100th Post

I have reached 100 posts on this blog in the few short months that I’ve been operating it. In that time I have gained only 1 follower (who happens to be someone that I know in real life) and 1 comment of which the entire contents was the word “wow” followed by a “…” The Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – Revenge! post seems to be the most popular post on the blog if only for its inclusion of a picture of Lucia von Bardas as a cyborg. But the number of visitors is steadily climbing so I think I’m in good shape overall.

Now for the meat of this post. Trophies, achievements, medals, awards, goals, whatever you want to call them. I do not like them. Have we as a civilization gone so far downhill that we need to be rewarded for every menial task that we do? Is that really where we’re at? Every time I beat a level or a story section I don’t need a little pat on the head telling me what a great job I did. I know what a great job I did, that’s why I did it!

This growing trend worries me. We’re so desperate for approval that we’ll take it from our game systems now days. Some people even go so far out of their way to get every single trophy just so they can say “Look at me! I did every little thing that the game told me to do!” It really is to the point of pathetic. Get up off of your chair and go tell your mom that you want a hug already!

It actually gets worse with how mundane some of the requirements are to earn these trophies. Rewarding you for going through basic gameplay is just sad. “Look! I killed three guys with one grenade! And now I get a trophy that I can proudly display and the whole world can see how great of a job that I did.”

The worst culprit (in my humble opinion) is Diner Dash. I downloaded the demo one day while I was trying to reach the Select level of the PlayStation Rewards beta. My wife played it and she thoroughly enjoyed it. So much to the point that she bought it. Do you know what happened when she loaded it up for the first time? She got a trophy. That’s right; she was rewarded a trophy for purchasing the game. This is just heartbreaking. The game can’t even say enjoy me for what I am, instead it has to scratch you behind the ears and go “Good booooooyyyyyy! You purchased me!!! What a very good boy you are! Oh yes, oh yes you are such a good boy!” all the while using that obnoxious voice that people use when talking to their dog.

And do you know what happened the first time I loaded up Diner Dash on my account after my wife bought it on her account? I was also awarded the same, stupid trophy. I didn’t even buy the game and it’s telling me what a great job I did.

Can we ever escape it? Do we really need to be congratulated for every little thing we do? Do we actually need a “good boy” from our games? Even facebook games have them. You get told how great you are for planting a tree and people actually go out of their way to get these. Just to say that they have them.

I do occasionally synch my trophies with the PlayStation Network. Normally it is out of boredom and I don’t actually want to go to bed yet so I do something arbitrary, like synch my trophies. But normally I don’t care. I would rather have them gone then interrupt my game. They pop-up during cutscenes and normal gameplay and they distract from what’s happening on the screen. So I make my plea, no matter if it falls on deaf ears, please remove trophies, achievements, medals, good boys, justifications, head-patting, carrot-on-stick awards from all future games.

And that is your 100^th post.

Damn.