ARE ACHIEVEMENTS A POOR WAY TO INCREASE GAME LENGTH?

Better than repetitive grinding.

In fact achievements work really well for many people. I know many who just play games for the achievements.

For me, FFTA's law system is one of the best kinds of achievement systems there are. It's engaging, and doesn't break the fourth wall at all. Some people hate it, find it to be arbitrary and unrewarding, but the judge favor (in ffta2) and judge points are pretty useful and rewarding. There are a few more examples, but I can't remember~~

The opposite end, wich I DESPISE, is when you are playing a horror game, completely enticed by the atmosphere and suddenly BAM, YOU KILLED THE 100TH ZOMBIE or something like that. I mean, come on

Well...I guess you feel an achievement for following the law during the battle. So perhaps it's a short term one.

But it's not an achievement system in the way that the topic means. They're talking about the way most modern games and consoles have that system of trophies that unlock for doing certain things and clearing certain challenges in-game.

...And now I'd have to wonder what FFTA's achievements would be like. 'FOLLOW EVERY LAW.' 'NEVER BREAK A LAW' 'FINISH BATTLE IN FIVE TURNS' ...Hah.

What I can say is that achievements in general are an easy way to increase game length.

Are your game's achievements themselves good or poor though? That depends.

An achievement that doesn't require the player to do anything particular in order to be earned (ex: Defeat the first mandatory boss) I consider bad, because it is merely a part of the bigger achievement entitled "Beat the Game."
I'd believe developers use those as catalysts for a feeling of accomplishment to boost your motivation to keep playing. The challenge you just overcame should be, in itself, enough to make you feel satisfied and accomplished, but to some the acknowledgement of said achievement and the alert pop-up is also required to generate the feeling.

I prefer when achievements require you to stray from the expected path or gameplay style the developer intended. That's what makes them special in the first place. Any kind of optional accomplishment can fall under that category. For instance: collect all the Riddler Trophies, defeat a given boss under a minute...
Speed runs records, although they usually aren't acknowledged within the game, are also a form of achievement.

I personally may care for achievements if I find their pursuit enjoyable.
I used to play BGO a lot and make achievement hunting games after the main game became boring. It was entertaining for a while, but new achievements just kept being added and I was growing tired of it, so I eventually quit.

In any case, optional stuff and achievements will only do your game good when the game itself is already fun.

I recall one of my first versions of Infection had achievements, such as killing X of the strongest enemy, which was optional. Or collecting dog tags from fallen soldiers.
I dunno, I personally liked it. But once I discarded the "open-ended sandbox" style for a more story driven game, I saw no place for achievements, as Joseph stated that it might be out of place or ruin the atmosphere.

If the game is fun and I just really like it, I would never think an achievement system would ruin my experience.

author=LockeZ
I know people who absolutely despise achievements and everything they represent, though I've never been entirely sure why. Personally, I like them as long as they're not things that require tons of grinding. Usually I see this in the form of achievements like "Capture every pokemon" or "Create every craftable item" or whatever. Requiring grinding for an achievement is perhaps the only thing more offensive than requiring grinding for a real reward. The OCD players are equally likely to do it either way, so at least give them something tangible for their trouble. Getting the best pokemon and the best crafted items is a meaningful challenge with a good reward, and fitting for an achievement - getting the other hundred also is just a boring, time-consuming pain in the ass.

Some games have achievements for hard tasks that you'd probably do anyway because they have their own rewards, and other games have achievements for the equivalent of wearing a traffic cone on your head. I'm okay with either style.

Speaking as a player who does despise achievements and everything they stand for, I feel that perhaps I should explain my point of view here.

On the scale of OCD players, I'm pretty high up there, but definitely not at the top. I'll rarely leave an Infinity Plus One sword unacquired, a bonus boss unbeaten, or bonus dungeon unexplored. Even without material reward, I'll often create self imposed challenges which the programmers did not clearly intend to be part of the experience of the game. I like doing this, and it makes me feel pretty good, but there are limits; I'm not going to sink hundreds of hours into a game just for the sake of one final self imposed challenge when I've already experienced just about everything else the game has to offer.

Achievements fundamentally reframe the relationship between my playstyle and game completion.

Take a game like Final Fantasy Tactics. It has an interesting story worth playing for, open-ended class system which offers player huge opportunity for customization, plenty of optional content, and is difficult enough to make completing the game in an ordinary manner challenging for most players. I've played through the game a few times, beaten all of the various optional battles, gotten all the best equipment, may or may not have unlocked every skill in the game (I don't really remember anymore,) and worked out some effective class/skill combinations which allow me to win battles which I once found challenging with various self imposed limitations such as using only one character, never using items, etc. By my standards, I've pretty thoroughly completed the game, and while I might want to revisit it as some point, it probably won't be any time soon, as I've pretty well tapped what I have to get out of it.

On the other hand, there's a sizable community of players dedicated to exploring the opportunities for self imposed challenges that the game offers. There are challenges involving never mixing skills from multiple class types on a character, playing the entire game with only the main character in every allowable fight (which is most,) never using characters with unique class types, and so on and so forth. Some of them are ludicrously difficult or time consuming, many of them are mutually exclusive in a single playthrough, and frankly, they exceed the extent of my interest in finding new approaches to the game's content.

Suppose that the developers of Final Fantasy Tactics had exhibited extraordinary prescience with respect to the trends of the gaming industry, and equipped it with an Achievement system. Not only the bonus bosses and unlockable events, but also the various self imposed challenges created by the players become achievements to unlock. Now, with my currently level of time investment into the game, I can see that I've unlocked 104/188 achievements. I'm being offered a visible notification that I've left this game, which I already considered largely tapped out, substantially incomplete. Instead of the pride that I once felt in exceeding the ordinary play parameters of the game, I feel frustration at not measuring up to the obsessiveness of the most hardcore players.

This reflects my feelings about every implementation of an achievement system I've ever encountered. It removes my ability to define on my own terms what constitutes a reasonable level of accomplishment in the game. Since I derive satisfaction from going above and beyond the basic expectations of game completion, I'll always do more than the bare minimum necessary to finish a game I enjoy, but an Achievement system redefines how I perceive the expectations of completion, to a standard I can't achieve without playing the game long past the point where it's ceased to be fun.

Even if attaining the sum of all achievements in a game doesn't constitute an obscene level of time investment, if the game developers and I disagree on what constitutes interesting and worthwhile things to achieve in the course of gameplay, I don't like having their standards rubbed in my face.

I'm sure there are players for whom an achievement system substantially enhances their enjoyment, but I am one of those for whom it does the reverse. Attempting to ignore them in the games where they appear does me no more good than it would for players who like them to pretend that games that don't have them do. So, my own input is very biased, but consider for what it's worth that such a system may serve to alienate some of your players.

I really prefer to play games because they are fun and not because I want achievements. But that's a personal opinion. If you hang around gamefaqs for example you will see those massive amounts of players that want all the PS3 Trophies. It is quite popular. Up to the point where people ask for games where it's easy to get the Platinum Trophy. They don't even care for the genre! Whaaat.

Anyway, for me, hmmm, I guess it really depends on the genre for me. In RPGs I NEVER cared for achievements. Sure, I DO get them while playing. Because if you play an RPG you're bound to eventually having fought 1000 battles. And I also might do exactly 777 damage in one hit. But it's not like I'm aiming for stuff like that at all.

It's different for arcade games, though. Those are usually 30 minutes or shorter and the whole fun lies within trying to achieve something. If the game doesn't have achievements then it's usually just increasing your score or trying to 1cc the game (beating it with 1 credit). With achievements you have a variety of other challenges that can indeed be quite fun.

I guess I can imagine achievements in RPGs for minigames.

Also sometimes achievements are helpful because they tell you what you have missed in the game. This makes it very conformtable to look up the content you've missed and play it. For example there are 10 optional dungeons in the game and if you beat the boss of an optional dungeon you get an achievement. When I'm done with the game I see I have 6 achievements of 10. I check which 4 achievements I'm missing and then I can check on the internet how to get them and will easily find out where the dungeons are I missed.

Usually just finishing an RPG doesn't give you much pointers on what you've missed in it, so you'd need to read through a whole walkthrough just to find it.

Personally i don't know the xbox system. In today huge offer is nice to count with a "to do list" that a game can offer,If it helps me to be aware of things i missed, specially when is a game I'll want to replay.
It has been said already, but pop-ups for "you have cleared the first boss" is a NO, NO. It's insulting, shame on any developer that thinks that advancing the game in normal dificult or easy is a achievement. Unless is something like "i wanna be the guy" or a super mario hack ultra-hard kind of game where just living a second longer is a achievement itself.

For a indie game it could totally work. Since projects tend to change over time, may be a way to let players know what is new since the last time they checked the game, inside the game itself.