An essay on Trophy Whoring: One man’s addiction, and subsequent “cure”

I’m not ashamed to admit that I was (and still am) a trophy whore.

Yes, I’ve got an addictive personality, and in the past, I always secretly envied Xbox 360 gamers’ ability to gain Gamerscore for any title released on that system. Needless to say, when Sony announced that Trophies were going to be implemented into PS3 games, I immediately set about tracking down some titles that had announced their support for the service: I bought Burnout Paradise off the Playstation Store, and I duped some poor dude into trading me a sealed copy of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (R1) for my recently bought copy of (ugh) Devil May Cry 4 (R1). (Yeah, the game may have been pretty new, but Uncharted 1 was way, way better than that steaming pile.) And that, my friends, is where my problem began.

When addiction takes hold, it takes a while to let go.

Going back, the Uncharted experience was really great, but what totally pushed it over the top was the Trophy collecting. It was really addictive to work through the game, and watch your level climb ever higher with every shiny doodad you collected (combined with the malamig-sa-tenga na “You Got A Trophy” sound effect).

Initially, this actually had a negative effect on my gaming experience at first. In the months following my acquiring the Uncharted platinum I was so OBSESSED with getting more Trophies that I found myself subconsciously refusing to play games that didn’t support them. And don’t think this obsession was limited to crap titles only – it extended to some really great games as well. Trophy addiction seriously hampered my enjoyment of Soul Calibur IV (a series I usually play ad infinitum) and even caused me huge delays in completing Valkyria Chronicles (!), which I sorely regret. I seriously considered picking up games based on their Trophy-Per-Hour ratio, despite their being mediocre at best (Knowing full well that it was crap, I almost bought Leisure Suit Larry! What the fuck, man.)

Allowing people to check their Trophies online?! That should be illegal!
How am I supposed to get any work done?

Eventually the glazy-eyed addiction wore off as I got less and less experience from each new Trophy. At TLVL 12, I think it takes 3 bronze or one silver Trophy just to get 1%, so parang nawalan ako ng gana to compete with those hardcore types who are like Level 15 and up. I also found out that a lot of people just rent games in order to up their Trophy count, which is something i’m not willing to do... as I’ve always been more of a buying person because I’m a big fan of collecting games. I still love earning Trophies, but I’m not obsessively competitive anymore and I’m content to just grab them as I go, saving my obsessive Platinum-collecting efforts for games I really, truly appreciate (next up: a triple dose of adventure, with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Dragon Age and Tomb Raider: Underworld up next on my Pt hitlist, with a dash of Modern Warfare 2's delicious brand of mindless action on the side.)

December draws near at last, and all the major releases that I want are safely in my collection – now, let the game backlog clearing begin!