I am not the 100%

Achievements and Trophies. Trophies and Achievements. What does it all mean, and what does it all come to?

Nothing, I say.

To me there is no real point in acquiring all of the achievements/trophies in a video game. They don't add anything to the experience, nor do they reward the player in any way within the confines of the game. The numbers of the achievements and trophies are completely irrelevant, and only seem to serve as a quantifiable measure of how many games you own, and to whatever extent that you have played them.

Achievements and Trophies, only seem to benchmark certain, rather mundane things that eventually are "earned" over time. Something along the lines of "get 50 headshots" isn't really an achievement, or an award that is something worth striving towards. I know that Achievements and Trophies are not the main focus of any game, yet they still seem to serve no amount of purpose for when the player has completed the game.

Achievements to not motivate me to explore anything different that I wouldn't already try in a video game. Some do, and some don't, yet the reward is underwhelming. A chime, and a small graphic displaying the milestone that I have reached. I've only earned every achievement for one game in my entire library, but that was because I couldn't get enough of it, and I was looking for an excuse to play more of it.

So, is that the appeal of Achievements and Trophies? To get the "most" out of your game?

Well, let's take a look at games from a financial standpoint. They are expensive. If games are not something that you purchase all too often, achievement hunting can be a great way to get the most out of your game. However, this is all at the cost of being rather pointless. I'm not a huge fan of Achievement hunting, as there's nothing to gain from it within the game. Earning all of the Achievements or Trophies in a game gains nothing for the player. Amongst true gamers, people who truly appreciate games for what they are, gamerscore is never a topic of conversation that is discussed.

I don't know the purpose of this arbitrary number. Perhaps it is simply a device so that players can get the most out of the game so that they can continue playing until every single achievement is unlocked. Or maybe it's a sort of Pavlov thing. A way to make us salivate at the sound of earning an Achievement or Trophy, for something useless. I guess, it's not for everyone, and I suppose that I fall into that category of people who don't need it.

Play the game how you will, and just enjoy it. Some folks play for the experience, some for the challenge, others for the gamerscore.