Remember a while back we were talking about the new Turok game’s list of Xbox 360 achievements? Remember that one of them, “Grab Bag,” essentially rewarded you for griefing? If you can’t recall, or are too lazy to click on links, the “Grab Bag” achievement rewards you ten points if you kill an enemy, a team-mate and yourself in a public online multiplayer match. Yes … it’s a chaotic disaster waiting to happen, really.
The developers have finally wised up to the reality that gamerscore whores and achievement completists would have no qualms about detonating themselves in front of a team-mate’s face for those ten glorious points and have promised to patch the offending feature if it becomes an issue upon release. The achievement was called “the worst ever” online as gamers lashed back at what they saw as an encouragement of douchebag behavior. Developer Propaganda VP Josh Holmes, however, claims that the genesis of the achievement was quite innocent:
“What we found was that players playing their first match in Turok – almost every player – was (accidentally) killing himself, a team mate and an enemy with a grenade or a Stick Bomb gun and so we thought ‘hey, we should give them an achievement for that’, as kind of a joke.”
There is a philosophical lesson to be had here, people. These harmless developers, in their cherub-like way, innocently sought to provide a fun and amusing achievement for us all to unlock, but it was our own cynicism and mistrust in man’s intentions that truly was unlocked in the end. In truth, Propaganda encouraged no such griefing, but that was the first thing we ourselves thought of because we hold such darkness in our hearts. For shame, gentle gamers. For shame.
