Aliasalpha: It'd have to be for fable 3 alone or it'd be giving a disadvantage to the type of person who thinks that playing avatar the last airbender for 5 minutes to get 1000 gamerscore is beneath them

ThomasPierson: Why do you want them? Like professional sports they provide nothing of lasting value and often detract from the activity they were designed to venerate. How's this for an achievement; play a game through to the end without crack, hack or walkthrough and with no purpose than to play the game; you know... like it's meant to be done.

LordCinnamon: Actually, I like achievements if they motivate you to try something weird/crazy/hard you would never try during normal gameplay. For example, in Toki Tori, there is an achievement to fill a certain room with 42 blocks. Well, turns out there is only one way to do that, and 42 is the absolute maximum. This results in a sort of mini game (filling rooms with blocks is not a regular goal in the game) which is fun to solve.
But the statistics achievements are very boring (and lazy).
However, the sort of achievements that are actually fun are relatively hard to come up with, you'd have to know the game quite well. So even if the technical problems were to magically disappear, I still think a satisfying implementation of the system would be unlikely.

lukaszthegreat: Well we can create our own list of achievements in games' forums....
and people would update it...
Like:
Thread in fallout forum:
Fallout 2 Achievements.
Content of the thread:
Here is list of various achievements, if you completed one post it so your name can be added. If you have idea of achievement post it and it might be added.
Achievements:
Got married
list of names
Become a slaver, killed Horrigan using only melee weapons, save Gecko, Blow up Gecko, Fix the radio, find waterchip, find Raider's base, join brotherhood, fully resolve Wright's son poisoning,
and so on and on.
lots of work and that would probably work only with big games like already mentioned fallout.

kalirion: What exactly is Gamer Score? Is that the G130 I saw when I logged into GFWL to download the Insane Map Pack for B:AA?

bowlingotter: Didn't say anything about a crack, hack, walkthrough, mod, konami code, blood code, easter egg, or anything like that. Maybe I should've replaced the word "achievements" (which incidentally looks be viewed upon by many as a dirty word) with the word "goals."
As for why they can be fun, which is the only thing I'm getting at here, this guy summed it up pretty well:

ThomasPierson: Sorry if it seemed like I exploded all over you. Yeah, in a way achievements are a dirty word because they are usually celebrations of mediocrity (Achievements I've seen include one for installing a game, taking a tutorial, upgrading a weapon and similar pointless or necessary activities). Or they are some form of status symbol. No offense, but I don't care if you unlocked an achievement for playing a game on it's hardest difficulty and winning; all that means to me is that you have much more free time that I do.
I don't need the game telling me how great it is that I beat a puzzle or give me a "virtual trophy" for completing Act One; isn't that part of the game? If you were to get an achievement, give me one for playing a game in a completely unorthodox manner and still make it to the end.
For my part, I believe that beating a game is far less important than the experience of playing itself. I love picking up a title and letting the world fall away for a few hours while I live the adventures of a Dragoon or bend my mind to the task of building the perfect machine or solving the secrets of a long dead race.
As Shepard Book said in Firefy; "...because how you get there is the worthier part."

bowlingotter: I fail to see the connection between "achievements" and DRM. You're assuming that if achievements were introduced (as in, little side-goals to pursue in a game apart from the primary path) that they would be used as a way to verify ownership of a game?