“Jumping” Games Offering Easy Platinum Trophies Degrade Its Integrity

The trophy system was released with the PlayStation 3 System Software Update (v.2.40) in June 2008. Since then, Sony decided to add trophies to all future consoles and titles in order for the player to have more to do. Having a trophy system gives the player a reason to keep playing, and it definitely worked in Sony’s favor.

Today, there exists a four-trophy hierarchy on PlayStation consoles. The ascending order for this starts with the Bronze, then Silver, then Gold, to the extremely unachievable, Platinum. In some communities, the number of Platinum trophies a player has, dictates their overall respect.

To give an example, a player on YouTube, Mystic, is a regular in the PlayStation trophy business. His account shows a 100% on Platinum trophies. This shows that there truly are players who care more about these specific trophies rather than the actual game itself.

Jakob VanDeusen, a streamer on Twitch, told in an interview with Inverse, “Nothing hits harder than popping a Platinum trophy.” He further stated, “It’s a huge drop of serotonin and it means I had a worthwhile experience with a game.” Looking at the dedication of these players, they often try to exploit trophy games to keep up the global PlayStation trophy leaderboards.

Recently, the PlayStation Store has been overloaded with a certain genre of games never seen before. Do not be alarmed, they aren’t a new uncharted clone, but rather something out of the Adobe Flash Player time period. These games are simple, it’s a food item jumping around, and that’s mostly it.

The Jumping Brownie, The Jumping Burger, The Jumping Burrito, The Jumping Soda, The Jumping Fries, and such are the games available for players to get their hands on. The standard edition of each game is $1.49, and the “TURBO” edition (what it’s called) is $2.99. It’s a cheap buy until you realize that the game is over in about two minutes.

If you don’t think this game is a masterpiece, I don’t know what is. Notice how fast the person playing is receiving trophies? This may seem stupid, but to trophy hunters, it is a dream come true. What most of these competitive trophy hunters do is that they buy the same game from different regions, effectively multiplying their gains.

Surprisingly, this is an extremely smart play for the people who made this game. Either they were uninspired, or it was their goal to make a game like this to appeal to trophy hunters. Regardless, it seems like they succeeded immensely.

Trophies have always had a certain vibe to them. As a dedicated player of the Soulsborne genre, getting a Platinum trophy has been something out of this world. The achievements were extremely difficult, some were time taking, and many were unnecessarily complicated. However, that’s why it is an honor to achieve a Platinum trophy; the fact that it is hard and brutal.

However, even AAA titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man have extremely easy trophies and it is insulting to players that spend all the time and effort in achieving them through actually arduous games. The fact that these games have the same weightage as the likes of Grand Theft Auto V in terms of achieving trophies makes them seem pointless. Why is it that achieving a Platinum trophy in Cuphead takes dozens of hours, whereas the same takes only a few in Donut County?

Even games from companies like Telltale Games offer zero to minimum difficulty to get a Platinum trophy. Games like Life is Strange, Minecraft: Story Mode and The Walking Dead games offer bare resistance. Just make a choice here and there, and in a few hours, you have a Platinum trophy.

On the other side of the story, lies Resident Evil, having extremely unique and enjoyable trophies, coupled with enough difficulty to make every single one worth it. This is great, as other horror games, like Soma, do not really take an open approach to trophies and keep it linear.

The mindset of the team behind the games matters a lot as well. Ubisoft usually adds linear-based achievements with a bit of added flair, Rockstar Games adds dozens of trophies to match the size of its games, while indie titles show an excessive amount of uniqueness in the games.

However, the question is; do these “jumping” games sully the title and integrity of achieving the revered Platinum trophy? Yes, they most definitely degrade it down significantly. PlayStation Store has a section showcasing new games, which is listed chronologically, and since “real” games only come out once or twice a week, these games will actually be the first games listed for days at a time.