Man Defeats His Achievement Points Addiction, Almost

I used to work with Jason Cipriano, back when he was obsessed with Achievement Points. I heard from him yesterday and he’s cleaned himself up. Kicked the habit.

Jason admits over at MTV Multiplayer that, yeah, he kind of took things far back in the old days of his Achievement mania and that the hankering is still there:

While I cannot deny the fact that there is still a little part of me that jumps for joy when I unlock another achievement in a game, I’m just no longer going out of the way to get them. There once was a time when I would have rubber banded my controller to make Superman fly 10,000 miles for 30 points, [Note from Stephen: Yes, he did this] but now I just let most* of the extraneous points go. If I have to go out of my way to unlock something, then I probably don’t need to unlock it, and I still stand firmly by my commitment to not play a full-length retail release multiple times, just for achievement points. Times have changed, and so have I.

Jason’s not kicked his habit completely. He confesses to having replayed the intro to Bayonetta to get some Achievements he missed. And he writes that, without the obsession over Achievements, he’s playing more games on more systems — and trying to add two-three games to his collection a week, an obsessiveness that could signal new dangers.

But I’d like to look at Jason’s tale in a positive light of someone who has decided to change something he now thinks was getting in the way of his enjoyment of more games. Just yesterday, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Gerstmann told us on Kotaku Talk Radio that he too is less Achievement-obsessed than before.

https://lastchance.cc/giant-bombs-jeff-gerstmann-in-our-first-ever-in-studio-5448069%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

Achievement addiction recovery is possible, these reports tell us. For the point-obsessed, you can change your ways, if you feel you must.

Confessions Of A Recoving Achievement Addict [MTV Multiplayer]