PlayStation Network: Karraker and the PS3 Achievement sytem

In a lengthy interview over at Gamasutra, Sony‘s new PR boss Dave Karraker, was asked about the negative buzz surrounding Sony. We won’t focus on that, as there’s been a lot of talk about that already. Instead, we’ll focus on Karraker’s take on the Achievement system that Sony’s PlayStation Network has.

He says that what Sony is trying to do with the Open Access platform is to allow the game developers to dictate what the network experience will be for the customer. He emphasizes that the majority of the networking features, aside from things like chat, texting, and emailing, you know, the basic community stuff, is all found basically in the game.

Read the full article to get the rest of Karraker’s take!

In a lengthy interview over at Gamasutra, Sony‘s new PR boss Dave Karraker, was asked about the negative buzz surrounding Sony. We won’t focus on that, as there’s been a lot of talk about that already. Instead, we’ll focus on Karraker’s take on the Achievement system that Sony’s PlayStation Network has.

He says that what Sony is trying to do with the Open Access platform is to allow the game developers to dictate what the network experience will be for the customer. He emphasizes that the majority of the networking features, aside from things like chat, texting, and emailing, you know, the basic community stuff, is all found basically in the game.

Which makes sense. Game specific achievements and scoring. In his words:

I donÂ’t care if youÂ’re great at Madden if IÂ’m playing you in Resistance. Because that doesnÂ’t tell me youÂ’re that much better in Resistance. An overall score doesnÂ’t really tell me much, it tells me youÂ’ve spent a lot of time online, it tells me you spend a lot of time playing games, but it doesnÂ’t tell me how good you are at a particular game. IÂ’d much rather have Resistance set up a leaderboard so I know who IÂ’m going up against, rather than somebody whoÂ’s great at Madden.

He goes on to say that all the matchmaking and the connectivity is 100 percent done on the software side. They’ll host things on their servers if the game developers wants, but he emphasizes that the game developers have the freedom to host it on their own servers. It’s up to them. He says that Electronic Arts will probably take advantage of that freedom.

When asked about Xfire, he says that all Xfire related questions should be directed to SOE, because their games are the only ones thatÂ’s supporting Xfire out of the box. So theyÂ’re building their community based on Xfire. In his words:

SOE announced they want to work with Xfire, great, we applaud them. ItÂ’s not something on the hardware side that weÂ’re supporting at the moment.

As gamers, why should we consider Karraker’s opinion on things? What pads his resume so to speak? Well, the first big game that he worked with was Gex. He then later got exposed to several storyboards for what would later become Tomb Raider. And his biggest (in this writer’s humble opinion) chunk of gaming cred from his “old” gaming life comes from the fact that he also got exposed to storyboards of what later would become the Original GTA.

Does his take on the whole Xfire – PlayStation Network hullabaloo clarify things? What do you guys think?

Via Gamasutra