Gaming is one of those hobbies that is both horrifically misunderstood and simultaneously one of the world leaders in entertainment. Whether it’s the immersive and interactive storytelling, the engagement and problem solving, or you just want to goof around with your friends, there’s something for everyone in the gaming landscape. I’ve been gaming for as long as I can remember, from humble beginnings with 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog on my parent’s SEGA Master System, to lifelike action set pieces in Spider-Man 2 on PS5, it’s been a monumental pillar of my entertainment life that my playtime likely rivals my time spent asleep at this stage of my life.
I spent much of my childhood playing Pokémon or licenced games for the most part, and as I grew into a teenager and an adult the era of achievements and trophies began, which in turn, impacted my gaming habits in a way I never expected. In the early days, the illusive Platinum trophy felt like this unimaginable goal, something only people who truly mastered games could achieve. Then we quickly found that these could be easily obtained through a series quite prolific in the modern gaming landscape, the Travelers Tales LEGO games. The concept was simple, get 100% and a few miscellaneous tasks later you’ll have a shiny Platinum trophy, and if you know LEGO games then you’ll know this is never really a challenging feat, just mostly time-consuming. This sparked something in my immediate friend group, the quest to find games that were simple to complete so we could race up the Platinum trophy highway and get more than the others, but even with this mindset, it was a slow progression. Personally, I started with a few licenced titles before moving on to games I really liked that were within range: Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper; these kinds of iconic platformers were my bread and butter for easy completions, but, there were a few I’m still proud of to this day sprinkled in, such as Sonic Generations.
After a year or two of competing and about 20 Platinum trophies, my friends lost interest in the chase and decided to do other things, but at this point I was hooked on the serotonin-fuelled ride of video game completion. I mostly played games I was interested in but was motivated by the games I could complete, the more accessible and obtainable the 100% the better, which unfortunately created the wrong kind of motivation into my gaming habits. For a few years, I wouldn’t play anything that had online or unobtainable trophies and I was more focused on raising that arbitrary number than experiencing high-quality titles simply due to difficulty or feasibility. It was around this time that I got back into Nintendo games which quickly rekindled my joy of playing games for fun. I owe a lot of that to the WiiU. I was still completing games, but now it was for the fun of it, irrespective of the lack of Platinum trophy, which is something I still continue to this day with the Nintendo Switch and my completion of Breath of the Wild in 2021.
In 2016 I found an influx of indie titles had been published to the PlayStation store from a publisher called Ratalaika Games. While unassuming and of mixed quality, what made these games popular and infamous was the relative ease with which they allowed you to get a Platinum trophy. Most titles were doable in under an hour or two and the quality skewed more towards low to average than anything super spectacular. This opened the floodgates of easy-to-obtain Platinum trophies causing leaderboards and the average players totals to shoot up considerably as the only obstacle between you and a decent Platinum total was your wallet and a little of your dignity. I was no stranger to these games, around 5% of my completed games come from this one publisher, and while some were fun bite-sized experiences (Bouncy Bullets and the Super Destronaut games) others were completely awful wastes of time that are now blemishes on my supposed list of achievements.
This inevitable decline of quality seems to have peaked with the current era of shovelware trash that plagues the store and has made Platinum trophy totals and leaderboards utterly meaningless. These come in the form of the “Pet the X“, “Jumping Food” or the hundreds of “Quiz games” that charge you £1-4 to hold down the X button for a few minutes to add another arbitrary number to your list. These are not games, they are no different to someone jumping on eBay and purchasing a Platinum trophy service from some sellers just to bolster their numbers. The key difference is that the people who purchase this slop are sitting through such forgettable nothing experiences and are actively paying for the privilege to waste their time on irrelevant nonsense. It was at this point of the decline in quality that I decided to not chase numbers anymore, and for the last few years I’ve been mentally tackling how I feel about Platinum trophies, what my relationship with them means and whether all the time and years I’ve spent chasing this endless arbitrary goal has meant anything.
This is where the combination of the COVID quarantine, approaching my 30s and general anxiety and existentialism started kicking in. Did the time in my life spent interacting with digital media mean nothing? Is it some arbitrary pastime that I have wasted my life behind instead of experiencing, nature, friends and starting a family? Obviously, there isn’t a real answer to this: how we spend life ultimately doesn’t matter, our time here is fleeting and if someone wants to spend their free time buying and “playing” shovelware more power to them, but, it was at this point that I decided what my relationship with gaming was going to be, and how I approached my Platinum trophy collection and how I will collect trophies in the future.
As time goes on I find myself appreciating more impactful experiences outside of video games. Experiences with real people in the real world, but, obviously this isn’t always achievable and can be expensive or mentally taxing, so, video games are for the downtime, to relax, to unwind. Due to the limited time I have to play these games I decided to get through the backlog of titles I’ve purchased or wanted to play over the years and try and play as many high-quality and excellent titles as I can. My Platinum total is insignificant, irrelevant and unimportant, and while I do celebrate the milestones, these are more of an inevitability than a target. I am proud of my accomplishments in the gaming space and look back on a lot of these tiny glimmers with pride, but I know that the real joy I take from them is the experience, the memory and the fun I had playing them, not the number that sits next to my name. But this is my take, my perspective and my thoughts. Some play for other reasons, some live for the leaderboards and to be in that top 0.1%, and as someone in the 0.2%, it doesn’t really feel like anything, just a lonely existence. But at least when I look at my trophies, I only see a few blemishes among a long list of memories and wonderful experiences I’ve achieved over the years.
Thanks for reading, and if you’re feeling existential about gaming and whether it’s a waste of time or energy, just remember if it makes you happy, you have fun and life feels a little easier for a while, then it’s completely worthwhile. Your happiness is paramount, and you gaming by yourself doesn’t hurt anyone.
Video game completionist and 3D platformer connoisseur, Riley is a fan of the whimsical frenzy of bright and colourful characters that blessed us in the late 90's. Their favourite game's are Spyro, Persona 5 and Super Mario Sunshine.
