So I’ll admit it, I’m a trophy whore.1 To those who do not know what a trophy whore is, or even a trophy looks like, I shall explain. To those who know what a trophy is, forgive me while I launch into a rambling explanation. I’ll try to keep it short.
Trophies (or achievements if you are in the Xbox camp) are tiny digital icons created by the Playstation gods and are awarded when video game players complete certain in-game tasks. These tasks vary from the straightforward (complete a story mission in a game), to the simple yet time-consuming (obtain all collectibles in a game), to the downright insane (Dead Space 2 offers a trophy for completing the entire game using only three saves). The difficulty in obtaining these trophies correlated to three grades: bronze for simple tasks, gold for tough ones, and silver for everything in between. Certain games (normally the larger, more expensive ones) offer a special platinum trophy for obtaining all other trophies in the game. A trophy whore is one who has an unhealthy obsession with getting these tiny, completely insignificant prizes.
Well, perhaps they are not completely insignificant. Each trophy awards the player experience points, for lack of a better term. These experience points are then used to raise the player’s trophy level.2 Others even more obsessive than I will know exactly how much each trophy is worth and, more importantly, how many points are needed to raise their own trophy level. I just know that bronze is worth less than silver, which is less than gold.3
So what do we get for our efforts? Nothing really. Sony recently launched a campaign where trophy points could be exchanged for physical prizes, but for the most part trophy levels are admittedly pretty useless (though I would argue that the trophy system is the best massively multiplayer role-playing game experience. Think about it. I might come back to this in a later post).
So why do I, and so many other players, care about these things? Well for me, one reason is that I simply find distinctive ping that sounds every time a trophy is unlocked extremely satisfying. This feeling of satisfaction is especially pronounced after a particularly difficult boss fight or arduous task. A trophy serves as actual proof that a player actually completed the task, which actually leads into my next point.
As you readers may find out through reading this blog, I am quite proud, and surprisingly competitive. However, I do not enjoy playing games online.4 Thus, my trophy collection serves as an outlet for both my pride and competitiveness. The most interesting competition is with yourself. Therefore, even though I definitely do not have one of the higher trophy levels on the Playstation Network (PSN),5 as long as I keep climbing the global ranks, and that level keeps going up, I’m happy.
Now I know that trophies have their detractors. The most common arguments are that trophies distract gamers (some people are annoyed by that melodious ping), that they artificially prolong games, and that trophies actually take the joy out of gaming — there will be those only interested in playing the game for the trophies, and not take in the game itself. While these arguments are not without merit, ultimately I believe that the “harm” caused by trophies is negligible. It has been possible for sometime now to disable the “ping” sound when trophies unlock, and I am proud to say that I have never played a game purely for trophies.6 I am sure there are people out there who chased the easy platinum by playing something like Hannah Montana: The Game. Good for them, but the world can see their trophy list, and everyone will know that they played that travesty of a game.7
I would however, disagree with the argument that all trophy hunting takes the joy out of gaming. While some trophies are indeed tedious and pointless,8 others can open players up to a whole new way of playing. Take a game like The Last of Us for example. It is completely possible to run through the game (on easy and normal at least) without really scrounging around for supplies. Yet by doing so, players are completely bypassing a huge portion of the game. The trophies in this game encourage exploration (which players will need to do on the higher difficulties anyway), and gives players a strong reason to revisit the beautiful world that Naughty Dog produced.9
My point, and I do have one, is this. Do not bash players for chasing trophies. Trophies can arguably make games better, and certainly do not ruin a game.10 So let us trophy hunters do our thing. It makes us happy.
That is all. I’m out.
1 I’ll also admit that I love footnotes. You’ll see by the end of this post. ↩
2 Playstation profiles only display the player’s experience in terms of overall level and percentage complete until the next level. ↩
3 I think a platinum is worth about twice as many points as a gold trophy, but I’ve been wrong before. ↩
4 Mostly because most of my gamer friends are on a different system than I am, and I do not enjoy playing with strangers. ↩
5 In fact, at level 18 I would say that I am rather low on the PSN’s totem pole. ↩
6 Probably goes back to the pride thing. Although, I have to admit that I’ve been swayed into buying a game based on the difficulty of the trophy list, though were games that I already had an interest in. The happiest case for me was the Walking Dead game. I was on the fence before I saw the easiest platinum in gaming. It is now one of my favorite games in terms of storytelling. ↩
7 And point and laugh, I hope. ↩
8 Like the (to me) infamous trophies in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, that required you to complete “bounties”, which were basically sets of treasure. Only the treasure was dropped by enemies. At random. More often that not, they would not drop anything, when they did, chances were that you already had that treasure. Seriously. I hated these damned trophies. ↩
9 OK. Another admission to make. I’m a Sony fanboy, and I love all (well most) of the exclusive put out on their consoles. Anyways, the point is that I completely agree with the perfect scores IGN gave to both The Last of Us and Uncharted 3. I know lot of people disagree. I don’t care. Both of those games are masterpieces. Beyond. ↩
10 With the exception of those bounty trophies in Golden Abyss. I really, really hated those things. Still a great game though. Probably my second favorite vita game right now. I’ll probably put out a list of my top 10 games on each of the Sony consoles later. Once, you know, the Playstation 4 starts to have something resembling an actual library. ↩
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