I’m not much of a hunter for Trophies or Achievements in games. I don’t mind their existence, and it’s sometimes nice to get a little bit of acknowledgment for reaching a certain milestone in a game or doing something that you later find out only a tiny fraction of players managed to do. They can also encourage weird novelty runs in roguelites like Spelunky or Hades that you wouldn’t normally think of, like completing the game without using shortcuts or while wielding a specific weapon.
For the most part though, I don’t particularly care, and allow my pile of Achievements to stack up passively before taking a peek every now and then to see if I’ve nabbed any rare ones. But sometimes as I peruse the Achievements I’ve earned, my eyes scan a little further, towards the Achievements Ihaven’tearned, which is where the troubles can begin. Once in a blue moon, I spot an Achievement that is rare and yet attainable, and I get fixated on getting my hands on it, even if this comes at the cost of actually having fun in the game I’m playing. In one extreme case, that obsession was not just a single Achievement or Trophy in a game, but the Platinum Trophy, which any Playstation player will tell you is the one you get for acquiring all the other Trophies in a game.
The Platinum Trophy in question was forAssassin’s Creed 2, back in the days when the concept of chasing accolades in the form of little icons displaying bronze, silver, and gold trophies was still in its infancy. I was having a perfectly wonderful time with the game itself, feeling like a cultural explorer of Renaissance Italy in between stylishly executed assassinations of various high-ranking ne’er-do-wells. It’s not like I needed Trophies to enhance my enjoyment of the game, more that it felt attainable enough that just this one time I decided to set the challenge for myself.
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From the moment I saw the seemingly manageable Trophies list for that game, I wasobsessed. See, Assassin’s Creed 2 didn’t have a huge Trophies list, and most of them were gained simply by playing through the game. It made me realise that, with just a little push, I could actually earn my first (and what would turn out to be my last) ever Platinum Trophy for a game–an accolade that would embellish my PSN profile for posterity. It was the fastest, easiest route to a Platinum Trophy that I’d seen in a game, and for a few intense weeks I became a rabid Trophy Chaser (even though before that I mocked the concept of pursuing those silly little icons).
While most of the Trophies for Assassin’s Creed 2 were fairly reasonable, there was one that would take me way beyond actual enjoyment of the game, and into an obsessive dead-eyed grind (enhanced by my as-yet undiagnosed ADHD hyperfocus). That trophy entailed collecting all 100 Feathers in the game–wispy little things floating in the air like Banjo-Kazooie collectables that served no other purpose than, well, to be collected.
My pursuit of these Feathers was quite possibly the most boring, inane shit I’d ever done in a game, but I’d entered a weird headspace where that didn’t matter. My quest was aided by the fact that I recall there being some kind of indicator as to how many Feathers I’d collected in a given chunk of the world map, so the areas I was scouring were nevertooexpansive. It was a dreary and unnourishing process, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me when I’d been swept up in the dizzying whirlwind of blind obsession. I spent every day for a good couple of weeks pursuing those feathers (without a guide, thank you). I remember my girlfriend at the time, a non-gamer already wary of my gaming’s encroachment on our relationship, asking me why I was running around obscure nooks and crannies of the game world without actually engaging with anything interesting in the game. I don’t recall my answer, but it didn’t matter; she wouldn’t have understood my drive for a digital Trophy, and looking back on it, I don’t think I entirely understand either.
When I found that final feather, tucked up in the underside of some roofed walkway in Florence, I was elated, but even though I still feel fairly pleased with myself for having got that one Platinum Trophy, I’ve never since then tried to 100% a game for Trophies or Achievements. For me, at least, the particular way that Trophy Hunt got its hooks into me didn’t feel healthy.
More recently, over the course of a year I slowly worked my way up to getting a rare-ish Achievement inHunt: Showdown(which entailed having five Level 50 hunters in my roster at the same time), but that felt different as the game didn’t force me to engage in mundane collectathon activities to get it. I just had to play well and be disciplined enough not to send my existing Level 50 hunters out into the field. The reward felt more intertwined with the actual game.
So I’ll dip into it on occasion, but on the whole, the Achievement Hunt isn’t for me, and I’m genuinely curious if Achievement Hunters pursue this extremely time-costly pastime for pleasure or whether it’s more of an obsession that’s hard to shake off (inevitably, that’ll depend on the kind of achievements available in a given game). Have you ever pursued an Achievement or Trophy that, for a little while at least, consumed a big chunk of your life?
