Achievement Unlocked

Tomorrow is Metro Game Day II, as opposed to Rural Game Day I which is what it would be if I hosted. The game day was created to share our love of gaming with friends and acquaintances; a chance to try to new games, get people excited about gaming, and flaunt our vast collection of games that aren’t found on the shelves of Walmart.

At the inaugural game day, a rudimentary scoring system was introduced at the last minute. You earn a number of points equal to the number of people you beat. So, first place in a four player game gets three points, second place get two, and third gets one. It was simple enough, but deeply flawed. A two hour slug-fest of a Twilight Struggle game would only get you one point. In that same amount of time, another player could play a variety of party games and rack up a double-digit score.

For Game Day II, we went to work trying to develop a new scoring system. While a system that takes into account complexity, time, and number of players is very much possible, the tracking would have had to be done on a spreadsheet and arbitrary decisions to create weighted values for complexity would only lead to problems.

Borderlands: My Muse

But in every dark situation, great men shine. I thought back to how I kept jumping off of cliffs trying to land on an enemy in the video game Borderlands just to get an achievement. (Let me tell you, it’s harder than you’d think, especially when you are targeting midget bandit ravagers.) But, if a little meta game reward could keep me doing stupid stuff like this, just imagine what I could instill in my friends!

That’s right, Metro Game Day II brings achievements! Perform certain tasks at the game day and participants will earn achievements.

Here’s a complete list of achievements. Except for the embedded examples, how to earn them will be kept secret until after the game day.

• A Dish Best Served Cold
• A Series of Tubes
• And So It Begins…
• Boom, Headshot
• Card Shark
• Cobra’s Worst Enemy
• Cornucopia
• Do Not Go In There
• Do Or Do Not


The Don't Get Cocky, Kid Achievement With Partial Credit

• Don’t Get Cocky, Kid
• Got Me Some Edjukashun
• Film Buff
• Grain Sales to Soviets
• Heartbroken
• Hobo
• It’s a Trap!
• Karate Kid
• Life of the Party
• Long Haul
• Lush
• Ninja
• No One Suspects the Spanish Inquisition
• Pity the Fool


The Power to the People Achievement

• Power to the People
• Return to Sender
• Rival
• Sonic
• The Hoff
• There’s No I In Team
• Those Things Cause Cancer
• War Monger
• Zombie

Next week, I’ll describe how I made the achievements, how we gave them out, and the lessons learned from the game day.  In the mean time, feel free to speculate on how they are earned.