I caught the Trophy Bug...(an editorial)
I've been pretty dormant for the whole month of July. That's because of two reasons. One there have been no movies worth seeing. But the major reason is that I have begun trying to get trophies for many of my PS3 games or as you xbox 360 owners call it achievements.
Xbox live first introduced achievements, which were various in game tasks that if completed would reward the player with points that increased their "gamerscore." Essentially it was an online badge of honor/ bragging rights type thing. Sony soon followed Microsoft's lead and in June of 2008 with the release of PS3 firmware 2.40 introduced their own version of achievements, which they dubbed "trophies." There are four levels of trophies as you would expect; bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Obviously the harder ones are made of better virtual metal. Anyway some of them can be obtained by simply during the course of completing a game but other require a bit more effort. In my experience it is virtually impossible to get every trophy on one play through.
When trophies were first introduced I never really cared too much about them. That all changed when "Ghostbusters" was released. I began playing the multiplayer with a friend and in the process of helping him try to get trophies I myself caught the bug. Soon after getting a bunch of "Ghostbusters" trophies I decided to go back and revisit some old games and try to get the trophies. My first attempt was with "Resident Evil 5." After playing a game I had already beaten for another 20 hours or so I was finally able to get my first platinum trophy. It felt pretty awesome to get it but in the process the game was no longer fun. I next attempted to get all of the "Dead Space" trophies but after playing the game a second time through and still missing a handful of trophies I decided to go cold turkey and stop trying to get trophies.
The whole trophy thing has a love/hate relationship for me. On one hand when you get the trophies the feeling of actually achieving something is really good. But like I said in the process the games become boring and sometimes frustrating. I've always believed that the reason for playing video games was to have fun. So trophies kind of defeat the purpose. For better or worse I believe they are here to stay.
Back when I was a child we never had trophies or achievements. Games were just meant to be played. There was no real competition or anything with them. The only achievement/trophy you ever got was the knowledge that you actually finished the game. And some games had items or areas that got unlocked upon completion in order to encourage the player to play the game again. However with these new trophies it feels like a lazy way for the developers to add length to otherwise short game experience. The parameters to get some achievements are completely ridiculous and force you to play a game multiple times.
The addition of trophies can let a developer forgo any additional content after completing a game for the first time and instead add obscenely hard trophies that require the player to play the same game multiple times and have the same experience again each time in order to get the trophy. So games can become tedious. I feel like trophies can allow developers to get a little lazy with their games. By artificially adding length to games without really adding any incentive to replay it besides preying on a gamers need to have bragging rights.
I feel like trophies are a double edged sword to gaming in general. In some cases they can enhance the gameplay experience this is usually true with many online enabled games like "Ghostbusters" (although 2 of the trophies are bugged and therefore not obtainable),and Killzone 2 . However with single player games like "Bioshock" and "Dead Space" the trophies are more of a hassle to get and don't really add a single thing to the game. And like I said I have a love/hate relationship with the whole idea myself.
If you feel so inclined pleased do share your own opinions in the comments!
Xbox live first introduced achievements, which were various in game tasks that if completed would reward the player with points that increased their "gamerscore." Essentially it was an online badge of honor/ bragging rights type thing. Sony soon followed Microsoft's lead and in June of 2008 with the release of PS3 firmware 2.40 introduced their own version of achievements, which they dubbed "trophies." There are four levels of trophies as you would expect; bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Obviously the harder ones are made of better virtual metal. Anyway some of them can be obtained by simply during the course of completing a game but other require a bit more effort. In my experience it is virtually impossible to get every trophy on one play through.
When trophies were first introduced I never really cared too much about them. That all changed when "Ghostbusters" was released. I began playing the multiplayer with a friend and in the process of helping him try to get trophies I myself caught the bug. Soon after getting a bunch of "Ghostbusters" trophies I decided to go back and revisit some old games and try to get the trophies. My first attempt was with "Resident Evil 5." After playing a game I had already beaten for another 20 hours or so I was finally able to get my first platinum trophy. It felt pretty awesome to get it but in the process the game was no longer fun. I next attempted to get all of the "Dead Space" trophies but after playing the game a second time through and still missing a handful of trophies I decided to go cold turkey and stop trying to get trophies.
The whole trophy thing has a love/hate relationship for me. On one hand when you get the trophies the feeling of actually achieving something is really good. But like I said in the process the games become boring and sometimes frustrating. I've always believed that the reason for playing video games was to have fun. So trophies kind of defeat the purpose. For better or worse I believe they are here to stay.
Back when I was a child we never had trophies or achievements. Games were just meant to be played. There was no real competition or anything with them. The only achievement/trophy you ever got was the knowledge that you actually finished the game. And some games had items or areas that got unlocked upon completion in order to encourage the player to play the game again. However with these new trophies it feels like a lazy way for the developers to add length to otherwise short game experience. The parameters to get some achievements are completely ridiculous and force you to play a game multiple times.
The addition of trophies can let a developer forgo any additional content after completing a game for the first time and instead add obscenely hard trophies that require the player to play the same game multiple times and have the same experience again each time in order to get the trophy. So games can become tedious. I feel like trophies can allow developers to get a little lazy with their games. By artificially adding length to games without really adding any incentive to replay it besides preying on a gamers need to have bragging rights.
I feel like trophies are a double edged sword to gaming in general. In some cases they can enhance the gameplay experience this is usually true with many online enabled games like "Ghostbusters" (although 2 of the trophies are bugged and therefore not obtainable),and Killzone 2 . However with single player games like "Bioshock" and "Dead Space" the trophies are more of a hassle to get and don't really add a single thing to the game. And like I said I have a love/hate relationship with the whole idea myself.
If you feel so inclined pleased do share your own opinions in the comments!
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