I received my new issue of Game Developer last week, and since I haven't found much of interest in the magazine so far I let it sit on my floor. I finally popped it open while cleaning, and found an article by our friend Jaime about achievements that more or less summed up exactly how I have felt about them. Unfortunately I can't link directly to it because they charge to read articles online, but I CAN say that this fellows website is something special. He has a lot of really interesting ideas about game design, ranging from technical stuff about balance to the more broad (but no less technical) topic of player experience.

If you are interested in game design I highly recommend checking it out.

Also, this guy was a project lead for Halo. So that should be enough for someone.

This is good stuff. Thanks for the link Nintendo.