Nintendo doesn’t want achievements, except when it does

It’s hardly a surprise, but it was worth confirming: the Nintendo Switch 2 won’t have achievements. When Polygon asked Nintendo’s vice president of player and product experience Bill Trinen if Nintendo was about to change its ways and introduce the ubiquitous progress trackers, he returned a simple, one-syllable answer: “Nope.”

At this late stage — 20 years after Microsoft debuted its Gamerscore achievement system on Xbox 360 — it seems safe to infer that Nintendo is not just typically late to the party implementing this feature. It’s a conscientious objector. Nintendo has never stated its reasons for eschewing achievements, but it seems to be opposed to them on a fundamental, maybe even philosophical level.

Why? It’s true that Nintendo has always liked to do things differently, and prides itself on the originality of its designs. But the company is not above copying others’ systems when it suits its needs, or when it simply becomes unavoidable. Nintendo has held online multiplayer at arms’ length for decades, offering perfunctory and limited services, perhaps out of concern for child safety. But the online gaming market is now sufficiently unavoidable — and subscription revenues for Nintendo Switch Online sufficiently important — that as of the Switch 2, we have GameChat, which reinvents Discord and Zoom for a Nintendo audience, in a Nintendo way. If Nintendo’s chief designers felt they really needed achievements, pride wouldn’t stop them jumping on the bandwagon.

My guess — along with those of many other observers — is that achievements simply don’t vibe with Nintendo’s ideas about what the experience of playing a video game should be. In this purist argument, a game’s fun factor should be motivation enough for playing it, without breadcrumb trails of meta-goals and rewards to lead you through the experience. There might even be a fear, not unfounded, that achievements can detract and distract from the pure enjoyment of a game, swamping players in checklists of things to do, and focusing more on bragging rights than having fun in the moment.

There’s no real need to rehash the arguments about the value of achievements that have been batted back and forth for 20 years now. Well-designed achievements can be creative and enriching, and lead you into areas of a game and styles of gameplay you might not otherwise explore. It’s equally true that achievement systems appeal to some of our worst instincts as as humans, and have the potential to turn what should be a joyful artform into a bloody-minded chore. Personally, I’m on the fence. But I respect the purism of Nintendo’s approach, which seems honest in its focus on putting the games themselves, and players’ enjoyment of them, first.

All of which makes the inclusion of an achievement-style system in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom even more curious.

This system, called My Play Data, looks pretty basic. It will be available in the Zelda Notes feature in the Nintendo Switch app. It tracks stats like enemies defeated, treasure chests opened, or rupees collected, and it awards in-app medals for hitting certain targets. In Global Play Data, you can compare your progress with players worldwide.

It sounds quite uninspiring, and maybe it’s just as well. When I first heard that Nintendo was adding meta-goals to these two games, I feared for their spirit. I love that, despite being so busy and sprawling, these games are almost mindful. They’re designed to encourage spontaneous, organic exploration, living and playing in the moment. Although they’re heavily loaded with stuff to do, they don’t depend on the dense web of objectives that smothers so many open-world games.

Luckily for me, the achievement design within My Play Data is so boring and abstracted, it’s unlikely to trouble that delicate balance. I have to believe it’s on purpose. If Nintendo wanted Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom to have good achievements, they would already have them. My Play Data’s medals appear to be a half-baked feature included just to pad out the Switch 2 Editions’ offering.

Maybe that doesn’t bode very well for Nintendo’s approach to adding value to its Switch 2 Editions. But it does indicate that, when it comes to achievements, Nintendo’s heart really isn’t in it, and it likely never will be.