Hey there, cave dwellers! Don’t worry, I’m not dead… not yet anyway. It has been a rollercoaster of a year so far, though. With my recent promotion at work and the added responsibilities that accompany it, moving into our new house, my grandmother’s passing and installing a new front lawn, spring and summer just sailed right on by without me. It wasn’t all madness though, I was able to finish off the “God of War: Collection” and “The Sly Collection” and even get a few good books read. I began “Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition” in March and have been making very slow progress since. Now that things have calmed down somewhat, it’s time to recommit myself to more of the things I need to be doing as well as things I want to be doing, writing among them.
In the Beginning…
In the Beginning…
My interest in video games began early with my father’s Atari. Long before the advancements in story, cut-scenes, side quests and multiple endings, some of the best times in my childhood were sitting on the couch with dad playing classics like “Breakout” or “Joust”. And the fun just got better when we added an Evil Gray Box to the family (some of you may have called this a “Nintendo”). Our new buddy Mario was really something to see in shiny 8-bit graphics, running and jumping from left to right while the iconic theme music we all know played on. But the real turning point was “Dragon Warrior”. Trying to wrap my little 10-year-old mind around such an epic quest to save the world would forever change me. I was a gamer.
Through the NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis and Nintendo 64 I was a gamer. Of course, growing up in a large family meant that we weren’t exactly rolling in cartridges. I did rent a lot, but when your genre of choice is the turn-based rpg you don’t finish a lot of games during a standard rental period.
Then there was a period of about 5-6 years where life… got kind of weird. It wasn’t a coma or prison, or anything like that. Let’s just say, there were no video games. I know… sad, right? But I have to say, if you’re going to check out of the video game world for a few years, the last few PS1 and first few PS2 years are the best ones to miss. Why do I say that? I’m glad you asked. Obviously I missed out on a lot of great stuff, some really killer games. How would I ever catch up? The truth is I’ll never catch up. I’m destined to be buried along with my tremendous backlog, but that’s not the point. So many of the classic games everyone else played when they first came out are being re-released over the last few years, and I imagine the trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Will the wonders of modern technology never cease to amaze? And the best part is that the games that are not simply re-released in their original form are given a nice, sparkly coat of HD, sometimes 3D, as well as…
…Trophies!!!
Ok, I know this topic is far from groundbreaking conversation. Anyone who’s spent any time with a gaming magazine, website or podcast has probably heard this attacked and debated from every angle, and those who don’t really play video games couldn’t care less. Need any more incentive? Me either, moving on!
For the uninitiated, “trophies” (or “achievements” if you’re one of those people… only joking) are little notifications that magically appear on your screen after performing certain tasks or accomplishing specific goals throughout the game. Anything from defeating a boss, completing a level or using a skill “x” number of times are the most common. Each one adds a varied amount of weight or value to your total Trophy Level (or Gamerscore), usually based on the difficulty in earning it. They come in bronze, silver and gold but chief among them is the Platinum Trophy (sorry Xboxers, you’ll have to translate for yourself from here on out) which is typically earned by unlocking all other trophies within the game. This signifies that you’ve done all there is to do, seen all there is to see, found all there is… you get the idea, complete mastery!
With regards to trophies I think there are generally two types of gamer, the “I just like to play through the game and move on to the next” gamer and the “WHERE ARE THE TROPHIES? I NEED ALL THE TROPHIES!!!” gamer. In my limited experience there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of middle ground between the two, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are, of course, variations of those gamers. For example, there’s the gamer who values his time way too much to lust after each and every trophy available in his collection, but after finishing a great game and noticing that there are only a few he didn’t get naturally in the course of his playthrough will go ahead and knock those out and nab the platinum as a nod to the developer. On the other side of the spectrum is the gamer who, although 20-something and male, will shamelessly devote hours out of his life to something like “Hannah Montana” for an easy boost to his Trophy Level. There might be something wrong with that…
Which One Are You?
Early in the PS3 lifecycle it wasn’t even a question, as Sony was a little late to the party with trophy support for their games. I just played the games I had the way I wanted to play them. By nature I’m something of a completionist, I don’t like to leave games unbeaten. I tend to be thorough and do my best to find all of the hidden secrets and trinkets I can, but mainly I want see how it ends. I’m much more invested in the characters and the story than whether or not I gathered all of the (fill in the blank) scattered throughout the level. I want to know for myself that I finished the adventure, saved the world, etc. and then boot up the next quest. What’s the point of replaying the entire game on a harder difficulty level if I already know where the story goes? Where’s my incentive to keep hunting down all of the arbitrary collectibles once the plot twists have been revealed? Enter the trophy system.
At first it didn’t really affect the way I chose to enjoy video games. While playing something like “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” (great game, epic series, highly recommended!) I might hear that little chime and see the upper right corner flash something like 50% of treasures found! and think, “That’s cool” and carry on. I might even check out the list of trophies in the game out of curiosity and see things like, Kill 10 enemies with a grenade while hanging on a cliff or Beat the game on insanely brutal difficulty level and say, “Yeah… I’m not going to do that. I would like to play a different game sometime this year.” Then I played a little game called “Assassin’s Creed II”. Through the natural course of my playthrough I had earned all but a small handful of the trophies in the game, and the ones I didn’t get were neither extreme or repetitive, or even extremely repetitive. They all simply required trying a few different game mechanics I hadn’t explored and it took no time at all to jump back into the world and earn my very first platinum. It just went downhill from there.
Do Trophies Ruin the Experience?
That first platinum trophy, albeit digital and completely intangible, has the potential to spark something inside that’s akin to “gold fever” depending on your natural inclinations. In a competition-saturated medium where bragging rights are the envy, trophies become your currency. Even if you don’t play a lot of competitive-oriented games, the gratification that comes from seeing that trophy pop, knowing that you’ve mastered that title, can be great. But whether or not the hunt for trophies takes away from the fun of the experience, I think, depends a lot on the individual. If getting as many as you can, as fast as you can is really where the fun lies for you, go crazy! More power to you! If story and character development are more your bag, be warned that serious trophy hunting will often lead to spoilers. Keep in mind, if chasing them down begins to feel like a chore, you might want to reevaluate how much trophies mean to you.
Exercise some judgment, this is your free time and you should spend it in a way you find rewarding. Slogging through “Demon’s Souls” for multiple playthroughs to get the platinum was at times extremely hard and brutally frustrating, but I loved it in a self-deprecating kind of way. “3D Dot Game Heroes” on the other hand, while a great game and a must for any original “Legend of Zelda” fan, would have probably cost me my sanity. Beating the game once was good enough.
Above all it’s just a game, and games are supposed to be fun. If you’re not having any fun then you’re no longer playing, you’re working. And if you’re working it had better be paying the bills or you’re just wasting your time. Put it down and play something that is fun, in a way that is fun for you. Game on!!!
At first it didn’t really affect the way I chose to enjoy video games. While playing something like “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” (great game, epic series, highly recommended!) I might hear that little chime and see the upper right corner flash something like 50% of treasures found! and think, “That’s cool” and carry on. I might even check out the list of trophies in the game out of curiosity and see things like, Kill 10 enemies with a grenade while hanging on a cliff or Beat the game on insanely brutal difficulty level and say, “Yeah… I’m not going to do that. I would like to play a different game sometime this year.” Then I played a little game called “Assassin’s Creed II”. Through the natural course of my playthrough I had earned all but a small handful of the trophies in the game, and the ones I didn’t get were neither extreme or repetitive, or even extremely repetitive. They all simply required trying a few different game mechanics I hadn’t explored and it took no time at all to jump back into the world and earn my very first platinum. It just went downhill from there.
Do Trophies Ruin the Experience?
That first platinum trophy, albeit digital and completely intangible, has the potential to spark something inside that’s akin to “gold fever” depending on your natural inclinations. In a competition-saturated medium where bragging rights are the envy, trophies become your currency. Even if you don’t play a lot of competitive-oriented games, the gratification that comes from seeing that trophy pop, knowing that you’ve mastered that title, can be great. But whether or not the hunt for trophies takes away from the fun of the experience, I think, depends a lot on the individual. If getting as many as you can, as fast as you can is really where the fun lies for you, go crazy! More power to you! If story and character development are more your bag, be warned that serious trophy hunting will often lead to spoilers. Keep in mind, if chasing them down begins to feel like a chore, you might want to reevaluate how much trophies mean to you.
Exercise some judgment, this is your free time and you should spend it in a way you find rewarding. Slogging through “Demon’s Souls” for multiple playthroughs to get the platinum was at times extremely hard and brutally frustrating, but I loved it in a self-deprecating kind of way. “3D Dot Game Heroes” on the other hand, while a great game and a must for any original “Legend of Zelda” fan, would have probably cost me my sanity. Beating the game once was good enough.
Above all it’s just a game, and games are supposed to be fun. If you’re not having any fun then you’re no longer playing, you’re working. And if you’re working it had better be paying the bills or you’re just wasting your time. Put it down and play something that is fun, in a way that is fun for you. Game on!!!
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