak is 236 days.

What happened? XCloud. I can now log into Xbox from my phone wherever I have a signal. While I don't really like to play Xbox games on my phone, it's easily good enough to tick off a simple cheevo, especially if I have it cued up. If I'm playing a game with XCloud support that has a super easy achievement (like for changing something in settings, or equipping a certain type of item) I just avoid triggering that during my playthrough and then if I have a day where I don't have time or ability to get on my Xbox I log in, tick off the cheevo, and log out in like 2 minutes. The streak continues.

None of this should matter at all, but what it means is that every day when I wake up and go through my mental checklist of things to do I include continuing the streak, and then if I find time to play something I want to keep going to build up the number of achievements in the streak and....I've pretty much only been playing Xbox as a result, even though there's stuff I want to play on my PS5 and even my Switch.

Of course there's nothing stopping me from logging on to Xbox, playing something until I hit one achievement, and then switching to some other device, and I've done some of that for sure. I've finished multiple PS5 games in the last 6 months so it's not like I haven't touched the thing. But generally it's been much more weighted towards Xbox. It has also been weighted towards Xbox games where I know I will get an achievement if I play for an hour or two, as opposed to some bigger games where you can go 10 hours between achievements. Both of these things are bad. Achievements should not be influencing what I play!

So why don't I just stop? I've stopped streaks before with much lower numbers because I didn't want to keep playing on one system.

236 days. This is the longest streak I'll ever have. It's over half a year! And because it's based on number of days there's no way to get around it. You need to log in and do something every day or it ends. It's meaningless and stupid and actively detrimental to my gameplay (not that I haven't enjoyed the XBox games I've played or it's really a chore, just that it's made me play stuff I wanted to play less than other options available) but it's so easy to just do one more day that I can't seem to help myself. And the longer it gets the less comfortable I am ending it because the more impossible it will be to ever break it.

I'm not really looking for solutions here, I'm just venting. I know how to solve this. Don't get an achievement for a day. Streak ends, nothing I can do, no harm done because this thing is completely meaningless, and the problem is solved. But every time I think I should do that I think of how cool it would be to get a whole year done, or to hit the 400 day mark. Or 500.

1000?

Like I said, I like to think of myself as smart, but all idiots do. Every stupid person thinks they're pretty bright. So yeah.

There is no external force pushing me to do this stupid thing. Nobody else knows about it (except you, dear reader, I guess). But I'm doing it. Even though I can easily stop. Even though I have nothing to gain. I'm doing it.

So yeah. I needed to vent. Feel free to share your own stupid decisions in this thread or, I guess, to try and shame me, though you can't possibly shame me more than I have already shamed myself.

At least some of those Game Pass games have been really good.

I am gobsmacked Microsoft hasn't done something like this officially as part of their Microsoft Rewards program. I know they already have a "login bonus" for playing a Game Pass game every day, but an achievement streak with tiered rewards for how long you maintain it seems like the exact sort of vaguely evil engagement tactic they would salivate over.

Hey, you do you man. I'd only worry about it when it becomes an intrusion on other parts of your life.

Then again, it reminds me of losing a bunch of souls in a soulslike game. It can be devastating, but also very freeing.

My highest on TrueAchievements is 35 days and I got that back in 06. I always thought it would be fun to try for a long streak, but always forget or get tired of doing it.

I know your "pain" all too well. During the 360 Era I was obsessed with achievements and the website trueachievements.com. I was doing so much in the name of getting achievements that I actually kind of lost sight of what I like about video games.

I know everyone has this story, but I was playing really bad games for easy achievements, and I was prioritizing games based on how easy it would be for me to get achievements rather then what I wanted to play. If a game had a discontinued achievement (either through server shut down, or bugged) I would flat out not play the game, because it would hurt my percentage.

I'm not saying you are at this level, but for me I had to rip the bandage off, because it was an obsession that was ruining my hobby. I purposefully opted to get a ps4 over an Xbox x, because it would stop me from playing for achievements (yes playstation has trophies, but I've never cared about them).

It is incredibly freeing to get back to playing games, without trying to "maximize" time vs achievements. Now I can play a game, roll credits and be done with it, instead of having to 100% all collectibles, or play 500 matches online.

This isn't a comment saying you should stop, because only you can decide that, but like you said.. the higher it goes the harder it will be to shut off. You might have to hard code an end date (365 or 500), otherwise you might be in for a long haul, or setting up achievements, buying bad games and spending more time researching achievement progress then actually playing.

I wish you the best

So yeah. I needed to vent. Feel free to share your own stupid decisions in this thread

I bought CrossCode shortly after release. I love and adore it, the incredibly well-written, charming characters, the beautiful soundtrack, the gorgeous pixel graphics. Just everything about it. But around 2/3rds through the game the puzzle timing and execution just became way too strict for me to handle.

Now CrossCode features an Assist Mode akin to Celeste's. You can increase your own damage, decrease damage enemies deal to you, and slow the game down during combat... or during puzzles. Using Assist Mode does not lock you out of any achievements. All it will do is show a timer in a submenu indicating for how long you have used any of the assist features. There is NO other disadvantage to using it.

Still, I have a very meticulous, perfectionist personality, and I like completing a game and having a "perfect" savegame when I'm done (like, spending nearly 100 hours on Deus Ex: Human Revolution to have a pristine Pacifist, No Alarms, All Augments Unlocked, Full Inventory save at the end).

So, instead of just activating Assist for this one puzzle I was stuck on in CrossCode, I stopped playing CrossCode. A game I deeply love. Never returned to it because I felt like I'd not be happy with having finished it any other way than what my dumb brain has decided was "the only way".

This seems like a situation where you are so invested in keeping this streak alive that you have found ways in life to keep it going. But eventually you're going to screw up and an easy cheevo will be slightly too hard, or you will accidently forget logging in or something.. and your streak is back to 0. I bet that's the moment that you stop doing it and no longer favor the Xbox as heavily for that particular reason.

This sort of reminds me of how i wanted to be 'efficient' in a f2p game by logging in the game exactly when the timers run out, so you can queue up new things as fast as possible instead of 'wasting time'. There were times where i was like 'hm.. i should go to bed now, but if i just wait 45 minutes i can start new timers...' and that did affect me. I would also constantly have timer-times in my mind throughout the day.

What always happens is that at some point i have that moment of clarity where i look at this shitty f2p game and i'm like.. this ain't even fun.. and i uninstall it and don't look back. Eventhough i might have 'invested' a month of time on these timers.

I played Wordle for a while, got a 23 streak one time and thought I was doing pretty well. I lost the streak, felt a bit disappointed, and gradually worked my way up to a 67 streak.

Then, for seemingly no reason, my cookies died and with it that streak. I haven't played Wordle since. It turns out I was only playing it to complete the daily ritual of adding 1 to the streak.

If the only joy I receive from something is that of completing it, and not of experiencing it in whatever form that may take, then it is an empty joy.

Seems like what happens to Wordle players on a streak. As soon as it ends, they uninstall the app as there is no point any more.

I recently played through The Evil Within for the first time, not sure why I picked it up at all considering the mediocre reception. Maybe the Ghostwire Tokyo coverage made me curious about it. I debated dropping it a few chapters in, but eventually completed it found it to be completely mediocre from start to finish. Well, lots of achievements still left in the game so I started a New Game+ to collect those that I missed the first time (you have to play it twice to max out every category). So I completed it again, this time having a much easier time and not paying attention to the story. Then I saw the speed run achievement (complete the game under 5 hours), so I did that with my maxed out character. By this time I had all but 2 achievements. Complete the game without any upgrades, so I did that (on Easy difficulty to compensate for the lack of upgrades). I have completed this utterly mediocre game 4 times in the past 2 months. I'll take a break now but no doubt I will eventually grab the last achievement, to complete the game on hard difficulty. And then there's the DLC which also require multiple playthroughs to get all achievements.

I thought that I was over this, but apparently not. But I don't feel bad about it, there is something therapeutic about this. The last 2 runs I didn't even plug in the audio and was watching Twitch streams on the side.

Still kind of wondering how I can only have 1 achievement in Cyberpunk despite getting to the point of no return. Must be some weird ones in that game!

I still log into Fate/Grand Order on a daily basis, so I'm just as bad. At least that is upfront about what it is and what it's doing.

That said, I just finished listening to Ranged Touch's episode covering Addiction by Design and the talk there about how the gaming industry is taking notes from the casino business just seems to fit this sort of thing to a T. The ease of access, the "time on device", even making it difficult to find your way out of the ecosystem.

It's probably just recency bias, but this struck me big time. I'd definitely give it a listen if you have 3 hours available.

Don’t have anything nearly as debilitating as this, though I do try to log in to Gran Turismo 7 every day and completely the 26 miles necessary to get slapped in the face by the truly, hilariously evil roulette wheel that only ever rewards the lowest possible item, usually 5,000 credits but SOMETIMES 10,000.

Otherwise, I can totally relate to using one console over another because of that ping you get when the game thinks you did a neat or important thing. I own a Switch, and I hear a lot of podcast hosts talk about how much they love playing all but the big AAA titles on their Switch because it’s so convenient…but I can never get past not getting any trophies on the thing. Even if there were trophies, or Tendos or whatever they want to call it…they wouldn’t contribute to my Sony Score or whatever they call it, so even then the trophies would feel empty. So I just don’t touch my Switch. As far as I’m concerned, the console died a tragic death the day Hades came to Playstation.

I should sell it, because I can’t even convince myself to buy a damn Mario game for the first time since Mario Sunshine because of the lack of Playstation trophies…but then I’d be admitting my affliction. So I keep it, I even keep it forever charging. Through one of the back USB ports on my PS5. It’s perverse.

@nodima: lol.. you say your addiction isn't nearly as debilitating but then admit that because you can't get trophies on switch you never play it. I would argue (playfully) that it might actually be worse then the achievement streak, because at least bigsocrates admits to playing other systems if even it's not as much as his xbox.

@banefirelord: there is something similar. It's a weekly thing, not a daily thing and it's not always achievement related every week but some weeks it requires you to get 3 achievements. it tracks how many weeks you've kept up with it and rewards points accordingly.

Happy to say I've never suffered with this kind of compulsion & I haven't gone out of my way for any sort of achievement or trophy since Oblivion. I play through the Yakuza series yearly (and have done for the last ~13 years) I don't think I've got all the trophies in a single one and it's never bothered me or interested me to do so. Streak awards or daily login bonuses have also never been of any interest to me.

Set yourself a round number target. IE 250. Then just commit to stopping once you hit it.

That way your personal best streak will look cool, and you'll remember the achievement of reaching that number, rather than the day you missed adding to it .

@imunbeatable80: I don't think that the situation is as disruptive as the kind of thing you describe. I am not neglecting other aspects of my life for video games (let alone achievements) and I'm not buying things I don't want to play because I have a massive Xbox backlog, especially when you include Games With Gold and Game Pass. It's more that I sometimes choose something I want to play less over something I want to play more because it seems like it will fit the streak, but that's not always bad either because I have found some games I really liked that I might never have gotten around to. I don't stick with stuff if I'm not enjoying it on some level, and while I look up achievements after a game is done I don't bother with them if they look like they will be unpleasant to complete. It's influencing what I play in a way that's not great but is not entirely negative either.

@bulllee I have definitely done the "I'd rather just not finish this game than drop the difficulty" thing, and boy is it stupid. Usually I go back to the game and just force myself past the difficulty spike, but yeah, can definitely relate even though it's objectively silly. I don't know why I am so resistant to playing on easy even though I like (and even prefer) easy games!

@rorie I am pretty sure that there are at least 2 story based achievements you need to have gotten before you reach the point of no return. I am going to break a huge story nobody has talked about here and say, for the record, that Cyberpunk was pretty buggy at launch, and maybe that led to achievements not popping when they should have for you.

Thanks to everyone for their advice re: stopping. Honestly, I do know how to stop if this were really disruptive to my life. I think picking a specific number is a good idea and I'll give that some consideration, but I might also just focus on switching to another system after grabbing one achievement on Xbox just to get back into the pattern of playing on different systems and getting into some of the games I've been putting off.

It feels good just to have come clean so thanks for everyone who read and commented!

Doesn't seem that dumb to me. Play whatever you want, man. If this streak is something you're enjoying and having fun with, then keep it up. The moment it becomes a problem or a stressor or something you feel like you don't have control over, end it.

I've been maxing out every character in the classic Playstation 2 title, Dynasty Warriors 2. I play it for like an hour every day and that's all the gaming I do. If anyone's being stupid, it's me!

Stupidest gaming decision? I guess, confining myself to only Playstation platforms because I love getting trophies. I know it's ultimately meaningless, but I just like the dopamine from that "ding". At least I'm not the crazy kind of completionist that has to get platinum and/or 100% on every single game. Though I will go out of my way to get the platinum if it seems easy enough. (Currently at 158 platinums!)

On one hand, it sucks that I miss out on Nintendo/Xbox/PC exclusives, but on the other hand, my Playstation backlog is so enormous that there's no way I will ever finish all of these games, so being stuck on one platform is actually saving me money in some way...?

I am, at this very moment, running an Autohotkey script to spam left clicks into a fake clicker-game called Blipbop on my characters phone inside of the PC game Mosaic to get the achievements. While I am doing this, I am playing the REAL version of Blipbop on my (Android) phone.

WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES?!

@banefirelord said:

lol so... actually.... I hope you're getting Microsoft Rewards out of this. There's a daily Rewards quest (as well as a weekly quests) (as well as typically other Game Pass quests) that give you points = real money for getting an achievement a day and like 3 in a week. Sometimes, they even have punchcards that are like do this many achievements and get 10,000 points. And yes.. Rewards do have streak bonuses. If you do all the weekly tasks in the Xbox rewards app (which, to be clear, are separate from the Microsoft Rewards app but feed into the same pool of points), you get more points for that each week. Just like you get more points for doing all the dailies, which also feed into the weekly, and the monthly quests...

And.. umm.. yea. But hey, you get paid a tiny amount for your effort lol. Might make the achievement grind more bearable (or so icky that you drop it out of disgust).

@cyrribrae: @liquiddragon: Yikes, I stand corrected. I knew they had the challenge stuff in place, but I didn't realize it had full-on streak bonuses and tiered rewards. Nevertheless, I shall remain resolute in leaving that money on the table--it's been a long time since I was anything close to an achievement hunter and the gamification of playing games continues to feel like a plot element in a bad dystopian satire that escaped into the real world that I want nothing to do with.

@banefirelord: Haha fair. Though, actually, it wasn't so bad. It's a pretty low imposition of time and when I was keeping up with it, it did give me reasons to open up and try games that I never would have played otherwise. But yea, there were too many times when I was like "eh, don't wanna" that I decided to unburden myself. But I mean.. those points are real yo. Could fund an ongoing Game Pass subscription off of those rewards... (well, all the rewards quests everywhere combined perhaps).

Yeah, I think this would be considered my dumb gaming addiction. I'm on a 66 week streak with the weekly rewards and tend to complete most punch cards that don't require you to buy shit. I also do the daily bing stuff for points...

I try to justify it to myself since I've acquired many free games and months of game pass with these points but I feel dirty for doing it.

Don't sweat it. I'm a dirty bing user just for the rewards points.

I feel so sorry for you about this.