Sony says “Show me the trophies”
What is the one thing that makes all athletes, rivals and competitors bust their ass to do their best in every game? Is it morals, determination, honor or pride?
I think it may be all of those classy virtues melted together and cast into one shiny metal trophy. That’s right, a trophy. You see it in every sport: the winner gets to hoist the coveted championship trophy.
Recently, Sony has adopted a similar system in which players are rewarded with trophies for their hard work and accomplishments in the games they play. Sadly, there is a catch. Only a few titles offer trophy support as of now. Sony eventually hopes that other major titles will develop or patch trophy systems for their games, but with no concrete information, gamers are left in the balance wondering if their favorite titles will be rewarded with trophies.
The trophy system operates in a similar manner to the Xbox gamerscore / achievements, by giving gamers a “level” calculated by the number and type of trophies they receive. The virtual shine-buckets are divided into four separate groups: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The obvious difficulty scale applies here with the bronze trophies being the easiest to obtain, and the platinum trophies only being rewarded for 100% completion of a game’s trophy challenges.
The trophy system comes as part of the firmware 2.41 update released by Sony earlier this month. The update also included a slew of new features, one of which is the in-game XMB, which allows users to quickly access music, Internet, and other options simultaneously while playing a game–but we aren’t needlessly graded on those actions, so who really cares?
The biggest question that arises with the trophy system is will big name titles embrace the system? It seems a waste of breath to gloat over a higher score in PixelJunk Eden or Buzz! Quiz TV? Gamers want their favorite games to be part of the ranking system. As of yesterday’s E3, we do know that Uncharted will receive trophy support by next month, but other developers are still shy about their feelings. Naughty Dog gets the “Actually listen to what players want,” trophy. Cheers.
