About TrueAchievements

What's it all about then?

I'm glad you asked. Well, we were comparing our GamerScores with a couple of buddies when it became clear to us that, as great as Achievements are, the way they are awarded isn't always fair. Have a look at this appalling example - the 5 points for pressing the Start button in The Simpsons Game are worth exactly the same as the 5 points for completing 10 side missions in Just Cause. It's an outrage. And, and you may wish to sit down for this one, the 1000 points for achieving a hit counter of 50 in Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (which takes about 5 minutes) are worth the same as the 1000 points for completing the whole of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, including the Living Legends Achievement (which takes for ever. Literally. Well not literally, or we wouldn't know, but you get the drift). And that didn't seem right to us. Not right at all.

So what did you do about it?

We became angry. Very, very angry.

Is that it?

No. We thought about whether we could come up with a better system.

And did you?

We think so.

How does it work?

We believe the harder an achievement is to obtain, the more points should be received. We've decided that an achievement's difficulty can be accurately approximated by using a formula based on how many people have that achievement compared to how many people own the game. We also understand the phrase 'accurately approximated' is a contradiction in terms but are refusing to remove it on the grounds that it sounds impressive. From there we multiply the original points given to the achievement by our difficulty score and end up with the TrueAchievement score for that, for want of a better word, achievement. By adding up the TrueAchievement scores for all the achievements you have won, you get your TrueAchievement Score. Of which you should be terribly proud. Unless it's only 1, in which case you are both a fool and disgrace to your family. We know this as they called the other day and asked to be disassociated from you. The difficulty score, or ratio, for each achievement actually represents it's rarity within the sites tracked gamers. This does not always mean that the high ratio achievements are difficult but it does often give a good indication that more effort is involved to get them.

Anything else I should know?

If there is, you will probably find it in our FAQ.

I have more questions!

We all have questions, I for one find frogs baffling, but if your questions are about this exciting service, please contact us here.