Trophies - How It Affected the Industry and the Gamers

Trophies, a greatly debated world of the gaming world. Does it increase the re-play value of the game or is it a mean corporate trick to fool the trophy-whores?

I definately believe that a part of the original reason for trophies was re-play value, but there's no doubt in my mind that a other part of it was to increase the sales of the games and their additions that came with trophies. Microsoft had Achievements and they were alright popular among the gamers so of course SONY decided to adapt it to the PlayStation.

Now, a lot of producers use this system to their advantage. They reward the player for trying everything there is to try and collect everything that is to collect. I like how Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and other alike games use the trophies to ensure that the player has the ultimate gaming experience. The player finds him self in a massive, incredibly beautiful environment and receives trophies for exploring it and collecting and trying out everything the gamer can find. I value that.

Then we have producers that use it to get the trophy-whores' attention. Terminator is a good excample of this, a terrible game that an average player could easily beat over a weekend, and get a gold trophy for every beaten level.

The trophies have set their mark on the gaming community. There are trophy-whores, anti-trophy-whores and then the golden middle. So most people define a trophy-whore as someone who likes to collect trophies, but it's so much more than that. The trophy-whore sells his opinion. The games that the trophy-whore is looking for is not the games he enjoys playing the most or the game that he can enjoy with his friends, it's the number of trophies and wether they are bronze, silver or gold that makes the final decision for him. The trophy-whore finds nothing wrong with blowing up an ally if he gets a trophy for it.
Everybody has seen an anti-trophy-whore pop up whenever the discussion comes to trophies. The ATW (let's just call them that) will probably have posted something related to "I don't force myself to collect trophies." or "Trophies mean nothing, proove it in a 1-on-1 quickscope match and we'll see who's 1337!" The ATW will also believe he is quite better than those who seem to enjoy receiving a hard earned platinum. You see, the ATW didn't fall for the trap that was planted by "the rich corporations of capitalism".
The golden middle is a gamer who has a casual attitude towards trophies. I know they are there, if the gamer truly enjoy a game or the platinum is quite challening and the gamer enjoys a challenge (challenging games are getting rather rare) the gamer may just try to get it (if he's bored and he's not to busy with his newest game). Generally a nice person.