Ten Years of Trophies: PlayStation Trophies are a Decade Old

Back on July 2, 2008, the PlayStation Network launched the first ever Trophies for PlayStation 3 games. Sony was a bit late to the game as Microsoft had achievements instituted three years before that in 2005. As excited as I was for PlayStation games to finally get the trophy system, I wasn’t really there at the outset. On June 10, 2008 I had been in a pretty bad motorcycle wreck–one that sent me in and out of hospitals for surgeries and full of medications that left me less than coherent for the next couple of months. Trophy supported games were also quite rare in those early days. I spent much of 2008 playing and replaying Metal Gear Solid 4, which didn’t get a trophy update until 2012.

The first game that had trophies was Super Stardust HD. My first trophy came on October 12, 2008 in Linger in Shadows, a game that was more of a tech demo and had one of the easiest trophy lists on the PS3. Soon after that, games like Dead Space, Rock Band 2, Resistance 2, and LittleBigPlanet added to my trophy list, bringing my total to 176 trophies by the end of the year. Oh, sweet summer child. I look at that number now and shake my head. I thought I was really excited about trophies back then, but to look at me now, you’d never know it.

My first Platinum trophy came on May 18, 2009. Platinum Trophies equate to Xbox’s 1000 Gamerscore meaning that you’ve effectively completed everything the game tasked you with doing. That first Platinum got me hooked. By the end of 2009, I had 10 Platinum trophies, and I had no idea that was the start of a journey that would define the next decade of my life. July 2, 2008 was a day that started an entirely new cultural phenomenon. It inspired entire websites and a new way of thinking about video games and how we interact with them.

I’ve now heard that ding 13,805 times marking my own accomplishments. 188 of those are Platinums, and many more make up 100% lists that don’t include Platinums. Some were a pain in the ass to earn, and some are easy early trophies in games that I never cared to continue much further. I’m also proud to say that none of them are from Hannah Montana or other “easy” games that trophy hunters sink so low as to play in order to pad their numbers. That’s my own (very truncated) trophy journey. You can follow some of my other trophy exploits on last year’s Trophy Theory column.

Trophies by the Numbers

Sites like PSNProfiles track nearly 2.5 billion trophies earned across PS3, PS4, and Vita, and that’s only accounting for the 3.5 million profiles that they actually track. There are nearly 80 million PS4s in the wild now, so trophy tracking sites are really only tracking a small percentage of the overall PlayStation Network player base.

There are nearly 220,000 trophies available across more than 7,000 PS3, PS4, and Vita games that can be earned by any one player. The person with the most trophies in the world as of today has 65,402 earned, 1,574 of them being Plats. Suddenly my own numbers are looking a little bit less like an addiction.

Love them or hate them, trophies and achievements are here to stay. They are a fundamental part of gaming now. Part of me finds it hard to believe that trophies have been around for ten years, but I can also hardly remember a time without them (might be due to the head injury from getting hit by a car). One-third of my life has been spent earning trophies. Trophies have been a thing for longer than I’ve been married.

Now that trophies have been around for a decade, tell us your own trophy stories! How many do you have? Are you an active trophy hunter? What’s your personal take on ten years of trophies? Let’s celebrate and talk about these enamoring and immaterial digital achievements in the comments below.

Keri Honea

I'm at 92% completion with inFamous: Second Son. I'm missing a couple of random combat trophies, but I've never bothered to get them, because the big one I'm missing that I know I won't get is the Silver trophy for finishing the game on Expert Difficulty. 

The game that aggravates me the most about not having the Platinum is The LEGO Ninjago Movie Videogame. A glitch is all that is keeping me from getting the last couple of trophies. I've heard the game has been patched, which might fix my issue, but the game was not fun enough to bother going back to, even for a Platinum.

John Abrena

These 3 still bug me to this very day:

1. (Vanilla) God Eater 2 for the Vita - "Unleashed from Abyss" Hunt Magatsu Kyuubi 

Reason: I lost my first Vita, together with this game.

 

2. Freedom Wars for the Vita - "Volunteer of the Year" Successfully complete every discretionary operation, and "Dionaea Slayer" Defeat a Dionaea-class Abductor while playing offline without falling once in battle.

Reason: Someone borrowed this game from me, then I lost my first Vita.

 

3. Persona 4 Golden - "Thorough Bookkeeper" Complete the Persona Compendium, "Legend of Inaba" Max out all social links, "Big Bro is Worried" Visit Nanako in the Hospital a total of 3 times

Reason: I actually needed just 1 more,Thorough Bookkeeper. I just didn't sync the data before, well, I lost my first Vita.

I am sad.

Louis Edwards

Resistance 2 will always be sitting at 90% for me.  I had a hard enough time killing people online, so reaching 10,000 kills was just too many for me. It's the only trophy I needed for Platinum and since the servers are shut down, it is now unattainable.

Cameron Teague

For me, it is Sims 3 on PS3. I own 48 of 51 trophies and just never got around to grinding the other two. Missing out on growing a prefect plant and completing 1000 wishes. I would go back to complete, but would need to buy a PS3 and the game.

Anthony Nash

Mine is Submerged (a really underrated game, by the way). I’m only missing two trophies, but just never got around to exploring enough to find all the secrets and boat boosts in the game.

Zarmena Khan

I'm one of those people who struggles to replay games they've already beaten just to fulfil a trophy condition, especially if it requires doing a speedrun or something. As a result, I am only a couple trophies short of Platinum in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. 

Then, there's Titanfall 2. I already beat the game on regular but must beat it on Master difficulty (which is above Hard) for a trophy. I probably would have attempted it if it wasn't held back by this rare time-challenge trophy that has taken even professional guide writers many, many attempts to unlock. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Chandler Wood

With so many trophies in my collection, there are a number of "almost Platinums" that haunt me. For Broken Age, I just need to speedrun it in under an hour. For Rogue Legacy, I just need to beat it in less than five lives. The two that bother me the most, however, are Vanquish and Grand Theft Auto IV. In Vanquish, I just need to complete the tactical challenges, and in Grand Theft Auto IV, I was turned off by the exceptionally long grind to max rank in multiplayer. I did everything else, but those last trophies tripped me up on my journey to Platinum.

Cody Gravelle

Oh, I have one that happened recently that made me super sad.

I bought FFIX for PS4, and made it a goal to Platinum it as a treat to myself. I made it all the way through the game before realizing I had missed one of Stiltzkin's items at some point during the playthrough, which meant I couldn't complete the trophy related to him. After so many hours already being spent on a game I'd already played many times, and a growing backlog of more current titles, I've had to make peace with the fact I'm never getting that Platinum after all.

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