The first system I really played was the SNES, and the games I had for that system were very sparse in terms of extras once they were beaten. Granted I started looking for extra sources of fun from those games before beating most of them because I wasn't able to at that age, which sometimes left me replaying just one or two levels over and over again. Games like Mega Man X and Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 were great for me, with tons of secrets and optional content to discover. That carried over into the N64 era where Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Donkey Kong 64 and the like really gave me a lot to explore and do in 3D worlds. I sometimes even made up my own stories and quests within these games once I was familiar with them enough. Because I didn't have much experience with the internet yet, if I didn't have the strategy guide, I was on my own in terms of discovery outside of the main quests. I sometimes stop and am amazed that I, and plenty of other kids, were able to figure out some of these things with no help, although I would probably attribute that more to the amount of time I had to try just about everything rather than being clever or smart.
The PS2 came and gave me the first taste of what would be achievements in the future with games like Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. I put at least 100 hours into each of these games, mostly thanks to one simple thing: the journal. Both games had an in-game journal that tracked everything. It told you how many collectibles you'd found, how many treasure chests were unopened in each world, how many enemies you hadn't encountered yet, and everything else there was to do in the game. Now I had direction. I wasn't just grinding along all the edges of games to see where more content might be, but had a nice list of objectives and goals to keep the game going long after I had completed the story. I remember vividly going through the synthesis process in KH1 to get the Ultima Weapon and writing down all the materials I needed, going to the computer to look up what enemies dropped them and where to find them, then going back and marking them off one by one. It probably should've been tedious and boring, but I found it so satisfying to check off my progress and finally complete my goals. The added bonus was that a lot of games in this time would give you something special for reaching that 100% mark, whether it be a special ending movie, cheats, costumes, or something like that.
When I got a 360 and saw achievements, I kind of ignored them at first. I was in a more competitive mindset at the time, focusing on one or two games only and was more than content spending all my time in multiplayer matches online. Over time the games I was decent at started to get old and I was ready to move on from trying to play at anything resembling high level, which left a huge gap for me to fill with new games where I used to just spend on one. Again, I still couldn't get many games, so I always tried to pick carefully. That was when the achievement system started to click with me. I'd get a game, play through it, and then see this list of objectives a lot like how the journals in Kingdom Hearts worked, only they were in every game and all contributed to a cumulative score across each game I played, and could be compared to other people online.
From there my experience with games kind of changed. I played them for fun still, of course, but once the fun was over I kept playing because I didn't have the option of moving on to a new experience, and achievements (later trophies on PS4) gave me goals to work toward in games I would've otherwise not done. The difference with trophies and achievements from what I was doing before is two part. First is that some of these tasks were extrinsically motivated. I gained nothing but a digital check mark for beating the game only using the starting weapon, for example, and sure, that was satisfying in a different way, but not in the same way as actually getting or doing something new in the game. It wasn't new content, just new challenges, and sometimes not very fair or fun ones. The second difference was that I started to feel obligated to get these trophies for games despite the requirements being things I didn't find satisfying at all. I don't know if it would quite be an addiction, but a compulsion for sure.
For a long time that didn't really matter. I didn't have the means to play new games so having at least something to do in my old ones was better than nothing. The problem is now I don't know if I'll be able to break that compulsion if I ever find myself in the position where I don't need to bleed every ounce of content a game has. I'm often jealous of people who are able to play a game, beat it, and then just move on to the next, and not just because they have the means to, but because I wish my relationship with games was like that. I wish I could just play for as long as I was having fun and then stop, but I can't. I'm still glad for these trophy systems existing because I can't, but wonder if they've only ended up doing more harm than good over time.
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