Whether or not trophies and achievements are a good or bad thing has been a topic I’ve tossed around in my head for quite sometime. On one hand you get global recognition to an extent for your achievements. On the other you might find yourself ignoring certain aspects of games because there isn’t any incentive attached to your accomplishments.
Before achievements and trophies were standard in games I would find new ways to challenge my skill level in a particular game. Simply beating a game wasn’t good enough for me. I had to do it convincingly on the hardest difficulty or in the most stylish way possible. Walking away from the arcade cabinet just as a super connects against my opponent in Marvel vs Capcom 1, knowing that it would K.O. them, was common for me. One of my fondest moments in gaming was beating someone in X-Men vs. Street Fighter with one hand, using Wolverine & Sabretooth and getting a perfect in the process. Getting a perfect in XMvS will shatter your opponents health bar completely. It really was an amazing moment. Past glories aside, lately I’ve noticed a change in the way I game.
No longer do I do things just because. If there is something I don’t have to do to get a trophy, more often than not I won’t do it. For example getting S rank on every stage on all difficulties in RE5 gets you absolutely nothing. To this day not having S rank on every stage doesn’t bother me in the slighteest and yes I do have the platinum trophy. For whatever reason I did feel compelled to get S rank on every stage for all difficulties in DMC4 though. Go figure. Even though I don’t game as “hardcore” as I used to, thankfully there are still games and a few individuals that can really get me into the spirit of competition. I can remember when someone on my friends list got a higher score than me in Super Stardust HD and then bragged about it. No matter how nice you dress up ‘you-suck-I’m-better-than-you’ it’s still ‘you-suck-I’m-better-than-you’. That one comment got me to annihilate his score so bad he never mentioned SSHD again.
I’ve never really been much of an online gamer except when it comes to fighting games. I don’t really have the time to care too much about online leaderboards so my online ranking doesn’t matter a great deal to me. I get most of my satisfaction from single player experiences. Recently my brother and I have started playing Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the first time. What I’m finding is that, even though there are no trophies, I’m getting a much more rewarding experience as I progess through the game than I get from a lot of games that come with trophies. I guess that’s because not every trophy is something a 5 year old couldn’t do. The competition between my brother and myself only adds to the overall experience of NGS1. Bragging rights over someone you see and talk to on a regular basis is so much better than being ranked higher than a stranger halfway across the country if not the world. Unless of course you’re ranked in the Top 20. I hope that with NGS1 I can start to go back to those days when playing the latest FF for hours on end for at least a year is the norm and not just a fond memory.
Whether or not trophies and achievements do more good than bad or visa versa is ultimately up to the individual. For me they are a nice addition, but I tend to try harder and and go that extra mile in the games that don’t have them. Where as others might not have invested as much time in a game without them. I sincerely hope the majority of you won’t turn down the opportunity to play a great game, new or old, if the only incentive is knowing you got to play it and beat it. There are literally thousands of games out there without trophies or achievements that could easily populate dozens of Top 10 lists.
Retro Game of the Week:
GigaWing by Capcom
I too used to push myself in some games… but I like the achievements and trophies because sometimes it asks me to do things that you would never think of…….. my perfect example is games like crackdown… where you had to capture all the orbs and reach the highest points of the game… and flip your vehicle in all sorts of directions etc etc…. doing things like this normally would be just messing around but the trophies gave a sense of accomplishment…. and in some cases it would be able to give you a measurement of what you have just done….. like fliping your car 100 feet etc… you wouldnt know that you even did this if you didnt have achievements because you wouldnt have a way to measure it accurately….
Also say a gun game like Socom or Rainbow etc these games have achievements/trophies that make people want to use other weapons etc to win… it gives them a reason to branch out in the game and explore new things and brings a lot more variety to games that sometimes can feel stale after a certain point.
So yeah…I dunno I think achievements was a very smart and simple idea that offered large ammounts of replay to many games and this obviously must be true because now sony has trophies… so it had to be doing something right.
* O and good article btw… very well written.
You make some good points. I’m glad I finally decided to write this even if it was at 2AM. The feedback has been really great. It’s really nice getting a chance to see things from a different POV.
My response is both positive and negative on the subject of achievements/trophies. While some people may disagree trophies/achievements have taken me out of a game more times than not.
The positive viewpoint of them is that they add replayability. I’ve played through Uncharted three times to platinum the game. In Fallout 3 trophies pushed me to beat the game three different ways as well as completing all side quests and eventually earning a platinum.
The negative to all this is the fact that I often find myself glancing at the trophy/achievements list way too often while in game. Also, I huge negative to them is I constantly hear people on message boards say that they will only play games that have trophies. The simple fact that people would choose to skip or even replay great games such as heavenly sword, metal gear solid 4 just shows how addicted people are to these things. People want to feel rewarded for completing something in game and our no longer satisfied with the accomplishment of beating a boss/level or even a game.
I used to be some what addicted to collecting achievements but simply got tired of the fact that I was playing game only to get points. To me trophies are leaving a bigger negative impact on modern gamers that they do positively. Also, I think what made me lose the most interest in them is the fact many of them are so generic.
I always dislike the really generic trophies. It’s as if the developers didn’t put any thought into them whatsoever.
Good article Sns….
I think the idea behind trophies/achievments were genuine and great and sometimes i strive to achieve them. In the end i can care less because i am just like how you use to be. I use to strive to beat games like Streets of Rage 2 with 2 gold stars or more or beat each stage of sonic with no fewer then a hundred rings. Even in revenge of shinobi a.k.a shinobi 2 beating the game without dieing or limiting myself to 1 power per level. Before it was popular i used to also try beating final fantasy games on the lowest level possible after beating the game first of course so i know weaknesses and strengths.
These may not offer trophies but they exemplify true mastery of a game something that in your eyes (and maybe others) require true skill. My only fear of trophies/achievements which in some games have already become true is that developers begin to throw in meaningless ones where not skill nor thought unlock it.
Thanks.
I used to play the Streets of Rage franchise daily. I still have all 3 games. I miss those old school beat’em ups.
My brother was the master of the Shinobi’s on Genesis.
Ilove achievements and sometimes the five games extra life and extra replay but some achievements are just so damn hard to get they make me hate the game
The only trophy that I know I’ll never get with out some technical expert is the platinum trophy for SFIV. I can’t do that stupid jump cancel into ultra with C. Viper to save my life.