Once Upon a Time some people used to insist that people needed to actually face a real challenge and overcome significant difficulties in order to feel good about rewards they’d earned. And I don’t mean just video games, this long predates video games.
Well, it turned out that was all complete bunkum. People are ecstatic to get rewards they didn’t earn and don’t feel guilt about it. That’s not all bad – game achievements are fun and harmless (except when they’re so badly designed they detract from the game). Some of them even require some real skill.
But it’s also the basis for the way the entire F2P industry pulls suckers in by showering them with ‘rewards’ then slowly turns off the spigot. It’s also one of the reasons we have an entitlement society, since once you’re used to the shower of unearned rewards it’s painful to have them cut off – again, that’s not just video games. Look at rich people’s monster kids.
Honestly sarusa, you couldn’t have said it any better. I enjoy a few “free” trophies, because it’s the game creator’s way of saying “Thanks for purchasing and playing my game!” and the more difficult trophies are for people who liked the game and played it to it’s full extent. Sure, some trophies in some games are stupidly hard, but when you earn it you feel like you REALLY earned it.
I feel like “entitlement” is an overused and poorly understood term.
The term’s original definition involved actually giving someone a title, as in “a title of nobility” or something along those lines. In our current society, it has lost some meaning, in part because titles are (to some extent) part of a defunct system of authority.
Essentially, using it in the context of a system of rewards that provides no authority to anyone is a bit of a distortion – not an unforgivable or inappropriate one, because of how language evolves over time, but perhaps an inadequate one, due to the context of its use being different.
As has been noted, it is naturally still a perfectly applicable term to use in discussing “rich monsters”, and I think it’s more suitable there than in talking about gamers getting frivolous participation trophies. But I do see some cause for alarm – and not because I think we’re all vulnerable to being, as you put it, “suckered” by F2P companies.
The phrase “a fool and his money are soon parted” is appropriate in this discussion. In other words, there’s something lacking in their common sense before the con artist ever arrives on the scene.
However, it’s worth noting that the “fool” in this case is using *common* sense – the common sense native to our society, in which it is literally possible to “pay to win”, if you have enough money.
In other words, it’s inappropriate to have this conversation without addressing where that “common sense” comes from – and why anyone with less money than it takes to “pay to win” in real life should be discarding that common sense in favor of a rarer, more frugal one to begin with.
There’s still titles today, and you can be entitled to something that comes along with them. However, those aren’t as much honorary titles or such of nobility any more, but legal titles. Contracts, for example, or when a court finds that someone owes you compensation because they did you wrong.
So yes, people can very much still be entitled to something. Especially when I pay a games publisher upwards of $60 for a game and find it lacking in features that were advertised.
am i the only one who remebers the fact that in lollipop chainsaw there was that one achievement you got for holding the camera at a VEEEEERRRYYYY sepcific angle.
no, just me?
i’ll go that way that
RandomCommenter#1437
Simone is wishing they didn’t read that. Not me though, absolutely not.
RandomCommenter#1437
*someone
Alex Vixius
@Grey I remember that achievement, and I got it without knowing it was even there because I tried turning the camera up but it was stuck on inverted and went down instead. Whelp, I got the trophy though…. yay.
Disgaea has “Watched the anime cinematic” ones, but they are the scenes from if you don’t push start when the game tells you to pick whether you want to continue or start a new game, so it’s actually possible to miss it.
Deadpool was the one I heard gave you trophies for really stupid stuff, as part of a joke.
Yep, some games do indeed use that as an achievement/trophy. It’s usually a game where the intro is skippable, even on first run, so it encourages players to go back and watch it. It’s easy to understand how a developer would like to encourage players to view the cinematic they worked hard on.
They can also be used for consumer research metrics. Set achievements for your game’s various bits and pieces, and you can check those numbers to see how people are engaging with your game, or if they are at all.
Saul the overhaul
And then they can cut what players don’t enhoy and snd build on what they liked.
warun
True. This comic’s joke about a trophy for customizing your character? Someone would really care about that, even if it’s just the people who made the customization tools. Bioware openly talked about the stats around how many people engaged with customization versus how many mashed through to the default soldier Shepard, and if I recall there’s at least been discussion about randomizing which class the creation menu starts on in later games as a result, to make people think about it more or try something different if they just mash.
Saul the overhaul
That sure is an intressting simple way of encuraging consumers to explore and discover the possibilities.
Yeah there are some games that will give you trophies for just hitting the New Game button. I think it’s a way for them to force the game to stay on your trophy list forever even if you finish it because you can delete games with no trophies if you don’t end up liking it. Or at least you can with achievements, I’m not sure about trophies.
This also used to be an indicator for older (PS3) games to see whether a game had been downloaded or not – which was important for getting a refund for a game bought “by accidant”. If you had one (“Start the game”)-trophy/achievement, refund was impossible. This was by no means a safe indicator, but also a reason some games have these. (I only know this for PS3, as I used to work in support there for a while)
There are *so many* games like this yeah. Heavy Rain comes to mind, as do a bunch of smaller indie games on Steam. I have no idea what proportion of my trophies are like this but I bet it’s at least in the double-digit percentage.
Yes. Worse still are the achievement spam games on Steam. They have whatever the maximum number of achievements a Steam game is allowed to have and all you have to do to get them all is start the game and leave it running while it unlocks them as fast as Steam allows it to.
They have their high achievement count as a selling point. Players were buying them just to pad their total achievement count. So certain developers kept spamming them out.
Valve tried to kill their business model by disabling achievements on games that haven’t sold enough copies. I think that worked.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
you posted a comment supporting the achievement of posting a comment about
unlocking an achievement
One lazy boi
Achievement unlocked…
I’m too lazy to type the rest
Skarlath09
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You posted a comment replying to the achievement of supporting the achievement of posting a comment about unlocking an achievement!
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You posted another comment replying to the achievement of posting a comment replying to the
achievement of supporting a comment that supports the achievement of posting a comment
about unlocking an achievement
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You added way too many layers
NecroFerret
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you posted a comment in reply to the achievement unlocked by another, therefore achieving for yourself an achievement
That pun wasn’t even pun-ny either! Also does any else think that onions are onion-tresting while mars bars are CHOC-a-block of goodness! Also Tyler’s comment was purr-fectly Fine. I’m not kitten around, it wasn’t paw-some but it wasn’t claw-ful. You were also fur-tunate to have a claw-ver pun. Now have you ever heard the ‘tale’ of Ragnar the red? Purr-haps not? Okay. You were un-fur-tunate to get all these hiss-terical puns today.
Now take a ‘paws’ because there’s even more pun-nier puns to come. Paw-don me but I must give just a few more puns. I could write the hiss-tory of puns. What type of mew-sic do you like? How did you purr-ceive these ‘furry’ puns?
-william shakespaw
J.K Meowling
*furry pun-ny puns*
R3Ked
STOP IT NOW!
J.K Meowling
Never! These paw-some puns will never stop. Actually I will stop. Paw-don me but I must leave.
Justin
Several bad puns later
J.K Meowling
Bad puns? Bad puns?!? How dare you say such purr-ible things about these furry, furry punny puns.
Justin
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess
you don’t leave your house
RandomCommenter#1437
I agree Justin, these are not very good
Jeffyboiu
Ha, nice name
Jeffyboiu
J.k meowling I bet ur a Harry Potter fan and a cat or gamer cat fan too. (Nice user)(u know)
People always make a deal out of trophies and achievements not being about doing anything worth rewarding but I’ve always seen them as a sort of to-do list that encourages you to explore more of what the game has to offer. You can learn a lot about a game by doing trophies that aren’t readily apparent if you, say, just play through the story and move on.
This mechanic of video games, specifically Playstation, of having trophies for innocuous things like starting up the game, pressing “new game”, watching the opening cinematic, it all drives me up a wall.
I do like to feel that I earned an achievement. I mean, I get it if I got an achievement for reaching a milestone in a game’s story, or completing a quest line or something, but I recall getting an achievement for watching the opening cinematic for Disgaea 3 and thinking to myself “well…. that was stupid, all I did is start up the game.” Didn’t they have OTHER places that could warrant an achievement? Like getting a character to level 9999? Or reincarnating someone 10 times? Or defeating Overlord Baal again? Sure those are probably in there, but it really feels like reaching, like they had a quota of achievements to fulfill and ran out of GOOD reasons to earn them.
Yeah, just having a special ending scene is nothing, and having a prize for doing nothing at all is also in itself nothing. Having an achievement that you can show off at any point marks progress and growth in-game (i.e.”Defeated Jotun” “Defeated Devourer” “Defeated All Superbosses”) is good. That said, I feel like having an achievement for completing the tutorial or watching the cinematic is kind of sweet. Just don’t have the entire game be a stream of empty compliments.
You should. There’s a lot you can enjoy in the opening cinematic. And a lot you can learn about the world.
I mean, Skyrim’s is kind of forced exposition, but…
123 thoughts on “Purrticipation”
sarusa
Once Upon a Time some people used to insist that people needed to actually face a real challenge and overcome significant difficulties in order to feel good about rewards they’d earned. And I don’t mean just video games, this long predates video games.
Well, it turned out that was all complete bunkum. People are ecstatic to get rewards they didn’t earn and don’t feel guilt about it. That’s not all bad – game achievements are fun and harmless (except when they’re so badly designed they detract from the game). Some of them even require some real skill.
But it’s also the basis for the way the entire F2P industry pulls suckers in by showering them with ‘rewards’ then slowly turns off the spigot. It’s also one of the reasons we have an entitlement society, since once you’re used to the shower of unearned rewards it’s painful to have them cut off – again, that’s not just video games. Look at rich people’s monster kids.
go44yeah
Honestly sarusa, you couldn’t have said it any better. I enjoy a few “free” trophies, because it’s the game creator’s way of saying “Thanks for purchasing and playing my game!” and the more difficult trophies are for people who liked the game and played it to it’s full extent. Sure, some trophies in some games are stupidly hard, but when you earn it you feel like you REALLY earned it.
TachyonCode
I feel like “entitlement” is an overused and poorly understood term.
The term’s original definition involved actually giving someone a title, as in “a title of nobility” or something along those lines. In our current society, it has lost some meaning, in part because titles are (to some extent) part of a defunct system of authority.
Essentially, using it in the context of a system of rewards that provides no authority to anyone is a bit of a distortion – not an unforgivable or inappropriate one, because of how language evolves over time, but perhaps an inadequate one, due to the context of its use being different.
As has been noted, it is naturally still a perfectly applicable term to use in discussing “rich monsters”, and I think it’s more suitable there than in talking about gamers getting frivolous participation trophies. But I do see some cause for alarm – and not because I think we’re all vulnerable to being, as you put it, “suckered” by F2P companies.
The phrase “a fool and his money are soon parted” is appropriate in this discussion. In other words, there’s something lacking in their common sense before the con artist ever arrives on the scene.
However, it’s worth noting that the “fool” in this case is using *common* sense – the common sense native to our society, in which it is literally possible to “pay to win”, if you have enough money.
In other words, it’s inappropriate to have this conversation without addressing where that “common sense” comes from – and why anyone with less money than it takes to “pay to win” in real life should be discarding that common sense in favor of a rarer, more frugal one to begin with.
Librarian
There’s still titles today, and you can be entitled to something that comes along with them. However, those aren’t as much honorary titles or such of nobility any more, but legal titles. Contracts, for example, or when a court finds that someone owes you compensation because they did you wrong.
So yes, people can very much still be entitled to something. Especially when I pay a games publisher upwards of $60 for a game and find it lacking in features that were advertised.
Snocone
I just wanna let you know that this conversation is wonderfully refreshing. Thank you all.
kodamant
I think this conversation just increased my iq
Grey
am i the only one who remebers the fact that in lollipop chainsaw there was that one achievement you got for holding the camera at a VEEEEERRRYYYY sepcific angle.
no, just me?
i’ll go that way that
RandomCommenter#1437
Simone is wishing they didn’t read that. Not me though, absolutely not.
RandomCommenter#1437
*someone
Alex Vixius
@Grey I remember that achievement, and I got it without knowing it was even there because I tried turning the camera up but it was stuck on inverted and went down instead. Whelp, I got the trophy though…. yay.
Skarlath09
Participation trophies make sport worth it.
TravisChessie1933
I’d like to see this cat try a NASCAR or F1 and see if he’s better at that than Guitar Hero
E
He’d be a NAScat
Justin
Guitar hero
I got like a 90% on cry for eternity.
TravisChessie1933
Is this an actual thing, you are rewarded for watching the introduction?
Cheynas
I have an old ‘Start of a New Era’ achievement from SoulCalibur IV on 360 that is exactly that.
Nobody
Disgaea has “Watched the anime cinematic” ones, but they are the scenes from if you don’t push start when the game tells you to pick whether you want to continue or start a new game, so it’s actually possible to miss it.
Deadpool was the one I heard gave you trophies for really stupid stuff, as part of a joke.
Manabi
Yep, some games do indeed use that as an achievement/trophy. It’s usually a game where the intro is skippable, even on first run, so it encourages players to go back and watch it. It’s easy to understand how a developer would like to encourage players to view the cinematic they worked hard on.
warun
They can also be used for consumer research metrics. Set achievements for your game’s various bits and pieces, and you can check those numbers to see how people are engaging with your game, or if they are at all.
Saul the overhaul
And then they can cut what players don’t enhoy and snd build on what they liked.
warun
True. This comic’s joke about a trophy for customizing your character? Someone would really care about that, even if it’s just the people who made the customization tools. Bioware openly talked about the stats around how many people engaged with customization versus how many mashed through to the default soldier Shepard, and if I recall there’s at least been discussion about randomizing which class the creation menu starts on in later games as a result, to make people think about it more or try something different if they just mash.
Saul the overhaul
That sure is an intressting simple way of encuraging consumers to explore and discover the possibilities.
Saul the overhaul
*and between intressting and simple
Resulli
Yeah there are some games that will give you trophies for just hitting the New Game button. I think it’s a way for them to force the game to stay on your trophy list forever even if you finish it because you can delete games with no trophies if you don’t end up liking it. Or at least you can with achievements, I’m not sure about trophies.
Ricalin
This also used to be an indicator for older (PS3) games to see whether a game had been downloaded or not – which was important for getting a refund for a game bought “by accidant”. If you had one (“Start the game”)-trophy/achievement, refund was impossible. This was by no means a safe indicator, but also a reason some games have these. (I only know this for PS3, as I used to work in support there for a while)
fluffy
There are *so many* games like this yeah. Heavy Rain comes to mind, as do a bunch of smaller indie games on Steam. I have no idea what proportion of my trophies are like this but I bet it’s at least in the double-digit percentage.
Bilateralrope
Yes. Worse still are the achievement spam games on Steam. They have whatever the maximum number of achievements a Steam game is allowed to have and all you have to do to get them all is start the game and leave it running while it unlocks them as fast as Steam allows it to.
They have their high achievement count as a selling point. Players were buying them just to pad their total achievement count. So certain developers kept spamming them out.
Valve tried to kill their business model by disabling achievements on games that haven’t sold enough copies. I think that worked.
Bilateralrope
Fun fact: Only 82.5% of the people who own Portal 2 on Steam have unlocked the achievement for watching its unskippable intro.
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
you posted a comment about unlocking an achievement
Kitty
Yay!
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
you posted a comment supporting the achievement of posting a comment about
unlocking an achievement
One lazy boi
Achievement unlocked…
I’m too lazy to type the rest
Skarlath09
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You posted a comment replying to the achievement of supporting the achievement of posting a comment about unlocking an achievement!
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You posted another comment replying to the achievement of posting a comment replying to the
achievement of supporting a comment that supports the achievement of posting a comment
about unlocking an achievement
Switcherland
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You added way too many layers
NecroFerret
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you admitted that you posted a comment in reply to the achievement unlocked by another, therefore achieving for yourself an achievement
Daisy Kitty
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
You admitted you were lazy!
Jeffyboiu
TO MANY ACHIEVEMENTS. OOOOOOOOOOOOF YEET
Twomuc
Why is this every online game from lvl 1-15
RandomCommenter#1437
Because, games with levels need a lot of achievements to keep people playing.
King Leo Aries
“If you think about it, aren’t all video game trophies pretty much just participation trophies?”
As the guy with platinum trophies for Kingdom Hearts Final Mix and Okami, kindly fuck off.
Scezumin
I was hoping for a response like this. Cheers to trophies which go beyond participation.
TimTime10
It’s a joke based on the small achivements. Getting bigger achivements are of course more impresive than participation.
Robert
Chill.
sebacostamr
Meanwhile, in MHW…
*Hides from a pack of Jagras 5 minutes in*
*Achievement get*
“I DID A THING!!!”
1234567890
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
Take on Dodogama quest and get killed by Deviljho
Justin
SanTIaGo
Tyler Furrison
This punfest is a cat-tastrophe
Daisy Kitty
This cat-ostrophic pun needs a pun-isment for not being very pun-ny.
J.K Meowling
That pun wasn’t even pun-ny either! Also does any else think that onions are onion-tresting while mars bars are CHOC-a-block of goodness! Also Tyler’s comment was purr-fectly Fine. I’m not kitten around, it wasn’t paw-some but it wasn’t claw-ful. You were also fur-tunate to have a claw-ver pun. Now have you ever heard the ‘tale’ of Ragnar the red? Purr-haps not? Okay. You were un-fur-tunate to get all these hiss-terical puns today.
Now take a ‘paws’ because there’s even more pun-nier puns to come. Paw-don me but I must give just a few more puns. I could write the hiss-tory of puns. What type of mew-sic do you like? How did you purr-ceive these ‘furry’ puns?
-william shakespaw
J.K Meowling
*furry pun-ny puns*
R3Ked
STOP IT NOW!
J.K Meowling
Never! These paw-some puns will never stop. Actually I will stop. Paw-don me but I must leave.
Justin
Several bad puns later
J.K Meowling
Bad puns? Bad puns?!? How dare you say such purr-ible things about these furry, furry punny puns.
Justin
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess
you don’t leave your house
RandomCommenter#1437
I agree Justin, these are not very good
Jeffyboiu
Ha, nice name
Jeffyboiu
J.k meowling I bet ur a Harry Potter fan and a cat or gamer cat fan too. (Nice user)(u know)
derp
laziest trophies ever
TimTime10
Remember in minecraft were one of the “acivements” were basically opening your inventory. Real effort to get that one took me 3 days to get it.
AsrielCreeper
What about Easter eggs those take skills
AsrielCreeper
or for some people googling skills
TimTime10
Depends on what kind of easter egg it is.
YOSHAA
Achievement:played 1 second
Achievement:played 2 seconds
Achievement:played 3 seconds
.
.
.
.
TimmyP
…now that’s Aabs Animals for you.
At least some of the money from that goes to charity, so I guess it’s cool. :P
kyguns
Achievement: made a comment
Resulli
People always make a deal out of trophies and achievements not being about doing anything worth rewarding but I’ve always seen them as a sort of to-do list that encourages you to explore more of what the game has to offer. You can learn a lot about a game by doing trophies that aren’t readily apparent if you, say, just play through the story and move on.
ChaosSorceror_Davidicus
This mechanic of video games, specifically Playstation, of having trophies for innocuous things like starting up the game, pressing “new game”, watching the opening cinematic, it all drives me up a wall.
I do like to feel that I earned an achievement. I mean, I get it if I got an achievement for reaching a milestone in a game’s story, or completing a quest line or something, but I recall getting an achievement for watching the opening cinematic for Disgaea 3 and thinking to myself “well…. that was stupid, all I did is start up the game.” Didn’t they have OTHER places that could warrant an achievement? Like getting a character to level 9999? Or reincarnating someone 10 times? Or defeating Overlord Baal again? Sure those are probably in there, but it really feels like reaching, like they had a quota of achievements to fulfill and ran out of GOOD reasons to earn them.
HamCat
Yeah, just having a special ending scene is nothing, and having a prize for doing nothing at all is also in itself nothing. Having an achievement that you can show off at any point marks progress and growth in-game (i.e.”Defeated Jotun” “Defeated Devourer” “Defeated All Superbosses”) is good. That said, I feel like having an achievement for completing the tutorial or watching the cinematic is kind of sweet. Just don’t have the entire game be a stream of empty compliments.
RandomCommenter#1437
Wow. I never watch openings if I don’t have to so I would never get the first trophy/achievment. Sad
HamCat
You should. There’s a lot you can enjoy in the opening cinematic. And a lot you can learn about the world.
I mean, Skyrim’s is kind of forced exposition, but…