Trophy Hunter’s Club: The System

One of my most time-consuming hobbies is video games, but I have a particular affliction; I crave finishing games to 100% completion. Except that’s a lie, really. What I really crave is filling out the trophy set for a game.

Trophy Hunters stalking their prey (a gold trophy) in the wild, circa 1890¹.

In case you’ve been living under a rock when it comes to video games for the last ten years, games contain checklists of “things to do” that award you with a little jpeg representing that you’ve done those things. It’s a bit like collecting badges in scouts. Most systems call these things “achievements” but the Sony-specific term is “trophies”, represented by bronze, silver, gold and platinum (the latter of which is usually awarded for completing a game’s trophy set).

2019’s been a challenging year for me as it is so because I’m a masochist I decided to heap a dollop of extra challenge on my life, because I can’t just enjoy a hobby like a normal person, I need to gameify it.

I have a login to a website called PSNProfiles² and this website is designed specifically to aid trophy collectors like myself. It gives really useful stats like average game completion ratios, which trophies I should probably go for next based on the percentage of other gamers who have it already, a log of trophies collected, etc.

It also has a dashboard that let’s you know how many trophies you have, how many you’re missing from the games you’ve started, a completion ratio and where I stand both locally (within the UK) and globally in terms of collecting trophies. However, the only bit that I see is this:

I’ve added the highlight for emphasis because that’s what my brain does.

I’m ashamed of that percentage. In my head that means that for all the games I’ve ever played, I’ve only done about half of the things in them. From a consumerist perspective that’s disgusting; that’s like buying a three course meal and scooping half of it on to the floor for the restaurant staff to clean up.

So, at the tail end of 2018, I set myself a goal: to up my game completion percentage ratio to 75%.

I can live with knowing that I’ve played three quarters of every game I’ve ever played on the PS3 and PS4. That’s a satisfying amount to be able to boast to myself. “But Sean,” I hear you ask in my head as if you’re really genuinely interested in my video game jpeg stamp collection, “how are you going to raise that percentage?” Well, dear reader, as the title of the post implies, I have a system.

It’s quite a simple system, boiled down to one rule: I cannot start a game until I have completed two other games³. The best part is? It works. That 67% in the screenshot above? That used to be 65%. It’s slowly crawling up.

Even better, I’m technically spending less money on video games because there’s not much point in buying games I’m not allowing myself to play. I’ve probably saved a significant chunk of money I’d normally throw away on games I might not even finish!

The best part of all, however, is that there’s a spreadsheet. Oh yes.

Nothing says “fun” like spreadsheets.

As you can see, I’ve blitzed a considerable number of games this year and still had opportunity to play loads of new ones. The system also encourages completion of the new games because they help open up a free “slot” in new games I can start.

What are the flaws in the system? Mostly just having to plan ahead for new releases I really want to play. For example I’m going to have to make sure there’s a free slot around March because Final Fantasy VII Remake comes out then. I had to do the same for Death Stranding too!

You might think I’m mad but I don’t intend to do the system forever; I’m hoping one day I can creep across that 75% threshold and then I’ll play whatever I damn well please! At least, until the next time it dips below 75%…

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | January 4, 2020 at 1:45 pm | Trophy Hunter's Club, Video Games | No comment

Tags: PS3, PS4, spreadsheets, trophies