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Trophies: An In Depth Look

Trophies: An In Depth Look

A look at trophies and how they are changing our attitude towards gaming

Article By PaddyBass

Trophies, Acheivements, Awards, Accomplishments. For some gamers these words can make the difference between buying a console or game, and to others they make positively no impact. Today im going to try and examine what makes trophys so important to some gamers, while others revile them and claim that they are killing our approach to gaming.

Please sir, Can I have some more?

Try to remember back, (If you can) to a time before high speed broadband. Actually if you're really adventurous, a time before we had any internet connection whatsoever! In those days, the only way you would 100% a game, was if you traded secrets with your mates, played just one game for months because it was all you could afford, or if you bought a strategy guide. Then along came games like “Grand Theft Auto 3”, with its archive of easter eggs and hidden packages to discover. Us gamers that liked the game enough went out of our way to get every little thing and achieve that much coveted “100%” rating. But for what? There were no rewards, no little icon telling us how great we were. We did it because we loved the games!

Microsoft did us all a favor when they created their acheivement system on the Xbox 360. Suddenly the game itself was telling you how to get its awards, and not only that it gave you a sense of purpose. You could now feel justified pumping hour after hour. into unlocking all of a games juicy secrets. Some people began taking this to extremes, and bought games they didn't even like solely in the hopes to increase their gamerscore. On the Xbox, gamerscore became a case of “Mine is so much biggers than yours” and people were playing games for the wrong reasons.

Another problem with the Xbox's acheivement system was that some games, (Such as Gears of War) required you have an Xbox Live Gold membership to unlock all the acheivements. This of course means spending upwards of 50 bucks a year, when you may not even play online very often. But Xbox, to be fair, had shown us how to draw that much needed longevity out of a game, even if it had not been perfected. We need some kind of pat on the back, for doing what we should be doing anyway. Playing the game! Eyes turned to sony, and aside from XMB in game, the most requested thing on Sonys forums was some kind of awards system to rival the 360's acheivements system.

In June 2008, we received update 2.40 which finally gave us the ability to display to our mates just how into a game we really are. Instead of acheivements, we had trophies, which felt like even more of an award. Phhff, acheivement! Raising 2 kids to maturity without them ending up drug addicts or in prison is an acheivement, but do you get a trophy for it. NO! You get a trophy for winning a grand prix! You get a trophy for being an olympic gymnast! You get a trophy for best show and tell... Well, actually scrap that last one. But you get the picture, we were psyched! So what games support this, we thought. “Super Stardust HD”... and... oh wait, thats it. Thanks Sony!!!

On Treasure Hunting and Star Destroying

“Super Stardust HD” is a great game. It brings the old-school space shooter into the modern age with stunning visuals, sound and gameplay. But had I purchased Super Stardust before Trophies became available on PSN. No, of course not! Its just a game where you fly around space shooting rocks. Im not paying 10 bucks for that. However the day 2.40 was released and trophies became available, I for some strange reason felt compelled to buy it. Could it have been the idea of getting shiny trophys for flying around space shooting rocks? It was definitely the idea of getting shiny trophys for flying around space shooting rocks, but I do not regret purchasing it as upon further play I realised that I did really enjoy the gameplay.

This begs the question, would I ever have taken the plunge and bought Super Stardust HD, had it not been for the release of the trophy patch. The chances are that I wouldn't have, and I would have missed out on one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent years. With 84% of the trophys in the game to my name, I was content... but where was the next batch of games that would thank me for playing them? I knew “Pixeljunk Eden” was on the way, but what then? Rumors told of “Uncharted” receiving a trophy patch sometime down the line. This piqued my interest, as I had already cleared Uncharted 8 months previous and it was still sitting on my shelf begging to be played again. And that is what makes Trophies so great. Kicking life into a dead dog!

Uncharted is one of the best games the PS3 has to offer, and rather than go off on a rant about it here, I will point you to my review of it. I had cleared Uncharted in December of 2007, and gotten all the In-Game medals. So how is it that, when the trophy update was released in August 2008, I had no problem coming back to start all over again? The answer is clear. The reason Uncharted still sat on my shelf was because I valued it as a great game, and wanted to play through it again. However, I couldnt bring myself to play the game, with no real reason other than the enjoyment of playing. The trophy update gave me that purpose I so longed for. A few years ago, I would gladly finish a game I enjoyed over and over again. Had Trophies and acheivements changed my attitude towards gaming?

When I was a kid if I got a terrible game, I was stuck with it. I could swap it with my mates if they were up for it, but aside from that I was out of luck. There was no Trade In sections, no “trade two bad games get one good game free” offers. But I played those bad games, because it was all I had. Now if I get a bad game, I think “Well, Insert Company Here, just stole 70 bucks out of my pocket”. Buying games has become a much different affair. The games media is partially to blame for the whole debacle, sometimes hyping a game like it's the second coming of jesus, and panning it when it hits stores and is already in your console. Now you may wondering, this article is an in depth look at trophies not the gaming industry, we've gone off topic. But no, the reason Trophies matter in modern gaming is because they can change a game from being a 7 hour playthrough into a 25-30 hour experience.

In Closing

If you go to your closest retailer and pick up a game randomly off the shelf, with no knowledge of it, chances are it might not suit you and you will probably return it. But if you pick up the same game and it has trophies, unless its actually really bad, it's likely you will at least go for a good portion of those awards. Its for this reason that trophies are such an asset to the gaming community. There are games that do not need trophies, such as “Ratchet and Clank:Future Tools Of Destruction”, however if Insomniac released a trophy update for R&C:FTOD, you can be guaranteed sales of the title would double and I would play through the game again, because that purpose and desire would be reignited.

Do I allow trophies to dictate the way I play my games? No, I will play a game without trophys, such as “Mercenaries 2”, and enjoy it regardless. Do I think that trophys should be in every game on the Playstation 3? Yes, I do as I have finished Mercenaries 2 and have no desire to go back and play it, and will probably trade it in for a game which does support trophies in the coming weeks. I disagree with Trophy zealots, who will buy a lacklustre game solely to raise their level and I also disapprove of the standpoint some gamers take claiming trophys cause people to lose track of why they are playing a game in the first place.

However as a casual observer I believe that Trophies bring an extra depth to games that has yet to fully be accepted by the nay-sayers, or appreciated by the zealots. In closing, it is unacceptable from this point forward for a game to not contain trophies. I say this not because I aim to raise my level, or because a guy on my friends list has 20 trophys more than me. I say this because in an age where a game costs as much as 179 litres of petrol, you want it to go the same distance.

Published on 2008-10-15 13:09:09