ARE ACHIEVEMENTS A POOR WAY TO INCREASE GAME LENGTH?

author=UPRC

author=Backwards_Cowboy
I think somebody should conduct a study into whether or not achievements affect a video game's sales. Does not having "Achievements/Trophies" listed on the back of the box decrease the chance that somebody will buy your game? Does a lack of trading cards decrease the chance of a Steam game selling? And if this proves true, does the number of available achievements/value of the trading cards have a further effect on the sales? Since not too many people can really defend the opinions for either side of the situation, I think something that actually could ruin an indie designer's livelihood would change the whole perspective on whether they are good or bad.

I doubt it. I don't mind achievements, but I never actively look to see if a game has any before I download/purchase it. If they do, cool, something for me to do if I get bored. I've never actively researched a game to see if it had achievements in it.

I have. But while achievements certainly make me less likely to buy and enjoy a game, I'm certain they also make some people more likely to.

It's kind of hard to conduct a good study on this, because in order to make it meaningful, you have to ensure that there's no salient difference between the games that have achievements and the games that don't, aside from the presence of achievements, and in general that's probably not the case. You could try a controlled experiment by releasing versions of a game which differ only by the presence or absence of achievements, but this also runs into a problem, namely that people tend to default to picking options that have more features, even if those features make them less happy. Ask people if, all other things being equal, they'd rather go to a restaurant with a lot of menu items, or fewer, they'll generally pick the one with a lot of menu items, even though the reality is that the added menu items decrease average enjoyment for patrons. In a lot of ways, people generally aren't very good predictors of their own preferences.

I suspect though, that for most types of games, achievements probably do attract more players. But then, most people don't play most types of games; different people are attracted to different types of games. Since to a considerable extent, games already filter their players by personality type, I think that it's pretty likely that some types of games will tend to do worse with achievements than without.

author=McBick
Just to note there are people who will buy "easy" games just to get more achievements.

Just like in some RPGs when you go farm exp from easy enemies. It serves to increase your overall experience. Experience being your xbox gamerscore or PSN level(from trophies)