Few things send gamers into Pavlovian drooling like the *ba-dink* of an unlocked achievement. In an attempt to conduct a grand social experiment, I set this sound as my phone’s text message tone, but sadly I’ve yet to see anyone’s head dart upwards to it going off, looking around like a panicked gopher in public. The collecting of ethereal points is so attractive to some that it becomes the entire goal of playing games. Entire communities focus on these parcels of accomplishment, and like anything reasonably popular in the gaming scene, these achievement whores have earned a sect of detractors.

Common arguments against achievement whoring amount to little more than video game bigotry. Most display blatant double-standards when it comes to their ideas of acceptable reasons to play a video game (and generally poor enough grammer to nullify their own points). The concept is itself laughable - why would someone play a game unless it is fun for them? At that point one starts to state that someone is having fun for the wrong reason. Such assertions are so ludicrous that calling them out would be redundant. That being said, disputants of achievement whores do have some valid complaints.

Playing online with achievement whores can be genuinely frustrating. Being placed on a team with someone that refuses to use anything but the pistol in Gears of War has made me wish I could punch someone over standard TCP/IP. I’ve heard many shrill cries from 12 year olds in Halo 3 for not allowing my Ghost to get re-jacked, though wheeling around and running over said kids does provide reciprocal satisfaction. What’s more, their whoring somehow creates problems outside of the games, in the real world. They find genuinely annoying ways to play large volumes of games. Some cycle through games quickly at rental stores, reducing the available selection for others. The most annoying whores abuse return policies to "borrow" games with easy points. While these actions are concerning, they’re no more annoying than what the average human being gets up to. No, most detractors hate achievement whores on principle.