y friend Rich and I were reminiscing the other day about games we'd played growing up. I recalled the forty dollars my eleven year-old self had sacrificed to purchase my first brand-new PlayStation game, Spyro: Year of the Dragon. I proudly explained to Rich that it was the first game I'd ever beaten completely; in fact, more so. "I got one-hundred and one percent," I beamed.
He volleyed back with the years he and his sister had invested into Crash: Bash. "We cleared two hundred percent handily. I mean, not even close."
My initial response was a sort of baffled disappointment. My extra percentage point hadn't bothered me too much, but confronted with such top-heavy fractions I couldn't help but wonder what the point of having a completion tracker was if it bore no resemblance to the actual level of completion one could attain.
But perhaps, a decade ago, Insomniac and Naughty Dog were onto something. My indignation arose because I saw 201% as a slap in the face to actual progress trackers. Now I'm thinking that's precisely what we need.
Achievements become harmful when they become our obsession. We game not for fun, but for points, losing the experience that got us gaming in the first place.I admire the thinking behind the achievement and trophy systems that have become an obsession among current-generation gamers. Many games feature these miniature rewards as checkpoints to give us an idea of how far along we've progressed in the story. Other achievements celebrate major milestones. Occasionally a trophy is held in front of you to taunt you into taking the path less traveled by.
Achievements are ostensibly designed to help you get the most out of your game; coaxing you into that higher difficulty, incentivizing a speed run, avoiding violence, encouraging aggression. They become harmful, however, when they become our obsession; we game not for fun, but for points, and in the process we lose the experience that got us gaming in the first place.
Perhaps this is the reason for the media's recent interest in the value of "easy mode." I've read four articles in the last month which dealt with the ecstasy of story-driven, death-scorning gameplay as if it were new and unexpected. The fact that easy mode has become a discovery rather than a matter of nostalgia is, frankly, a bit disconcerting.
We've all been there: the new game screen asks us to choose between easy, normal, and hard, and one thought immediately runs through the brain: There aren't any achievements for easy mode, so it's normal or hard. I don't think I'm ready for hard — save that for the second play-through where I get all the hidden collectibles and find all the secret areas — so I'm gonna go with normal.
But what do you do after that second, going-for-completion run? Once you've added another platinum to your trophy case, do you feel compelled to play the game again? The answer for many is, I fear, a resounding no. After all, achievements are there to help you get the most out of your game. If you've got them all, you've succeeded in that goal.
Only a trip down nostalgia lane could provide the reality check I needed to see how ridiculous such thinking is. That single extra percentage point in Year of the Dragon taught me an important lesson I once knew but had long forgotten: you can't mathematically quantify the gaming experience. No one but you should have a say in whether or not you've properly enjoyed a given title, least of all the people who made it.
Don't let that 300/1000 bother you — never play a game you aren't enjoying just to get closer to an arbitrary measurement of completion. And even when you hit that shining 100%, remember: you may only be halfway "there."
What am I going to do after that second run? Oftentimes, one can't be arsed to complete a first run.
Naw, naw, after a while, I'll notice that 300/1000, and that will remind me that I never did beat that fun game that I stopped playing because .... well, I forget why.