It should be no secret to regular readers that I am addicted to video games. I make no apologies for this. I don’t play golf, I don’t watch sports, I don’t spend my weekend nights away from my family at the bar… just give me a few hours a week to try and beat the dragon and save the princess and I’m happy.
With the release of the Xbox 360 (a gift from the heavens) there was also the release of the achievement. Achievements act as almost a meta game within the games you play by keeping a global score that is earned by performing certain feats within certain games.
For those that maybe take this score a little two seriously and compare their score with their friends (myself included) the system has always seemed a little unbalanced. There is really no logic behind that score that would give more weight to achievements earned by only a few as to those earned by the majority. Well, the geniuses over at TrueAchievements.com saw this same flaw and they set out to fix it. (A little bit of math goes a long way.)
You’ll see my Xbox Gamer Tag, and now my True Achievement Tag in the side bar from now on…
From the source:
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 GamerTrueAchievement. 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.
