Achievements versus Visions

I recently had a friend recommend I develop a game for the Microsoft Phone 7 platform.  So I started to look into it.  From only a small amount of digging, I found it would probably mean development in XNA, rather than Unity.  This is fine.

What stood out to me in one of the youtube "Here are all the cool games we have for MP7!" videos, was that they mention "Achievements".  This was a feature in Xbox360.  They are sort of like badges you can earn, and then when someone looks at your game profile (like all those girls who keep checking out which guys have earned the best achievements)...  well you get the picture.  Achievements are essentially a marketing tool to promote the platform, and they also provide the gamer a benefit in that they add visibility to parts of the game that haven't been reached yet.

This reminds me of my resume.  I get to take that resume to an interview, and the interviewer looks it over and says "so tell me about such and such".  But painful as it seems - it's true.  I really don't care about such and such.  Because that was yesterday's news.  And yes, it probably comes through in my voice.

So now I'm in the middle of creating a game.  I think it's worth going broke for.  Call me crazy.  And one of the features I'm looking forward to putting into the game is "Visions".  Instead of telling the player "You've gained the following worthless Achievment!" I'm going to tell them "You've gained the following Vision!"  The player gains a Vision BEFORE they work on a level or puzzle.

You see, having a vision really IS something.  It's the ability for full engagement in something you want to make happen.  That engagement will make you forget to eat, forget to sleep, forget that person who cut you off while driving to work this morning.  "Without Vision, the people perish."

Javascript Doesn't have Goto

Think that Goto is never needed in code?

Here:

if (conditionA) {

   if (conditionB) {

      if(conditionD) {

         codeD();

      }

   } else {

      codeNotB();

   }

} else {

   if (conditionC) {

      // wouldn't it be nice to put a Goto to the test in conditionD above?

      if(conditionD) {

         codeD();

      }

   } else {

      codeNotC();

   }

}

I'm encountering exactly this.  Obviously I could add a function - but it's messy when there are many nested for loops and variables that will have to be passed, and a Goto would be so simple.  Sorry - not in Javascript.

Wish I had switched to C# (which does support goto).  Ugh!