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Comment by rodly | Hacker News Reader

What is incredible about achievements for anything? It's an interesting way to keep users engaged and committed. How is it "the most incredible thing" regarding Software on Steam?

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Not to be too off-topic, but this sort of instant nasty cynicism is all that's wrong with HN of late. One of the rules of this place is 'be polite', would you respond like that to a stranger in person?

This kind of reaction makes me not want to read/comment/submit at all.

I'll take the inevitable hit in karma to say my piece. You probably didn't mean to be rude, but it comes off to me at least as very much so, intended or not.

His questions don't appear the least bit rude to me. They are certainly direct, which some people confuse for rudeness, but it looks like an entirely honest line of questioning. Honestly, I'd like to know the answer too. What makes achievements incredible?

It’s rude because avolcano is clearly excited about this premise and rodly is just ridiculing his/her excitement. There’s no objective basis to what is incredible.

Or maybe he's asking why avolcano finds achievements to be the most exciting thing. It didn't seem that rude to me, but then again, I'm a bit oblivious to such things -- I tend to favour the nicest possible interpretation.

"Incredible: so extraordinary it seems impossible".

I do wonder what is so extraordinary about having achievements in apps and how this would be a very difficult thing to technically achieve.

I’ve got: "Incredible: difficult to believe; extraordinary"

He's also misinterpreted. The incredulity was about 3 things: "achievements, DLC, and even Steam Workshop support." When the focus is on an opinion, rather than facts, the result is often rudeness and inaccuracy. Those two often appear together. When you focus on facts, rather than opinions, it's hard to be rude. An example from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'

Dont you know that it is cool to pass summary judgements and being cynical? Combative or putdown type responses seem to be the order of the day. FWIW I agree with you.

"The most incredible thing" about something that isn't actually especially incredible is by definition not going to be that exciting.

What were you expecting? Each program is actually a VNC client that connects to a server that has super secret Valve room temperature quantum computing hardware and a NIC based on laser cutting OCRable messages onto live crabs?

I don't personally find achievements motivating, but a lot of people do. That same mechanism can be a powerful force for motivating people to learn and gain mastery over software that they might never otherwise have gained.

I'm occasionally frustrated that I don't know how to do lots of things in Photoshop and Illustrator, for example, but don't have enough incentive to learn how to do them. While I don't think achievements would work for me, there are undoubtedly many people in a similar situation for many kinds of software that it would work for.

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