I had a sneaking suspicion last night, but I've confirmed it this morning: Game Center will only list the most recent 29 games you've played. It will NOT count achievements that are NOT in that 29-game list. I currently have 32 installed Game Center-enabled-with-achievements games. I have been unable to get all 32 games listed in Game Center *at the same time*. When I load a game that is not in the list, it will push the bottom game off the list entirely (just now: loaded Super Mega Worm, it pushed Cro-Mag Rally off the list; and again: loaded Cro-Mag Rally, it pushed Enigmo 1 off the list). Always 29 games. I can see the rationale for "only show the games the person has played recently". But, the worst part of this is games not on the list are NOT counted for your achievement totals. For an achievement whore like me, this is absolutely devastating. Sours the experience. Anyone else confirm, deny, rumormill-me-into-complacency?
This and the fact that you can't see your total achievement points, really deters me from even trying to accumulate a bunch of achievements.
May be its a bug? There is no point in having achievements in the first place if there is no way to keep a record of them just coz you exceeded the 29 games limit. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon, no matter if its a bug or just plain ignorance on Apple's part.
Honestly, that doesn't bug me too much. With the Xbox, you have a rough concept of what the points mean: if I have 36000 points, you can roughly equate that to 36 fully completed retail games. On the PS3, the notion of aceing a game is represented by Platinum trophies. With OpenFeint and GameCenter, the numbers don't really mean much: we already have games with 48 points over 48 achievements, compared with 300 points over 3 achievements. Points here don't indicate any metric of wealth. Number of achievements, all things considered, are equal: 100 unlocked achievements will almost always be "worth" more than 50 unlocked achievements.
I'm rapidly loosing interest in GameCenter mainly because of this. But there's so many problems with it: the speed, look, support and so on. To think i was so damn pumped for GC once.
Take your pick of which device and you can report bugs or feature requests for any of them: http://www.apple.com/feedback/
But again, these achievements don't mean anything, so why would you care anyway? I understand that video game achievements have no real world value, regardless of what social network you obtain them from. But 360 achievements give a sense of accomplishment, because there are very few super casual 360 games that give their points away with no effort. 360 achievements give you at least a sense of personal/inner accomplishment because you had to do something, show some innate level of gaming skill, in order to obtain them. So many of these Game Center games are casual and simplistic in nature. They supply no real challenge and it requires no legitimate effort in order to "earn" their achievements. Honestly, they are not really "achievements" at all. They don't mean anything. They are hollow and meaningless and I don't understand why people would even care about them. The lack of Game Center support thusfar as it pertains to multiplayer is far more disappointing, although it is admittedly still early. Hopefully, things will pick up. Edit: I suppose a fair number of iDevice owners don't have a 360 or a Ps3, and so they really don't understand what the whole achievement thing is about. That's the only thing I can think of. If you did own a 360, I don't see how the notion of Game Center Achievements would amuse you when they pale so horribly in comparision. For some people Game Center or Open Feint might be the only achievement systems they have ever had actual experience with. Which, quite frankly, is sad; because this really is nothing more than a poor substitute for the real deal.
I have long abstained from the "achievements are evil! achievements are awesome!" point/counter-point posts, threads, and discussions. I consider achievements awesome, and they have been for me as far back as the Atari 2600 days (cloth badges), and when my mother and I kept hand-written high score charts of NES games. Disagree. I will agree that a healthy portion of the iDevice achievements are "easy" and "poorly done", but there are plenty of Xbox achievements that are similarly easy. I've long haunted the "Quick 200" and "Quick 1000" threads on x360a.org. When it comes down to it, the only difference between Xbox/PS3, and OpenFeint/Game Center/etc. is that one set has a higher degree of quality control when it comes to achievements. That doesn't exempt idiocy (1000 points in 15 minutes [Avatar/Xbox 360] or an achievement for pressing the Start button [The Simpsons/Xbox 360). (And, yes, I own hundreds of Xbox 360 retail and arcade titles.) Of late, with children growing up, work neverending, and an always-on lust for the latest MMOs, "casual" (ugh) gaming has been my predominant avenue for gaming. As inferred above, I've been gaming for a lOooOoong time, and I have *dozens* of Xbox 360 games that I have yet to open, or worse, have opened, popped in, played for a few hours, went "yawn, I know where this is going", and have moved on (pictures available upon request). Spending 60 USD is no longer desirable (financially easy, but dedication impossible) for something that will run me 10 to 40 hours to "appreciably complete". I just don't have the time for that anymore. So, casual gaming, with it's "a new game everyday" and "five minutes here, five minutes there" attitude, is exactly up the alley I'm seeing for my foreseeable future. The achievements are "easy", sure, but that's because the *time involved* (note I said time, not skill) is magnitudes *less* than your typical 60 USD retail title. I see the scale of achievements quite simply: 60 USD (retail Xbox 360 title), 10 USD (Xbox 360 arcade title), 0.99 USD (iOS title). The effort involved for each game's achievement scales with its price: there are *hordes* of players who buy an Xbox 360 Arcade title when they release on Wednesday, and by the weekend, they're done with the game, 200/200. They move on. There's nothing "wrong" with that. I've been there. That doesn't make the achievements any more or less worthy to an achievement whore (which I label myself). I, for one, can't stand multiplayer, and multiplayer achievements worse. I hate people. Why would I want to game with them or depend on their skills (or lack thereof) to accomplish something? Ew. Go away. Hyperbaric chamber on.
Gamecentres focus should definately be on the multiplayer aspect, cos it works impressively well. The way that fruit ninja has implemented it is perfect IMO, they still utilise the much better openfeint integration for their achievements and such, but the Gamecentre lag free multiplayer is excellent! Forget the Gamecentre achievements, they clearly don't understand the point of achievement type systems, just focus on what they seem to be doing so well - matchmaking.
Usually you have to work for achievements. Thats why they put them in the game. You probably have some stupid game that has achievements like "beat level one" while it usually is "beat level one within 10 seconds with max points without losing a life and with the super powerup you can only get every 20 levels" See the difference?!
There is room for both types of achievements as well. Some achievements encourage you to simply play a game through until the end. Others, my personal favorites, encourage you to go through the game a certain way that you may not have done otherwise. (such as not using a certain weapon, using a special ability on certain enemies) To me these add replay value to a lot of games that may not have them otherwise. I see nothing wrong with having both types of achievements in the same games. Some simple ones and some devilishly tricky ones to push you just a bit further.
Proof that apple can update the game center store without ios updates. Makes me happy. They also fixed the leaderboard bugs. Great to know they have fixed this.