Well, it’s Sunday, it’s still Lock-down, and it’s time for another 'DrBloodmoney Lengthly Musing' that most people won’t read. 😜
I have been thinking recently about the future of Trophy Hunting, in the wake of some of the general prevailing trends across the hobby as a whole.
Now - I preface this by saying - I am not a trophy elitist.
My Ratalaika-defending credentials are readily available on this site, and my view that a good game is a good game, regardless of the difficulty of the trophy list is self-evident in my trophy list.
What I am saying here is not a dig, or an admonishment, or an attack on anyone.
I am musing on the future of a pastime I love, that is all.
Please do not think I am taking aim at you, or sermonising to anyone.
Also - I use the term cataclysm in the ‘upheaval and change’ context, not the ‘total destruction’ context - that’s important to note!
Anyway…
More and more, I have been starting to feel the inevitability of some sort of existential reckoning, or cataclysmic change, with regards to the leaderboard philosophies and the Trophy Hunting websites that cater to them and set them, PSNProfiles included.
There was a time, back in the days of the PS3, when an ‘easy platinum’ (or a ‘trash-plat’ or ‘junk-plat’, whatever term you favour) meant a few well known, yet still somewhat lengthly games. Hannah Montana, Terminator Salvation, some of the Pixar Tie-In games, some of the later Telltale games etc.
The fact that I can specifically name them speaks volumes about the relatively minor effect they had on the general leaderboards at the time.
Over the course of the PS4 era, however, that relatively small contingent exploded exponentially.
What began with the Arcade Archives games (a mix of quality, for sure - there are some great games in there, but trophy-wise, they are extremely easy and quick), and the occasional one-off ‘trophy-for-cash’ games (My Name is Mayo / Slyde/ 1000 Top Rated etc.) was followed by the explosion of EastAsia Studio and Ratalaika games. (I myself have defended those many times in terms of the quality of some of the games, but I cannot in any way defend their policy on trophies, adding up to 8 ‘stacks’ for every release.)
Now, the latest low in the trophy hunting race to the bottom is upon us, in the form of the ‘Breakthrough Gaming Arcade’ games - a set of platinums so hopelessly devoid of quality, effort and value that I truly believe they will be the looked back upon as the final catalyst for the impending changes I now see as inevitable.
While there was once a time when I rolled my eyes at statements by ‘Elitist’ Trophy Hunters claiming that “anyone could amass 300-odd platinums in a few months” and dismissed them as over-wrought hyperbole and sniffy-nosed elitism, now, I have to finally admit that, while that may have been exaggerated then, it is literally true now.
I feel like the whole community - in most aspects a conglomerate, a loose assembly of plethora of small sub-groups - is beginning to fracture into 2 distinct overarching groups with regards to these types of games - those for, and those against them.
Even people like me, who once fell broadly in-between - are being slowly pulled into one camp or the other, as the permeation of the gaming landscape with these easy, stackable platinums grows and grows in size. It is becoming impossible not to be forced to pick a side, even if one feels that it is simply a case of choosing the lesser of two evils.
Even on PSNP, (historically the most egalitarian and non-elitist of the trophy sites,) the push from what was once a small portion of the user base for more tailored leaderboards, catering to hunters who focus specifically on rarity, or completionism, or scarcity, as opposed to the pure, raw, numbers game has steadily grown over the years from a bubbling undercurrent - easily dismissed or ignored by the majority - to a roaring, churning sea has been slow, but has been gaining pace and volume all the time, and is - I feel - beginning to reach a critical mass.
I feel like I see pretty much the same number of post decrying these games, and calling for their exclusion from the leaderboards, as I do of threads proclaiming the virtues of the next 1-hour platinum, and filled with positive comments and elation at the number of stacks and the ease of trophies.
It really feels like this is becoming an unsustainable dichotomy.
Once, not terribly long ago, I would play any game I felt like, and if it was a Ratalaika game where the platinum came in the first hour, or an Artifex Mundi or Telltale game, where the Platinum is a guarantee, it felt fine.
More recently, playing those games began to feel a little different - still fine, but more and more I felt that there was a sense of tut-tutting and poo-poo-ing from some aspects of the community, and I felt more and more the need to justify playing these game - both to myself, and to others.
That the common understanding was that I would have only played these games for quick trophies, and that any argument that I might have actually enjoyed them was ludicrous.
I tried hard to avoid those kind of feelings ever affecting what I played, and for the most part that worked fine, however - and now I come to the crux of my point - now, playing such games is giving me pause for a different reason:
I'm beginning to worry that having too many ‘easy’ games on my profile may affect the longevity and viability of my profile.
I’m beginning to feel that soon, there will be changes to the way these sites actually cater to trophy hunting.
It feels inevitable that the way in which profiles are tracked will begin to change dramatically in the next few years, and I am starting to worry that having too many ‘easy’ games will end up with my profile being excluded from whatever leaderboards exist in the future entirely.
Whether it happens on the existing sites, as a result of the crescendoing push for alterations to the leaderboards, or if the existing sites stagnate, and some new player enters the scene, I do not know, but I feel like - based on the number of threads requesting change - if some new site did pop up, that offered the same levels of service as the current ones, but excluded anyone with too high a percentage of easy games, or discounted stacks, or required a certain rarity percentage for inclusion, it would immediately siphon off users from the existing sites at an alarming rate.
If that were the case, I’m almost worried that playing too many Ratalaika games, or EastAsiaSoft games or the likes, may be potentially precluding my inclusion in the hobby I love, somewhere down the road.
Maybe I’m just getting Covid-crazy and seeing patterns where there aren’t any - always a possibility! 😂- but I’d be interested if anyone else has been feeling the same?
Like maybe we are closer to the end of trophy hunting as a raw-numbers game than to the start of it, and that maybe the winds of change are starting to blow?
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