I saw a link to a website whose purpose is to organize a gathering of players for NBA Live 07. Not to play the game, but rather to hang out in the lobby, in the hopes of getting the “Online with 1000 People” achievement. Their attempt (last Saturday) failed, but what’s astounding to me is that two previous attempts have worked. It’s mind-boggling that so many people (at least 250, because you can apparently sign up 3 Live Silver accounts locally and still have it work) could be motivated to coordinate like this, purely for the joy and bragging rights of seeing and hearing “Achievement Unlocked.” They may be motivated by the fact that, eventually, EA will turn off the online portions of older titles, leaving some players with now unattainable achievements. (Mind you, I think this was a terrible idea for an achievement to begin with, but that’s besides the point.)
The lengths that people will go to in order to get achievements is pretty crazy. Some games make it extremely difficult to get all 1000 points, but people will grind through them anyway, just to see that number go up, or to have bragging rights over their friends. It’s keeping up with the Joneses for the 21st century.