The Problem with Achievements: How Achievement Systems Destroy Intrinsic Motivation

There was a boy who built castles for nothing.

For nothing means for everything: for the pleasure of placing one block on top of another, of watching a tower grow that had only existed in his head, of spending three hours on a wall nobody had asked for. He wasn't after a prize. The prize was the wall. He built the way he breathed, with no external reason, because he liked building, full stop.

Then the server added achievements. Points for building. Medals. A builders' leaderboard.

And months later, that boy hardly built anything unless he was given points for it.

The promise that seemed obvious

The idea behind achievements seems like pure logic: if people like doing something, reward them for it and they'll like it even more. More medals, more motivation. More points, more drive. It's the logic that has filled every app, every game, every platform you use with badges, streaks and levels.

It sounds so reasonable that almost nobody questions it. And yet it is false, in a deep and well-documented way.

Because it turns out that motivation isn't a tank you fill. It's more like a delicate balance that rewards, badly used, can break. And when they break it, they don't add desire: they replace it with something more fragile, which evaporates the moment the reward goes.

The boy with the castles isn't an anecdote. He is the everyday demonstration of one of the most counter-intuitive findings psychology has produced.

What the reward does to the pleasure

In 1973, the psychologists Lepper, Greene and Nisbett carried out an experiment that ought to be more famous than it is. They took children who drew for fun — who drew in their free time, without anyone asking them to — and began giving some of them a reward for drawing. A sticker, a certificate, some recognition.

Then they took the reward away. And the children who had been rewarded drew less than before. Less than those who had never received anything.

The reward hadn't added desire. It had transformed it. What they used to do for the pleasure of drawing, they now did for the sticker; and without a sticker, why bother? This is what is called the overjustification effect: when you reward something someone was already doing for love, their brain rewrites the reason. They stop thinking "I do this because I like it" and start thinking "I do this because I get paid". And the day you stop paying, the reason disappears with the payment.

Psychology has spent decades distinguishing two engines: intrinsic motivation — doing something for its own sake — and extrinsic motivation — doing it for an external reward. The uncomfortable finding is that they don't add up. Extrinsic motivation, badly placed, can drive out intrinsic motivation and take its place. You put a price on what used to be done for free, and it becomes something that is no longer done for free.

The game where the prize was the castle

The counter-example is Minecraft itself in its purest form.

At its core, Minecraft doesn't pay you to build. You build, and the result is… the building. That is the whole reward, and it is enormous: the tower exists, you made it, there it is. The activity and the prize are the same thing. That's why millions of people have spent thousands of hours raising things nobody scores, in worlds with no leaderboard for anything, simply because building, when nobody turns it into work, is one of the cleanest pleasures there is.

The server that adds points for building isn't adding fun. It's adding a middleman between the boy and his castle. Before, the boy built and looked at his work. Now he builds, looks at the points, and the work slips into the background: it becomes the means of climbing a table. The castle stops being the goal and becomes the receipt.

And when the castle is only a receipt, building it stops being a pleasure and starts being a chore. The same action — placing blocks — but hollowed out from the inside. The achievement didn't celebrate the building. It replaced it with its shadow.

The principle: putting a price on what was done for love turns it into work

This is where achievements stop being a Minecraft matter.

It is one of the most useful and least known laws of human motivation: when you reward something someone was already doing for enjoyment, you risk turning it into work, and work gets abandoned as soon as it stops paying. The hobby that becomes a business and stops being fun. The volunteer you start paying who, if one day you cut the pay, stops coming even though they used to come for free. The child who read for pleasure until they were given a point for every book, and then read for the point.

It doesn't mean every reward is poison. It means external rewards are a dangerous tool precisely where love already exists. They're useful for getting something started that nobody fancies; they get in the way where there was already a desire of one's own. Paying for what people already wanted to do is the most sophisticated way of making them stop wanting it.

That's why it pays to distrust the urge to gamify everything, to put points on every good thing in order to "motivate". Sometimes the best way to protect someone's desire is simply not to touch it. Not to reward. To let the activity remain its own reward, which is the only reward that doesn't evaporate when you stop giving it.

What gets built knowing this

Designing with respect for intrinsic motivation means a restraint that goes against every instinct of modern design: sometimes, not adding the achievement. Not turning every action into points. Not transforming the pleasure of playing into the obligation to fill a bar.

It means asking, before adding a reward, whether people were already doing that for enjoyment — because if they were, the prize may spoil it more than help it. It's something KobiiCraft keeps in mind as it resists the temptation to gamify every corner: letting building, exploring and being with others remain their own reward, instead of burying them under medals that would end up turning the game into homework. The principle, however, holds in any classroom, office or home: with what someone already loves, the best intervention is almost always not to intervene. People's own desire is fragile, and the quickest way to break it is to put a price on it.

The castle he no longer built

Go back to the boy who built for nothing. Which, for him, was building for everything.

Before the points, he raised walls nobody graded, in a world where the only one who saw his tower was him, and that was enough. That was the purest motivation he would ever have in his life: making something beautiful without expecting anything in return, simply because doing it filled him up.

The achievements arrived promising to give him more. And they took away the only thing that mattered: the desire to do it when nobody was watching.

Not every reward is a trap. But it's worth remembering, every time someone proposes measuring, scoring and rewarding something that was already done for love, the question of the boy with the castles: does something that was already done for nothing really need a prize?

Because sometimes "for nothing" was, in reality, for the best reason there is. And putting a price on it is the surest way to make us forget it.

Frequently asked questions

Why can achievement systems take away the urge to play? Because when you reward something someone was already doing for pleasure, their brain rewrites the reason: they stop doing it "because I enjoy it" and start doing it "because they give me points". The day the reward disappears — or stops impressing — the reason goes with it. That is the overjustification effect: the reward doesn't add motivation, it replaces it with a more fragile kind. That is why a player who built for fun can stop building once the server turns building into a scored task.

What is the overjustification effect? It is the phenomenon whereby rewarding an activity someone already enjoyed reduces their motivation to do it. It was demonstrated in a classic study by Lepper, Greene and Nisbett (1973): children who drew for fun drew less after being rewarded for drawing and then having the reward taken away. The external reward "overjustifies" the behaviour and displaces the internal motive, leaving it dependent on a reward that, when it disappears, takes the desire with it.

What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Intrinsic motivation is doing something for its own interest or pleasure (building because you like building); extrinsic motivation is doing it for an external reward (building to earn points). The distinction, central to Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory, matters because the two don't add up: a badly placed external reward can drive out intrinsic motivation and take its place, making the activity dependent on the reward.

Is all gamification bad? No. External rewards are useful for getting behaviours started that nobody fancies for their own sake; the problem appears when they are applied to something people were already doing gladly, because there they tend to spoil more than they help. The rule of thumb is to ask, before adding points or medals, whether motivation already existed: if it did, the best design decision is often not to intervene and to let the activity remain its own reward.

How do you protect intrinsic motivation in a game? With restraint: not turning every action into points, not burying the pleasure of playing under bars to fill. In practice, letting building, exploring or being with others remain ends in themselves, rather than means of climbing a ranking. Before adding any reward, it is worth checking whether people already enjoyed the activity; when they did, the wisest intervention is usually none, because people's own desire is fragile and putting a price on it is the quickest way to break it.