If we take Left 4 Dead (by far my most favorite Steam game), some of the trends made clear by the achievement tally make sense. For instance, only 0.5% of L4D players have achieved “Legendary Survivor”. Achieving that means holding off endless waves of zombies for at least 10 minutes—in five different situations while hoping your 3 teammates know what they’re doing.

But only 36.5%—nearly a third—of players have achieved “Grim Reaper”? That only requires finishing the last campaign of the game; you can do this by playing single player on easy. Maybe a significant number of players simply don’t have the time to play Left 4 Dead for at least the hour or so required to finish a campaign?

In any case, given that after-gameplay updates from Steam are apparently unavailable anywhere else, here’s the full post:

This week, we added some new pages to the Steam Community which make it possible to view each game’s aggregate achievement stats. Check out the complete collection. While browsing them, we think you’ll find there are some interesting things to learn about Steam games.

Sometimes, achievements reveal what should already be blindingly obvious to all criminal masterminds. For example, you, dear reader, undoubtedly already know that the way to cause “Death From Above” is to fire an orbital laser.

But in a stunningly non-obvious counterpoint, who would ever have thought Steam could pop-up a notification that reads “You have achieved: Divorce (Defeat Mom and Dad)“? Where has that message been all our lives? All we had to do to get that sweet revenge was just play a Steam game? We wish someone had told us sooner.

And then there are the truly inspiring achievements. As of this writing, 13.5% of one game’s players have officially gained the status of “Pervert”, after inspecting a pair of withered binoceros testicles with genuine enthusiasm.

All in a day’s work, we say.

Post from: The Gadget Blog