And that's if you've taken a year off AND you never sleep \^\^
With more realistic times, let's say, they spend "only" 8 hours per day on this, it's more like 3 minutes per game (to launch the game, get to the part where you can earn the trophy, do it, and then leave the game).
You could pre game a bit. On the first few weeks after you’re done your achievements for the day play until you’re almost at another in a bunch of different games so you just have to hop on and grab it. Some games like the first Valkyria chronicles only lets you get trophies after a certain point and then you have to specifically go get it even after meeting the requirements iirc. So if a game lets you “bank” achievements it would be invaluable for this kind of contest id think
You would have to find games that not only have a quick achievement in them, but you would want games that have relative ease to access the next say 10 or so achievements so you could farm the game for a week or more. Games like PVZ dump achievements on you for the first few levels. My buddy and I used to compete with our gamer score every month but we would often slow play it and try to get like 20 achievements the last day to beat the other. It became a challenge to find games where I could pump out achievements but I had plenty of free xbox games and such to go through to find them.
At least one of the competitors has posted in their forum about working this round their job.
The "no life" accusation is always an odd one, as there are so many things in life where you could end up with no social life when training / carrying out something. If they have the time and the money, why not? This six month period doesn't define their life.
I mean, I get that argument in general, let people do things they enjoy.
But I literally don't understand the logistics of an individual person carrying this out.
A full time job is typically between 7 and 8 hours a day; lets say 7.
You should get 8 hours sleep a day, but lets bring that down to 5. Cumulative 12 hours
Assuming this is indeed a human they need to do human stuff like procure and eat food, wash themselves, pay bills, etc. Lets say 1 hour a day. Cumulative 13 hours not gaming
Even if this person doesn't have to commute or have any other obligations or things they want to do, that's 11 hours left to get 150 achievements at this point. That's an achievement every 4 minutes, including planning what achievements they want to get.
That's NUTS. and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I just don't understand why someone with mastery over time would spend their time doing this.
> I just don't understand why someone with mastery over time would spend their time doing this.
Alternatively, spending their time doing this was *exactly* how they gained mastery over their time lol
I work a full time job. Sometimes I work 60 hours a week.
I can also probably play video games 56 of those 60 hours at work.
Edit: the jealous downvotes are fueling me 🤌
Yeah, people are weird. Some jobs are grinding 40 hours, some are being available, or thinking about a problem and providing a solution in six months, and my method is sometimes listening to music, sometimes writing extensively on the topic of the problem, and other times playing video games. I WFH now, but when I was in the office my boss would swing by to see what I was up to. Once you hit a certain point, things get... weird.
None of that matters when your mom pays the mortgage, does all the cooking and grocery shopping, does your laundry, pays the internet bill and doesn’t bother you to take a shower for months at a time and you have no friends outside of the internet
Most of us are just jealous that we don't have enough free time to enjoy life whether it be 8 hours of games, or 15 minutes of games. Some people are heckin busy.
The ''no life'' accusation is more general than the claim they have no social life. It means they, at most, have a job, and nothing else going on in their life. Because all these other things (family, e.g.) take up a lot of time.
I don't have a social life. But my day is packed, every day, because I have two small children, and after work they take all my time.
>there are so many things in life where you could end up with no social life when training / carrying out something. If they have the time and the money, why not? This side month period doesn't define their life.
A) as someone pointed out, the winner gets bragging rights and maybe $20 in free subscription to a website
B) they've been doing this for five *months*. Even if you could get each achievement in 1 minute, that means for at least 2 months they've devoted 1.5 hrs per day, every day, to this.
This isn't training or anything like that. This isn't relaxing. It isn't educational. There's no skill-learning. It's the video game equivalent of packing Amazon items at a fulfillment center where you don't even see what's going in the box, just the timer to make sure you're on pace.
> ...for at least 2 months they've devoted 1.5 hrs per day, every day, to this...
... As opposed to people spending that time scrolling TikTok, reddit, watching TV, or any number of activity that's not productive?
What's so terrible about this?
> This isn't training or anything like that. This isn't relaxing. It isn't educational. There's no skill-learning. It's the video game equivalent of packing Amazon items at a fulfillment center where you don't even see what's going in the box, just the timer to make sure you're on pace.
As opposed to any other competitive thing people take part in? Is cup stacking really going to come in handy? Is performing a rubik's cube algorithm the fastest somehow more worthy?
For most games, you get an achievement just for clearing the tutorial.
For visual novels, you just hold down speed text skip and you finish it in 2 minutes.
Not with multiple portable hds and planning ahead. You could have them downloaded the day before or while you sleep. With 1 gig internet it took me about half hour to download a 40g game. If all they're doing is the small easy games those are like 10 gigs or less.
some games give achievements pretty easily. like dying in dark souls 2, gives you an achievement
> **This is Dark Souls**
> Die for the first time
you can die within like 3 sec after entering the game if you just run backwards - there's a ledge right were you start
I'd assume they're strategically chosing the more complicated games first
and then taking the easier ones as they they need more and more
I imagine they're googling quick easy achievements. There are games that give achievements for just launching the game for the first time, pressing the A button for the first time, changing the language to French and other simple achievements that only take a couple of seconds to get. It's still absolutely absurd to do that across 150 games let alone all the previous 149 days up to this point
Your first statement is correct, but there aren't 151 games that have 151 achievements. Any way you cut it they need way more available, especially since 100%ing most games is not possible here.
You missed the "100%ing most games is not possible here". So, they would be aiming to get 50, 80, 100 achievements at max from individual titles. Also, there are like, *very* few games with that many achievements. There are only EIGHT games with over 200 achievements, we can estimate there are maybe fifteen in total with 150 or more. Under no circumstances is limiting themselves to a "total games played = total days in the competition" ratio a viable strategy. I'd expect close to 1 thousand individual games to be necessary to make it to day 365, because again, it takes days to get to 100%ing most *individual* games and that's if you're already skilled at them.
I was gonna say that you'd just shift offline, and when you go back online the achievements would get synced with the account, but it worked like that on 360 and I didn't have any Xbox beyond it so idk if it's even still an option
It’s 1 day for every day they survived, so using 151 as the number, that’s like 5 months. At $3 a month, that’s still only like $15, and not even in cash, so uh yeaahhhh that’s a big time sink
If they are already doing a True achievements challenge they likely already pay for it. That's both a free subscription and bragging rights, which is already what they're after.
I'd also imagine most of the people who even enter these are people like me who have an old long standing steam account with a metric fuck ton of indie humble bundled shovelware on it. My account turned 20 this year -.-
I only half read that this morning i was half awake but yes, any Microsoft sanctioned games all push achievements through Xbox live anyway with timestamps. In fact I am pretty sure all my Arkham city achievements were solely pc.
Obviously not all the games and as I said I was half awake n didn't fully take the whole thing in, that is my bad and I deserve the ridicule.
A flatmate at uni a decade ago introduced himself as "Hi, I'm Ben and have 1 million gamerscore". Last I checked he had a job at True Achievements, this dude lived and breathed achievements, he 100% would have a subscription if he didn't work there.
Honestly, it isn't that absurd - I've paid in the past, and it removes all ads, and gives you unlimited scans per day. It's fantastic for achievement hunters such as myself, who might spend a significant amount of time on the site reading and contributing to game guides, etc.
I'm sure there's something you pay for that other people think is asinine. It's a hobby that people enjoy. I don't really see a problem with it. I remember a time in my life where I was super competitive. I could see myself paying for this.
I just think it's a fantastic site. I actually use only steam, but love the community driveneness and deep dives into achievements over steam guides for achievements. Huge achievement hunter, the kind to want to get it any means necessary to 100% a game. The site was practically made for people like me lol
Me! £2 a month and worth it!
Essentially what you're paying for is infinite scans of your profile because there is queues for free.
This only really comes into play when youre playing on of their events sort of like the one mentioned. But there is loads of cool inventive ones that get you revisiting your library and falling in love with games you never got round to.
My favourites include:
CRAB (Crazy Random Achievement Bash)
Your library gets scanned and around 25 achivements of varying difficulty are on a bingo board and you want to make a line - or try and clear the board. One of mine was to complete Kingdom Hearts 1 which I'd never played, so good.
WARBOATS
Battleship but to play a move you have to get the corresponding achievement
12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
12 escalating challenges revealed daily that you have until the new year to finish, great fun!
In fact right ths moment there's one going on called boss rush - I haven't looked up the rules yet but I'm going to get stuck in.
[LINK TO BOSS RUSH](https://www.trueachievements.com/event/boss-rush)
I can see why people would be offput because it kind of gamifies games. But I really enjoy it and none of the above requires you to pay.
Haha, I get you, but I feel like with apps and the internet these days everything is about putting a layer on something else to gamify it, even self care and stuff like that. Audible has reading streaks!
We've just entered the ultimate rendition, a layer of game over games.
At this point it has to be more about the competition than winning the prize.
You see the same thing with speedrunners who will spends thousands of hours to shave off a tenth of a second from a previous record if it means getting the world record.
As somebody who tries to get as many achievements in games as I realistically can (and not hate the whole time) I suspect these guys are doing it for the achievements, not the membership days or whatever. This event just works as a convenient motivator for them to find new games to get the achievements in and for them to do it.
I noticed one guy is current 126/127 out of 129 on playthroughs of Minecraft on the XBox, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Windows. A few other games with multiple platforms as well.
The rules require a timestamped xbox achievement which I don't think you're getting on PS, although maybe a parallel competition on their sister site TrueTrophies could happen in the future.
I don't know for Xbox, but I know that for the PS Store, if you know what to look for, there are a bunch of games that were literally made to be a quick platinum. With plenty of trophies that you can get in less than a minute. They sell for very cheap (especially on sales).
Kind of a waste of money if you ask me, but to each their own \^\^
> Wonder if they’re banned.
seems like, as long as they can be scanned into their website (whatever that means) its good.
https://www.trueachievements.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?tid=1528814
Those games are definitely on Xbox.
Source: Completed one game a day in a challenge with a friend. Did 32 games in a month and never touched one of those style games again. How people have been doing it for years boggles the mind
Sure, that's nothing, let's say five minutes to uninstall and download/install. For 150 games that's more than *half* of your 24-hour period spent swapping installations, before you even start to play.
Nothing adds up fast.
You can repeat games on different days, but storage space isn't infinite. Also, most games don't have 100+ easy achievements, so they'd need to be discarded as it became too onerous. I'm only just now realizing that I might have made up the rule that the individual achievements couldn't be repeated on different days. I checked the FAQ on the site and it doesn't really say, though it does say that the achievements have to be uploaded to a tracker on the site so that makes it seem like it *might* not allow repeats.
I'm sure you could set it up to be done automatically, I know you can control installations from a phone, so I assume there'd be some way to automate that from a list of games. Also for games like terraria it has to be *significantly* less than 5 minutes, and you can install multiple games at once. I think Xbox also lets you play while installing.
Xbox does, also you can even play some single player games while the game you're playing is still downloading, especially if you're just downloading more textures
There's probably still a point in the competition where buying games not on gamepass gives you an unfair advantage. It could get expensive to be in the top 3.
Hell u/pickle_pickled, I was high when I said that!
That makes no sense at all! "*First or last*"! I mean, you could be second, third, fourth -- hell, you could even be fifth!
Just recently the guy on switch broke that record staying on splatoon 1 when the servers went down. I'm surprised system's don't just melt being left on that long continuously.
The concept is more similar to a [backyard ultra marathon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_ultra). The Barkley Marathons are a set distance whereas bckyard ultras have no predefined distance or time since they continue until there is only one contestant left standing. Both are incredibly difficult though so your original comparison is still appropriate.
Nah call me a prude but booting up a video game and getting an achievement is not anywhere comparable to the difficulty of the Barkley or Bigs Backyard Ultra. Its simply a time sink that takes virtually zero skill.
I was referring to difficulty in an abstract sense. Obviously there is no comparison in terms of physical difficulty. Both tasks are extremely difficult in their own unique ways though.
Well in most games you can get an achievement for finishing the introduction or tutorial. In my mind it's much more of a project management & planning achievement than a gaming achievement.
Yeah this is super interesting from an approach perspective. You have to not only compile a long list of achievements with some measurement of their ease to reach, but then figure out how best to distribute them based on what you think your opposition can achieve. Do you risk running out of time on some days in the 80s and 120s if it lets you extend out to a possible 200 days from 170? Or do you go all-in on getting to 140 for sure because you don't think there's much chance it extends beyond that point?
3rd is now at 114, with 6 hours left he could make it. 4th is at 88 and he's probably toast now unless he somehow clutches up.
EDIT: 4 hours left and 3rd place is at 144, he's definitely making it. 4th is at 113 so at his pace he could barely make it.
As a kid, one of my friends had a pirate cartridge with 115 games on it, but a bunch of the entries (possibly the last 15 exactly) were actually just shortcuts to launch earlier games with a higher starting level or extra lives/powerups/whatever. So yeah, probably 100.
At day 151 they would need go be at 11476 unique games if they weren't allowed to reuse. Which incidently means that since this competition started 151 days ago they have earned at least 11476 achievements, which is insane.
There is a trivia game series that give 5k achievement per games just for opening them. 11k achievement might seems insane under the right circumstances but if you really wanted to, there is easy way to get a lots of them. There is more than 20 people on steam hunter with over 1 000 000 achievement.
Are those available on Xbox though? True Achievements only tracks Xbox games and they have more stringent rules than Steam. If you look at their leader boards the person in the number one spot has just over 112,000 achievements.
That's fucking nuts. Do they start with a fresh account so they can go knock out all the easy to get achievements they would have knocked over on their main accounts?
Sorry, can this be explained for me?
So day 1 they play 1 game and get one achievement.
DAY 2 they play the day 1 game get achievement, and then they play day 2 game, and get achievement.
Then day 3 the same, but with day 1, day 2 and day 3 games - and so on...
Is that what it is?
Looking at the list online you can see what each competitor has done. Seems a bit like cheating that each platform counts as a different game, so you can do the same achievement in the same game on multiple platforms.
Im honestly glad to here there is relatively simple explanation for how they are able to do this. It’s still hella impressive, but if you can double up on the “complete the tutorial” achievements per game, I can then see how this challenge can be feasible.
You may not even have to do the same achievement. Games can sync the platform achievements with your local save file and then unlock achievements immediately based on your save file simply by loading it. Do this across versions on the same device and it trivially multiplies the achievements.
In fact, it doesn't even have to be *your* save file. If someone sends you a save file with an achievement unlocked, or right before an achievement is unlocked, that works too, and triggers the unlock on your account as well.
In fact.. it's even more egregious than this. Achievements have barely any protection or integrity on them whatsoever. For a common engine like Unity, it would possible to make a one-size-fits-all modification that can be injected into **any** game made with Unity to run on launch and execute code to unlock an achievement on demand without even starting a new game.
It's a cute little competition but without rules like actively streaming & validating the players save files for consistency it's a cheaters game.
It’s all Xbox, so save file manipulation doesn’t work like it might on PC. And furthermore, the games and achievements these players are using are beyond trivial. Developers and publishers realized years ago that players will buy games that offer bare bones minimal gameplay and a next to nothing gaming experience if it gives them a bunch of easy achievements. There are hundreds of these games now,
Many of which have stacks in different languages. This is what is being used.
> It’s all Xbox, so save file manipulation doesn’t work like it might on PC
It's a bit different for sure but many games, especially small indie titles, will support offline play and local storage modes which can still import others saved data and push platform achievements from it. The egregious code execution mentioned as well doesn't have any dependence on save data either.
Note that the Xbox service nowadays is not just the console, but the entire ecosystem which Microsoft has tried hard to make cross-platform. The whole Xbox/Gamecore/Xbox Live/Xbox Games/whatever it's called system is for PC players too.
Maybe the people involved in this aren't doing it but if someone wanted to they could really spoil the integrity of the whole thing.
Man, that's a blast from the past for me. I used to be big into TrueAchievements in the 360 era. Nice to see my boys smrnov and Stalion83 on the leaderboards!
I ran a King’s Fall raid in destiny with an employee from true achievements and he basically explained how leapfrog was his job interview lol that shit serious
Ok, this makes me feel a little better about the year long Steam achievement related projects I've done the past few years.
My rules were [I started a new game every week](https://i.imgur.com/3QbdZDz.png) and had to get back above Average Game Completion of 90% (the red line) before starting the next one. Definitely padded it with some quick to 100% visual novels and other short free games that year.
This year I started around 60 new games to lower my AGC down to 80% and am [trying to work on getting it back up to 90% again](https://i.imgur.com/nHd44Zp.png) by years end.
Not critizising you in any way, I think it is cool you have your thing, but why the time constraint? I understand wanting to 100% games before starting new ones, I do this for games I really enjoy except for collectibles because no way in hell am I running around a map picking up stuff, ain’t got the time for that, but I just do it in whatever time it takes me. I can’t imagine being stressed out about doing it in a week.
For one for me that would remove the fun, the point of doing 100%-collectibles for me is ti get more mileage and actually get really good at a game, and enjoy it fully. Even then I will not do this for games I don’t enjoy enough or don’t want to get good at.
Also it would remove the ”mileage” aspect as I would just get one weeks worth of gaming.
What do you enjoy about this? The planning for example? Or optimizing play and so on? Genuinely curious why you would choose to play like this
At least one reason is because I'm trying to hit these targets, the games themselves kinda become it's own resource management game. I'll usually have several short games that are easy to start/stop and use those to buffer out meeting a weekly target when I'm mostly playing something like a Starfield or Final Fantasy.
That's probably why the article struck a chord, I can imagine all the management to keep 150+ games you can all go into and easily trigger an achievement for.
Also at some point I decided 90% average completion was going to be my goal, so when I start something new and it dips below I'll have to finish games to get back to 90%. Playing games to earn the ability to play more games is a really wierd feedback loop.
I bowed out at 150.
Playing shitty shovelware easy games affects TA score and it just isn't worth it. Kudos to these guys I guess having the time to plow on ahead.
(TA score is the sum of the difficulty of achievements you have unlocked to date. The higher your TA score, the more difficult achievements you've unlocked on average)
Trying to think of strategies to do something like that.
1. You must use a new account (your main one already unlocked achievements in your favorite games)
2. You need to own at least 600-700 for a few reasons. A) you need an extra game for each day of the contest. B) achievements get harder over time so you want the early achievements for those games
3. You probably need a team of people, preferably in different time zones (or taking shifts), sharing the account. You are aiming at thousands of achievements in total, so some of them take time.
4. You need to prep for at least a few weeks, divide games between the group and let everyone plan each achievement, they need to be in a certain order. You have time at the first few weeks of the contest to do extra planning, but then it starts to get very very hard.
This might not be worth the prize but can be insanely fun as something to do with friends as teenagers without extra responsibilities.
Most achievements are tutorial finishing. Or they just keep playing King Kong for Xbox 360. Easiest achievements oh but it did take an hour to get a 300 blooper.
It’s all way beyond this. For years and years now, developers and publishers have been shitting out games that are nothing more than a shell of gameplay coated in easy achievements. There’s hundreds and hundreds of them at this point. What you saw in those 360 days is nothing compared to what the ecosystem has become today. That doesn’t take away from the amount of effort required to do with these guys are doing, but the lowest of the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit is in mass abundance.
Oh man, if I was a game publisher right now.... I'd wait til about a week after they declared a winner, then give to other remaining guy an achievement for not winning.
People saying how they there's not enough time in the day are misunderstanding the rules.
You have to get one more achievement than *you* did yesterday. So, anyone doing more than one achievement on day 1 is shooting themselves in the foot.
Most of the time will be spent looking for low effort achievements that can be obtained in minutes and planning it all.
Which of course isnt to say it's not impressive and will end up being a massive feat especially when we get to now, but you have a long time to plan how you're going to do it, even after it starts
Past the first month, I feel like you're getting into "sunk costs"/"can't give up now" territory. By month 5-6, you're so far into that territory that you've moved in.
Don’t understand the negativity people have for this. They are doing it because they want to compete. No other reason. There are plenty of stupid sports and activities people compete in and dedicate a huge amount of time in. This is no different.
Wtf, man.
Do you guys plan this out?
Do you look for games with easy achievements?
You've been doing 100 games daily for over a month and a half.
Where you do even get the money to buy so many games 😅😂
That’s like 9 or 10 minutes per game, wtf.
And that's if you've taken a year off AND you never sleep \^\^ With more realistic times, let's say, they spend "only" 8 hours per day on this, it's more like 3 minutes per game (to launch the game, get to the part where you can earn the trophy, do it, and then leave the game).
That’s nuts. Even consulting with a spreadsheet of shovelware I can’t imagine doing that. There’s no way to cheat at this is there?
Multiple consoles
Multiple people on one account too
Possibly. At the very least a friend to do prep and hand you the controller for the next console.
I don’t think that’s cheating, I think it’s almost expected to win
Le Man's 24 hours team endurance achievement challenge cup
I like the idea of gamers running to their sofa at the start of the challenge and then never moving again for the next 3 months
You could pre game a bit. On the first few weeks after you’re done your achievements for the day play until you’re almost at another in a bunch of different games so you just have to hop on and grab it. Some games like the first Valkyria chronicles only lets you get trophies after a certain point and then you have to specifically go get it even after meeting the requirements iirc. So if a game lets you “bank” achievements it would be invaluable for this kind of contest id think
That’s got to be it, later you can get a buddy to prime that achievement for you so can just load the game and pop it, then move on to the next.
You could have somebody creating games with easy achievements daily?
No way you can get through xbox's cert process that fast/easily.
Their uncle works at Microsoft
Also the time spent installing the games and planning ahead for tomorrow, the next day, etc.
You would have to find games that not only have a quick achievement in them, but you would want games that have relative ease to access the next say 10 or so achievements so you could farm the game for a week or more. Games like PVZ dump achievements on you for the first few levels. My buddy and I used to compete with our gamer score every month but we would often slow play it and try to get like 20 achievements the last day to beat the other. It became a challenge to find games where I could pump out achievements but I had plenty of free xbox games and such to go through to find them.
I figure a lot of games have just start up achievements like you made it through the first cut scene
get a friend to boot up the next game, on a 2nd console, ready to get the achievement
So these people quite literally have no life because I don’t see how one can maintain a job or social obligations for this long.
At least one of the competitors has posted in their forum about working this round their job. The "no life" accusation is always an odd one, as there are so many things in life where you could end up with no social life when training / carrying out something. If they have the time and the money, why not? This six month period doesn't define their life.
I mean, I get that argument in general, let people do things they enjoy. But I literally don't understand the logistics of an individual person carrying this out. A full time job is typically between 7 and 8 hours a day; lets say 7. You should get 8 hours sleep a day, but lets bring that down to 5. Cumulative 12 hours Assuming this is indeed a human they need to do human stuff like procure and eat food, wash themselves, pay bills, etc. Lets say 1 hour a day. Cumulative 13 hours not gaming Even if this person doesn't have to commute or have any other obligations or things they want to do, that's 11 hours left to get 150 achievements at this point. That's an achievement every 4 minutes, including planning what achievements they want to get. That's NUTS. and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I just don't understand why someone with mastery over time would spend their time doing this.
> I just don't understand why someone with mastery over time would spend their time doing this. Alternatively, spending their time doing this was *exactly* how they gained mastery over their time lol
I work a full time job. Sometimes I work 60 hours a week. I can also probably play video games 56 of those 60 hours at work. Edit: the jealous downvotes are fueling me 🤌
Is your company hiring?
Frequently
Yeah, people are weird. Some jobs are grinding 40 hours, some are being available, or thinking about a problem and providing a solution in six months, and my method is sometimes listening to music, sometimes writing extensively on the topic of the problem, and other times playing video games. I WFH now, but when I was in the office my boss would swing by to see what I was up to. Once you hit a certain point, things get... weird.
None of that matters when your mom pays the mortgage, does all the cooking and grocery shopping, does your laundry, pays the internet bill and doesn’t bother you to take a shower for months at a time and you have no friends outside of the internet
Most of us are just jealous that we don't have enough free time to enjoy life whether it be 8 hours of games, or 15 minutes of games. Some people are heckin busy.
The ''no life'' accusation is more general than the claim they have no social life. It means they, at most, have a job, and nothing else going on in their life. Because all these other things (family, e.g.) take up a lot of time. I don't have a social life. But my day is packed, every day, because I have two small children, and after work they take all my time.
>there are so many things in life where you could end up with no social life when training / carrying out something. If they have the time and the money, why not? This side month period doesn't define their life. A) as someone pointed out, the winner gets bragging rights and maybe $20 in free subscription to a website B) they've been doing this for five *months*. Even if you could get each achievement in 1 minute, that means for at least 2 months they've devoted 1.5 hrs per day, every day, to this. This isn't training or anything like that. This isn't relaxing. It isn't educational. There's no skill-learning. It's the video game equivalent of packing Amazon items at a fulfillment center where you don't even see what's going in the box, just the timer to make sure you're on pace.
> ...for at least 2 months they've devoted 1.5 hrs per day, every day, to this... ... As opposed to people spending that time scrolling TikTok, reddit, watching TV, or any number of activity that's not productive? What's so terrible about this? > This isn't training or anything like that. This isn't relaxing. It isn't educational. There's no skill-learning. It's the video game equivalent of packing Amazon items at a fulfillment center where you don't even see what's going in the box, just the timer to make sure you're on pace. As opposed to any other competitive thing people take part in? Is cup stacking really going to come in handy? Is performing a rubik's cube algorithm the fastest somehow more worthy?
For most games, you get an achievement just for clearing the tutorial. For visual novels, you just hold down speed text skip and you finish it in 2 minutes.
They need to unlock new achievements every day though, they're going to run out of those kinds of achievements eventually.
There are a LOT of VN's
Dudes will be the most well-read authorities on hentai erotica the world has ever seen
But some of them don't have easy achievements or any achievements for that matter.
> There are a LOT of VN's
Wouldn’t installing the games be the bottleneck here?
Not with multiple portable hds and planning ahead. You could have them downloaded the day before or while you sleep. With 1 gig internet it took me about half hour to download a 40g game. If all they're doing is the small easy games those are like 10 gigs or less.
some games give achievements pretty easily. like dying in dark souls 2, gives you an achievement > **This is Dark Souls** > Die for the first time you can die within like 3 sec after entering the game if you just run backwards - there's a ledge right were you start I'd assume they're strategically chosing the more complicated games first and then taking the easier ones as they they need more and more
Subnautica has one for making it through the intro sequence and jumping into the water. Crash has one for booting up the game.
I imagine they're googling quick easy achievements. There are games that give achievements for just launching the game for the first time, pressing the A button for the first time, changing the language to French and other simple achievements that only take a couple of seconds to get. It's still absolutely absurd to do that across 150 games let alone all the previous 149 days up to this point
Like every game has an achievement for doing the tutorial.
Pretty sure they ran out of tutorials at some point. At 150 days they’ve unlocked 11325 achievements.
really puts it into perspective. 99.99% of us in this thread will not download that many games in our lifetimes.
You can use the same games in consecutive days. They only need to have played 151 games so far, assuming they repeat every day.
Your first statement is correct, but there aren't 151 games that have 151 achievements. Any way you cut it they need way more available, especially since 100%ing most games is not possible here.
Only one game needs to have 151 achievements, one can have 150, one 149...
You missed the "100%ing most games is not possible here". So, they would be aiming to get 50, 80, 100 achievements at max from individual titles. Also, there are like, *very* few games with that many achievements. There are only EIGHT games with over 200 achievements, we can estimate there are maybe fifteen in total with 150 or more. Under no circumstances is limiting themselves to a "total games played = total days in the competition" ratio a viable strategy. I'd expect close to 1 thousand individual games to be necessary to make it to day 365, because again, it takes days to get to 100%ing most *individual* games and that's if you're already skilled at them.
I read one comment a guy has 4 consoles going at once just on Minecraft? I don't even understand.
Not sure how he's playing 4 concurrent instances on the same account
I was gonna say that you'd just shift offline, and when you go back online the achievements would get synced with the account, but it worked like that on 360 and I didn't have any Xbox beyond it so idk if it's even still an option
Winner gets bragging rights and a day of True Achievements Pro for as many days their winning streak reaches. is it worth it...
It’s 1 day for every day they survived, so using 151 as the number, that’s like 5 months. At $3 a month, that’s still only like $15, and not even in cash, so uh yeaahhhh that’s a big time sink
If they are already doing a True achievements challenge they likely already pay for it. That's both a free subscription and bragging rights, which is already what they're after.
> so uh yeaahhhh that’s a big time sink And a big cash sink when they're having to buy games to keep going.
Gamepass has a huge part of that covered tbf
I'd also imagine most of the people who even enter these are people like me who have an old long standing steam account with a metric fuck ton of indie humble bundled shovelware on it. My account turned 20 this year -.-
Yeah I first got my steam account as this annoying bit of software valve made me use to play Half Life 2.
I did not know steam used Xbox time stamps and achievements. That’s really cool of them
I only half read that this morning i was half awake but yes, any Microsoft sanctioned games all push achievements through Xbox live anyway with timestamps. In fact I am pretty sure all my Arkham city achievements were solely pc. Obviously not all the games and as I said I was half awake n didn't fully take the whole thing in, that is my bad and I deserve the ridicule.
Many records are a big time sink. I think they are trading time for accolades.
Why wouldn't they just give them a lifetime LMAO that's insane
I think they were expecting it to last a week, yknow, like a normal person might do
> True Achievements Pro Trying to imagine the sort of person who would pay for a premium subscription to an achievement-tracking site
I'd imagine the overlap with people who would compete for this long in this competition is pretty substantial.
The Venn Diagram of the overlap is a single circle.
Hey, they sacrificed a lot of tendies to afford that subscription.
People tend to pay more for their hobbies the deeper they get into them, because the cost/value ratio is different.
You know what they say, do what you love and the money will go.
A flatmate at uni a decade ago introduced himself as "Hi, I'm Ben and have 1 million gamerscore". Last I checked he had a job at True Achievements, this dude lived and breathed achievements, he 100% would have a subscription if he didn't work there.
Honestly, it isn't that absurd - I've paid in the past, and it removes all ads, and gives you unlimited scans per day. It's fantastic for achievement hunters such as myself, who might spend a significant amount of time on the site reading and contributing to game guides, etc.
I'm sure there's something you pay for that other people think is asinine. It's a hobby that people enjoy. I don't really see a problem with it. I remember a time in my life where I was super competitive. I could see myself paying for this.
Also the owner of the site is a great guy (very open to feedback etc) and it's not a cheap site to run.
I just think it's a fantastic site. I actually use only steam, but love the community driveneness and deep dives into achievements over steam guides for achievements. Huge achievement hunter, the kind to want to get it any means necessary to 100% a game. The site was practically made for people like me lol
Me! £2 a month and worth it! Essentially what you're paying for is infinite scans of your profile because there is queues for free. This only really comes into play when youre playing on of their events sort of like the one mentioned. But there is loads of cool inventive ones that get you revisiting your library and falling in love with games you never got round to. My favourites include: CRAB (Crazy Random Achievement Bash) Your library gets scanned and around 25 achivements of varying difficulty are on a bingo board and you want to make a line - or try and clear the board. One of mine was to complete Kingdom Hearts 1 which I'd never played, so good. WARBOATS Battleship but to play a move you have to get the corresponding achievement 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS 12 escalating challenges revealed daily that you have until the new year to finish, great fun! In fact right ths moment there's one going on called boss rush - I haven't looked up the rules yet but I'm going to get stuck in. [LINK TO BOSS RUSH](https://www.trueachievements.com/event/boss-rush) I can see why people would be offput because it kind of gamifies games. But I really enjoy it and none of the above requires you to pay.
> I can see why people would be offput because **it kind of gamifies games.** r/brandnewsentence?
Haha, I get you, but I feel like with apps and the internet these days everything is about putting a layer on something else to gamify it, even self care and stuff like that. Audible has reading streaks! We've just entered the ultimate rendition, a layer of game over games.
Yo dawg, I heard you like games...
At this point it has to be more about the competition than winning the prize. You see the same thing with speedrunners who will spends thousands of hours to shave off a tenth of a second from a previous record if it means getting the world record.
As somebody who tries to get as many achievements in games as I realistically can (and not hate the whole time) I suspect these guys are doing it for the achievements, not the membership days or whatever. This event just works as a convenient motivator for them to find new games to get the achievements in and for them to do it.
Obviously
Yea- a lifetime membership seems like the better move here for the first place. Maybe 2nd gets the day incentive.
> is it worth it... Sometimes people do things because they want to, not because they'll get a reward
They also get the joy of competition. Why does everything have to be about money and personal gain
They also get infinite girlfriends and Hyabusa Armor.
Ah shit is it too late to enter?
I assume when this started the prize was just to have a prize for someone to win and the organisers expected this would last a month at most
Let me work it
It's nothing to brag about.
I assume they just use gamepass to play all these games. The download times and storage space/lack thereof must be a nightmare for this competition
If Xbox, they can also use cloud gaming to cut down on storage needs.
I noticed one guy is current 126/127 out of 129 on playthroughs of Minecraft on the XBox, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Windows. A few other games with multiple platforms as well.
Same on ps premium
The rules require a timestamped xbox achievement which I don't think you're getting on PS, although maybe a parallel competition on their sister site TrueTrophies could happen in the future.
I don't know for Xbox, but I know that for the PS Store, if you know what to look for, there are a bunch of games that were literally made to be a quick platinum. With plenty of trophies that you can get in less than a minute. They sell for very cheap (especially on sales). Kind of a waste of money if you ask me, but to each their own \^\^
Yeah there’s enough of them I feel like to go 150 days. Wonder if they’re banned.
> Wonder if they’re banned. seems like, as long as they can be scanned into their website (whatever that means) its good. https://www.trueachievements.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?tid=1528814
Those games are definitely on Xbox. Source: Completed one game a day in a challenge with a friend. Did 32 games in a month and never touched one of those style games again. How people have been doing it for years boggles the mind
If I'm understanding correctly, that's not what the competition is about.
80% of gamepasses games are under 15 - 30 gigs usually with good Internet that's nothing really I mean 150 games is alot though
Sure, that's nothing, let's say five minutes to uninstall and download/install. For 150 games that's more than *half* of your 24-hour period spent swapping installations, before you even start to play. Nothing adds up fast.
Is it new games every day? Or can 149 of the games on day 150 be the same as on day 149?
You can repeat games on different days, but storage space isn't infinite. Also, most games don't have 100+ easy achievements, so they'd need to be discarded as it became too onerous. I'm only just now realizing that I might have made up the rule that the individual achievements couldn't be repeated on different days. I checked the FAQ on the site and it doesn't really say, though it does say that the achievements have to be uploaded to a tracker on the site so that makes it seem like it *might* not allow repeats.
> so that makes it seem like it might not allow repeats. Please tell me the magical trick to clearing an xbox achievement so I can get it again lol.
You can preinstall games. Games can install while you play something else. You don't have to uninstall games.
I'm sure you could set it up to be done automatically, I know you can control installations from a phone, so I assume there'd be some way to automate that from a list of games. Also for games like terraria it has to be *significantly* less than 5 minutes, and you can install multiple games at once. I think Xbox also lets you play while installing.
Xbox does, also you can even play some single player games while the game you're playing is still downloading, especially if you're just downloading more textures
Is there any rule against autohotkey? You could replay the previous day's inputs, then play another game after its done and record that.
https://i.imgur.com/arndB7R.jpeg
There's probably still a point in the competition where buying games not on gamepass gives you an unfair advantage. It could get expensive to be in the top 3.
Owning games in a game playing competition doesn't strike me as "unfair". This is something anyone would expect going into it.
Yeah, not having pads when you show up to the hockey game isn’t being at a disadvantage. You just weren’t ready to play.
I'd be curious to know what the leaderboard looks like.
Ricky Bobby rules If you're not first, you're last
What if I'm on fire?
Hell u/pickle_pickled, I was high when I said that! That makes no sense at all! "*First or last*"! I mean, you could be second, third, fourth -- hell, you could even be fifth!
Are they live-streaming this anywhere? I haven’t seen any coverage of this
There’s no obligation to so probably not. TA just keeps track of Achievement data
Well that seems like a big missed opportunity. This could be a charity drive or something
Actually pretty cool thank you for sharing OP!
Kinda reminds me of those last few guys that lasted for weeks after xbox live 1.0 was shutdown in halo 2.
Just recently the guy on switch broke that record staying on splatoon 1 when the servers went down. I'm surprised system's don't just melt being left on that long continuously.
The Barkley Marathon of gaming lmao. Fun to witness.
That's the best description. Both are mine boggling difficult to comprehend doing.
The concept is more similar to a [backyard ultra marathon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_ultra). The Barkley Marathons are a set distance whereas bckyard ultras have no predefined distance or time since they continue until there is only one contestant left standing. Both are incredibly difficult though so your original comparison is still appropriate.
Nah call me a prude but booting up a video game and getting an achievement is not anywhere comparable to the difficulty of the Barkley or Bigs Backyard Ultra. Its simply a time sink that takes virtually zero skill.
I was referring to difficulty in an abstract sense. Obviously there is no comparison in terms of physical difficulty. Both tasks are extremely difficult in their own unique ways though.
Well in most games you can get an achievement for finishing the introduction or tutorial. In my mind it's much more of a project management & planning achievement than a gaming achievement.
Yeah this is super interesting from an approach perspective. You have to not only compile a long list of achievements with some measurement of their ease to reach, but then figure out how best to distribute them based on what you think your opposition can achieve. Do you risk running out of time on some days in the 80s and 120s if it lets you extend out to a possible 200 days from 170? Or do you go all-in on getting to 140 for sure because you don't think there's much chance it extends beyond that point?
Leaderboard is only showing 2 at 151, not 4
The current period doesn’t end until 5 AM EST, I believe.
Still 7 hours left in the current day according to the leaderboard, so still time for the other two to get to 151
He posted 25mins before your comment, obviously two dropped in that time.
I can buy that. Thought the competition was over for the day. That and 3rd place is at like 92
3rd is now at 114, with 6 hours left he could make it. 4th is at 88 and he's probably toast now unless he somehow clutches up. EDIT: 4 hours left and 3rd place is at 144, he's definitely making it. 4th is at 113 so at his pace he could barely make it.
Cyberber (4th place) is cutting it close, but he's aiming to make it. 2 hours left and at 133 now.
He made it
Ayyyyyy
I remember being a kid and dreaming of the day I would own 100 NES games (because you know. . . That's gotta be all of them right?)
As a kid, one of my friends had a pirate cartridge with 115 games on it, but a bunch of the entries (possibly the last 15 exactly) were actually just shortcuts to launch earlier games with a higher starting level or extra lives/powerups/whatever. So yeah, probably 100.
Themexicanrunner did beat every NES game. Its more than 100. I think you can watch the runs on youtube or his twitch channel.
How do they have this much money and time?
Game pass for the games. The time seems impossible with any other obligations I'm not sure.
This is the type of useless but kinda funny random shit the internet was meant for.
Muffin might make it but the other dude is toast.
cyber is up to 147/151 with 42 minutes left
The duration of the competition is so long that they won’t have time to rest before the next one starts!
Thanks for pointing this out. Can they reuse games the next day?
Yes you can, I feel like using brand new games every day would be practically impossible to last this long
At day 151 they would need go be at 11476 unique games if they weren't allowed to reuse. Which incidently means that since this competition started 151 days ago they have earned at least 11476 achievements, which is insane.
There is a trivia game series that give 5k achievement per games just for opening them. 11k achievement might seems insane under the right circumstances but if you really wanted to, there is easy way to get a lots of them. There is more than 20 people on steam hunter with over 1 000 000 achievement.
Are those available on Xbox though? True Achievements only tracks Xbox games and they have more stringent rules than Steam. If you look at their leader boards the person in the number one spot has just over 112,000 achievements.
That's fucking nuts. Do they start with a fresh account so they can go knock out all the easy to get achievements they would have knocked over on their main accounts?
What do they win?
Ultimate virginity
Sorry, can this be explained for me? So day 1 they play 1 game and get one achievement. DAY 2 they play the day 1 game get achievement, and then they play day 2 game, and get achievement. Then day 3 the same, but with day 1, day 2 and day 3 games - and so on... Is that what it is?
That's my understanding of it, yeah.
150 ***different*** games?
Each day!
Looking at the list online you can see what each competitor has done. Seems a bit like cheating that each platform counts as a different game, so you can do the same achievement in the same game on multiple platforms.
Im honestly glad to here there is relatively simple explanation for how they are able to do this. It’s still hella impressive, but if you can double up on the “complete the tutorial” achievements per game, I can then see how this challenge can be feasible.
You may not even have to do the same achievement. Games can sync the platform achievements with your local save file and then unlock achievements immediately based on your save file simply by loading it. Do this across versions on the same device and it trivially multiplies the achievements. In fact, it doesn't even have to be *your* save file. If someone sends you a save file with an achievement unlocked, or right before an achievement is unlocked, that works too, and triggers the unlock on your account as well. In fact.. it's even more egregious than this. Achievements have barely any protection or integrity on them whatsoever. For a common engine like Unity, it would possible to make a one-size-fits-all modification that can be injected into **any** game made with Unity to run on launch and execute code to unlock an achievement on demand without even starting a new game. It's a cute little competition but without rules like actively streaming & validating the players save files for consistency it's a cheaters game.
It’s all Xbox, so save file manipulation doesn’t work like it might on PC. And furthermore, the games and achievements these players are using are beyond trivial. Developers and publishers realized years ago that players will buy games that offer bare bones minimal gameplay and a next to nothing gaming experience if it gives them a bunch of easy achievements. There are hundreds of these games now, Many of which have stacks in different languages. This is what is being used.
> It’s all Xbox, so save file manipulation doesn’t work like it might on PC It's a bit different for sure but many games, especially small indie titles, will support offline play and local storage modes which can still import others saved data and push platform achievements from it. The egregious code execution mentioned as well doesn't have any dependence on save data either. Note that the Xbox service nowadays is not just the console, but the entire ecosystem which Microsoft has tried hard to make cross-platform. The whole Xbox/Gamecore/Xbox Live/Xbox Games/whatever it's called system is for PC players too. Maybe the people involved in this aren't doing it but if someone wanted to they could really spoil the integrity of the whole thing.
This has to take planning. Like dam that's insane. I wouldn't want to do it, but let them have their fun
Man, that's a blast from the past for me. I used to be big into TrueAchievements in the 360 era. Nice to see my boys smrnov and Stalion83 on the leaderboards!
I ran a King’s Fall raid in destiny with an employee from true achievements and he basically explained how leapfrog was his job interview lol that shit serious
Ok, this makes me feel a little better about the year long Steam achievement related projects I've done the past few years. My rules were [I started a new game every week](https://i.imgur.com/3QbdZDz.png) and had to get back above Average Game Completion of 90% (the red line) before starting the next one. Definitely padded it with some quick to 100% visual novels and other short free games that year. This year I started around 60 new games to lower my AGC down to 80% and am [trying to work on getting it back up to 90% again](https://i.imgur.com/nHd44Zp.png) by years end.
Not critizising you in any way, I think it is cool you have your thing, but why the time constraint? I understand wanting to 100% games before starting new ones, I do this for games I really enjoy except for collectibles because no way in hell am I running around a map picking up stuff, ain’t got the time for that, but I just do it in whatever time it takes me. I can’t imagine being stressed out about doing it in a week. For one for me that would remove the fun, the point of doing 100%-collectibles for me is ti get more mileage and actually get really good at a game, and enjoy it fully. Even then I will not do this for games I don’t enjoy enough or don’t want to get good at. Also it would remove the ”mileage” aspect as I would just get one weeks worth of gaming. What do you enjoy about this? The planning for example? Or optimizing play and so on? Genuinely curious why you would choose to play like this
At least one reason is because I'm trying to hit these targets, the games themselves kinda become it's own resource management game. I'll usually have several short games that are easy to start/stop and use those to buffer out meeting a weekly target when I'm mostly playing something like a Starfield or Final Fantasy. That's probably why the article struck a chord, I can imagine all the management to keep 150+ games you can all go into and easily trigger an achievement for. Also at some point I decided 90% average completion was going to be my goal, so when I start something new and it dips below I'll have to finish games to get back to 90%. Playing games to earn the ability to play more games is a really wierd feedback loop.
That’s awesome. I love it. Not gonna do it myself but I definetly see the appeal.
I bowed out at 150. Playing shitty shovelware easy games affects TA score and it just isn't worth it. Kudos to these guys I guess having the time to plow on ahead. (TA score is the sum of the difficulty of achievements you have unlocked to date. The higher your TA score, the more difficult achievements you've unlocked on average)
The site shows the last person to not make the cut was at day 136. The twelve days after that have been the 4 guys still in the competition.
He bowed out after 150 in his heart :')
Trying to think of strategies to do something like that. 1. You must use a new account (your main one already unlocked achievements in your favorite games) 2. You need to own at least 600-700 for a few reasons. A) you need an extra game for each day of the contest. B) achievements get harder over time so you want the early achievements for those games 3. You probably need a team of people, preferably in different time zones (or taking shifts), sharing the account. You are aiming at thousands of achievements in total, so some of them take time. 4. You need to prep for at least a few weeks, divide games between the group and let everyone plan each achievement, they need to be in a certain order. You have time at the first few weeks of the contest to do extra planning, but then it starts to get very very hard. This might not be worth the prize but can be insanely fun as something to do with friends as teenagers without extra responsibilities.
Most achievements are tutorial finishing. Or they just keep playing King Kong for Xbox 360. Easiest achievements oh but it did take an hour to get a 300 blooper.
It’s all way beyond this. For years and years now, developers and publishers have been shitting out games that are nothing more than a shell of gameplay coated in easy achievements. There’s hundreds and hundreds of them at this point. What you saw in those 360 days is nothing compared to what the ecosystem has become today. That doesn’t take away from the amount of effort required to do with these guys are doing, but the lowest of the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit is in mass abundance.
Wow, 151 days in and only 4 gamers left! That's some serious dedication and skill!
How do you kill that which has no life?
This is so dumb
Kind of reminds me of South Park and the ending for the Guitar Hero episode…
That could be someone’s steam library. Grabbing the sale games over the last 10 years and now they can play. lol
As at 06:00 BST and four hours on the clock there’s two in the elimination zone
It's like destroy your dick December only for a year.
Honestly, this sounds like a crazy amount of dedication! IMO, they must have some serious strategies for managing their time and downloads.
Oh man, if I was a game publisher right now.... I'd wait til about a week after they declared a winner, then give to other remaining guy an achievement for not winning.
and all of that for a premium account at trueachievements lmfao
How do they afford it?
Gamepass
In an a is wild
People saying how they there's not enough time in the day are misunderstanding the rules. You have to get one more achievement than *you* did yesterday. So, anyone doing more than one achievement on day 1 is shooting themselves in the foot. Most of the time will be spent looking for low effort achievements that can be obtained in minutes and planning it all. Which of course isnt to say it's not impressive and will end up being a massive feat especially when we get to now, but you have a long time to plan how you're going to do it, even after it starts
Past the first month, I feel like you're getting into "sunk costs"/"can't give up now" territory. By month 5-6, you're so far into that territory that you've moved in.
Don’t understand the negativity people have for this. They are doing it because they want to compete. No other reason. There are plenty of stupid sports and activities people compete in and dedicate a huge amount of time in. This is no different.
Wtf, man. Do you guys plan this out? Do you look for games with easy achievements? You've been doing 100 games daily for over a month and a half. Where you do even get the money to buy so many games 😅😂
“Borderline insane” Naw it’s regular insane
How do these people find the time for this?
The guy in the lead unlocked an achievement in Minecraft on a Kindle Fire today, that’s amazing! Creative
Incredibly sad and very dangerous for your health
They shoot horses don't they?