Games are virtual. When you turn on the console, a world appears; when you turn it off, no trace remains. Except for the achievements you earned -- which fortify your Gamerscore and self-esteem, blip by blip. The Underachiever tracks the productivity of one gamer playing to catch up to his peers. What do games feel like when they're used for work?
Let Punches be Punches
Can a punch in the face become a meta-narrative?
The other day, I kept my friend John company as he undertook a 24-hour quest for achievements. His goal was to see how many points he could add to his Gamerscore by milking the Xbox 360's most generous games. After a day of virtually nonstop play, he had earned more than 10,000 achievement points.
I'm not sure the points mattered much to him; games like Hannah Montana: The Movie and Hasbro Family Game Night (only Mr. Potato Head could get excited about Connect Four) are hard to get into. John's project made achievements seem pretty pointless. But assuming your game is meaningful to you, achievements can prove that something real happened between you and the game. What if they could even redeem the past?
The Xbox Live port of Double Dragon gave me a rude awakening last year when I realized that gaming had moved on from my childhood beat-'em-up fantasy. My once-favorite game was little more than a scratchy artifact. It was not fun. And now it had been pumped full of achievements.
I'm watching street thugs beat up Marion and hoist her away. The garage door opens, and out rushes Billy Lee -- two seconds too late to save his girlfriend. I've been through this many times, and I know how the story ends. This time, Billy looks like a pansy. He's running from punches, terrified of being surrounded, trying not to get hit. Because hey, there's an achievement for that!
I never knew timing could matter so much in this game. When I was five years old, all I wanted to do was kick people in the face. Now, each encounter with a thug is a tense game of shadowboxing. Unfortunately, the computer's timing is unbeatable; I reload three, four, five times because it keeps sneaking in hits. A real sense of masochism underlines this game -- you take a real beating for trying to be a good guy. I watch Marion get slapped and thrown over her assailant's shoulder three, four, five times. Billy keeps charging out of the garage, stupefied by his loss. How many times has Marion gotten herself kidnapped so that I can play out his revenge fantasy?
Another achievement asks me to finish Mission 3 while holding a baseball bat from the beginning of the level. This is another tragedy in the making; everyone on the street is determined to knock the bat out of my hands. I used to play Double Dragon with my father, and I wonder why we never talked about all the pain we shared. Thugs bat me left and right like children at a pinata party. Girls snap whips at my feet. Knives fly repeatedly into my abdomen. And I keep falling into these huge chasms in the street.
A struggle erupts over a stick of dynamite. A pyromaniac is throwing these crackling explosives at my feet, one after the other; I'm just trying to pick up the dynamite and throw it out of the way. We break into a scuffle as I'm making a lunge for the stick, and the thug's cronies start punching me in the face, their feet on the lit fuse. 15G: Demolition Man rings out as the dynamite explodes, killing all three of us. The points were for killing two enemies with a stick of dynamite. I didn't do it. Does that count as emergent gameplay?
I cross a narrow log bridge when an eight-foot-tall Zangief lookalike decides to pick a fight. We're trading blows when he suddenly picks me up and tosses me. 10G: No Swimming is awarded for crossing the bridge without falling in the water. I didn't do it!
Thanks to the achievements, I start to notice these fleeting moments where the game shapes the tale on the spot. It isn't just the story of Billy and Jimmy Lee finding and fighting over their Marion in the final climax -- it's the story of an explosive scenario gone awry, of David and Goliath battling above raging waters. It's the story of how, during a cliffside brawl with two hulks, Billy jumps over a hurled boulder and causes one to deliver a fatal blow to his own brother.
And through all this, I still have my bat. I'm nearing the end of Mission 3, when I tumble off the cliffside and respawn below. The bat is left up above, far beyond reach. The glitch is frustrating, but truer to life than Double Dragon's clones -- which caused weapons to disappear after you dropped them enough times. Long after the game is done, I imagine my bat still sits on the edge of that cliff.
At some point, I receive 5G: Good Score for earning 20,000 points. This game has points?
My story meets its unexpected end during the climactic fight with the gun-toting leader of the Black Warriors. I've just earned 15G: No Mercy for ruthlessly killing every single one of his henchmen. In the process, I died more than 10 times. I'd be pummeled by fists on all sides, and crumple at the feet of criminals, or I'd suffer a single bullet to the back from their boss. It would have been much easier to simply go after the boss himself and win the game. My vendetta against his minions seemed like a ritualistic cleansing.
I think to break the narrative by cheating for my last achievement -- earned by beating down player 2 for Marion's affection. Since I haven't been playing the game co-op, I plug in a second controller and select a profile. The game abruptly throws me back to the title screen. If I want to change the story, I'll have to start again from the beginning.
Double Dragon's achievements give me a reason to keep playing. They simply provide ideas for new ways I can amuse myself in this two-decade-old game. But achievements also create a story. And what this story suggests is that meta-narratives are highly overrated.
It's all too easy to project a personal story onto a game, particularly one with a thin premise. Double Dragon isn't a high drama or a fable about the human condition. It's simply a one-liner about getting punched in the face, over and over. And I have to wonder if the best meta-narratives in the world can hide the fact that most games are still asking me to either punch my enemy or get punched in the face -- and not much more.
Achievements earned: 4
Points gained: 45
Ryan Kuo is an editor at Kill Screen Magazine, and a freelance writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Find him on Xbox Live and Twitter as twerkface. And please don't laugh at his Gamerscore -- he's working on it.