A friend of mine is addicted to achievements. 
 
I know that such a thing is common to say around and about gamers, but I don't use the word "addicted" as an analog for "he likes them a whole bunch."  When I call him an addict, I mean that he uses them to validate who he is, and is willing to do nearly anything to get as many as possible in every game he encounters.  If he doesn't achieve all 1000 achievement points in the game, he becomes visibly frustrated and bothered by it, and it takes a great deal of distraction toward something else to make sure he doesn't get actively depressed by it. 
 
For example, he recently rented Facebreaker, Where the Wild Things Are, and Mini-Ninjas.  He's 27 years old.  He rented these not because he was supremely interested in these titles, but because he wanted new achievements to get, and lamented to me that there were 10 achievements that he couldn't get in Facebreaker because they involved playing online, and the servers for the game had been shut off. 
 
To which I replied, "But that's not a good game.  No one plays it.  Why not just play something else?"  He couldn't give me a good answer. 
 
To get four player achievements in music games, he will play four instruments at once, with a guitar under each arm, kicking a pedal on the drum and putting the microphone next to a fan so that some sound is going into it.  He constantly wants to play Rock Band 1, not the vastly superior 2, because he needs a friend to unlock the city achievements with him. 
 
Still, the best example of this problem is when he had a few of his friends, including myself, trying to attain an achievement in Guitar Hero Van Halen (SEE WHAT HE HAS US PLAYING?!  DO YOU SEE?!) which required that four people hit 100% of the notes in a song.  He put the microphone on beginner, and put a fan in front of it.  A friend of ours played drums on beginner when he would normally do so on hard or expert, while I took easy guitar (I had no desire to play beginner, and refused), and he took beginner bass.  After a few attempts, as someone would occasionally miss a note, we finished the song...and only I got the achievement, playing under someone else's name.  He was depressed, actively depressed, that he didn't have this achievement, and that none of us would play it anymore because a) Guitar Hero Van Halen is awful, and b) we wanted to play something for our own enjoyment, and not just to improve the sizes of our digital members. 
 
He's had us do things like this for hours, and we've gotten to the point that we simply won't support it.  Like dealing with any addict, one has to deny them the drug so as to allow them to detox.  I enjoy achievements as much as the next guy, but sometimes, it just seems as if they're sullying games more than supporting them.

Admittedly, I'm writing this in order to achieve the "quest points" for Giantbomb, thus giving me something else to obsess over.  It's not that I don't have anything to say, but I often wonder if anyone has any interest in reading my thoughts on video games in particular.  I already have ONE blog that I ignore, so why do I need two?  It's not as if I need reminding of my own lack of community here; I currently have 0 followers on this site. 
 
Still, I've been meaning to say something in particular about achievements (for the Xbox 360 in particular, but I suppose those same thoughts could apply to Trophy Support as well), but it's nearly 2 AM here, and so perhaps I'll save that for a second blog post which, hopefully, I will complete sometime before the Tricentennial.