I'll never understand the discourse surrounding achievements. They're typically very noninvasive; you can ignore them, disable them, hunt them, or do whatever you want.

It obviously depends on the preference of the player, the game, and how much thought went into the achievement. Not sure what else needs to be said.

People who look at 100% completion as peak gamer cred suck. People who walk around telling others to stop achievement hunting because it's "sucking the joy out of gaming" equally suck.

It's clearly a personal preference, so I just do my own thing and let others do their thing.

When playing trough a game the first time I never care about achievements. I do not disable them, but I just ignore them and don't check which ones the game has. And if a game does not have achievements then I indeed do not miss them.

But if I have finished a game I ended up really enjoying and want more, then I do check the achievement list for inspiration for what to do. And sometimes I end up discovering parts of the game I initially missed that way.

I have never bothered with RetroAchievements, but I also don't get the hate about them. They are achievements that are not a part of the game, that you need to deliberately install to be able to get them. So if you don't like them, just don't install them? Some people clearly enjoy them, so I don't think it's a bad thing that they exist even though I don't care for them.

I find that how much I care about achievements parallels how well they are done. Some games I care almost nothing, especially when the achievements feel tacked on. Other games, the achievements represent thought-out developer-suggested goals or progression and feel right. If I trust the developer's choices in creating achievements, I enjoy the achievements.

As such I don't care about RetroAchievements at all. The achievements aren't a part of the game. They end up either trivial or tedious. If I want a tedious challenge and can't come up with one myself, I'll see what people who love and have mastered the game tend to aim for.

FYI if it's just the notification you want to disable, you can do it from the Steam settings (at least in desktop mode). I despise notifications, so I have them completely disabled, but you should be able to remove just the achievement ones.

I wouldn't say I hate achievements, but I can't understand what's appealing about them.

I'm the exact opposite of the OP in the article. I love achievements and can call myself achievement hunter. I have even written multiple non-spoiler achievement guides for others. I get a more accomplished and fulfilling feeling after beating a game 100% achievement wise instead of just seeing the credits.

There are of course games where achievements make no sense and games where the achievements feel like 'slop'. Take a look of for example the digital version of the board game Talisman and its list of achievements. I can't believe anyone finds going through those kinds of achievements fun and rewarding.

In addition of the beating the game 100% I find it fun to 'compete' against my friends whether they know I'm doing that or not. Comparing for example Steam achievements lets me do it. If someone has 54/67 achievements I want to have 55.

I'm aware of extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation, about the potential upsides and downsides, the potentially positive or detrimental effects of achievements.

I often do chase or consider achievements, but also explore games and their limits or what they cover anyway. I do like completing, especially if 100% is feasible. Other times I ignore them and focus on the game. If the game is not very captivating or interesting, I often don't care much about achievements.

I did find incremental progression games interesting in how they make the extrinsic motivation, the numbers-go-up system, the core game mechanic. It's interesting to explore and be mindful of how that can be fun, but in a different way than creative, exploratory, or story games. Of course, some mix both systems.

Achievements are not for me. I might have a look through the list and if some sound fun I might try to engage but most of the time they are a grind, and that's not why I play. To me they have always felt like an insincere engagement tactic (or something like that).

I had to delete my RetroAchievements account because it sucks the joy out of gaming. When achievements don't exist I just happily play a game until I'm finished with it but when they are there I NEED to get them all.