Trophy Hunting

I am back from vacation and so I have been playing video games on my boat during the week. I picked up a stack of games for next to nothing and am trying to get through a number of them as quickly as possible. Don't worry, I will provide reviews for some of the good ones as I get to them.

One thing I have started to notice is the number of trophies I am accumulating for the PlayStation family of consoles. I am told that there is a similar system for the XBox consoles. Trophies have absolutely no value other than the sentiment one assigns to them. I don't really play video games to collect trophies but the topic came up during lunch today. Those are the types of conversations you have when one work for a video game company.

Naturally I got a lot of good-natured ribbing because while I have over 465 total trophies, none of them are platinum. Most are bronze with some silver ones and a few gold thrown in. One of the guys I eat lunch with loves to trophy hunt. That means he finds out what is necessary to earn a trophy and then plays to achieve it. He feels it adds to the game as he must try out new things. While I may find a favorite gun and use it throughout the game, he will mix it up as different trophies can be awarded based on getting a certain number of kills with differing weapons.

I asked how to find out about the various trophies and how to earn them. Most of the time, the game will tell you what to do. Other times you have to do a bit of research on the Internet. To me that sounded like cheating. My buddy didn't think so.

Someone else at the table pointed out how he earned a trophy by connecting a rubber band to his controller and letting it run three nights in a row to accumulate 75 miles of driving for a remote control car in one of his games. Doing so rewarded him with a platinum trophy for the game. Everyone at the table agreed that he is a trophy hunter and it definitely qualified as cheating. Personally I found it to be hilarious.

There is not much to the current game I am playing and if things continue I will earn my first platinum trophy. Simply playing the game all the way through is all that is necessary. Does that make me a trophy hunter? I don't think so because I am not altering how I play the game. However if you catch me attaching a rubber band to my controller and letting it run all night for 3 nights in a row, then you can call me a trophy hunter. Now if I only had a rubber band on the boat.