Let’s face it: All the best athletes have to retire someday. It’s hard to stay competitive in a sport when your body is no longer functioning at its best. Even in esports, where physical demands are less, most players retire by their mid-20s.
But what about trophy hunters? Trophy hunting is a sport like all the rest, only the competitive aspects are completely optional. You can engage with leaderboards and community challenges as much as you’d like, but you can also simply track your own hard-won progress; no rivals needed.
This begs the question: When should you retire as a trophy hunter? If trophy hunting is entirely what you make of it, then who’s to say what one’s stopping point should be?
In this article, we explore this question in depth. While retiring from the game is a deeply personal decision, we have outlined 5 non-starters that indicate you should retire or, at the very least, take a break from trophy hunting. Trust me when I say that we do not take these suggestions lightly!
Table of Contents
Trophy Hunting No Longer Sparks Joy
Before making any drastic decisions, consider this: Does trophy hunting enrich your life? When you play video games all the way through for the sake of completionism, what emotions does it render? Happiness, pride, ambition? Or… apathy?
Frankly, if a hobby doesn’t give you the warm and fuzzies at any point during the process, it might just not be the hobby for you. While one can’t expect something to be wonderful all of the time—nothing worth doing ever is—it shouldn’t be like pulling teeth. Nor should it fill you with ambivalence.
If trophy hunting never produces positive feelings, then you should consider taking a break. Let your passion rekindle with distance before attempting to stoke it again. It doesn’t have to mean completely abstaining from video games; try to play something that fulfills you and brings back that unbridled joy, without the pressure of achievements taking up space in your brain.
Nintendo games are generally excellent options for palette cleansers to help get the spark back. Alternatively, if you are principled, Xbox or PC titles can be good options as well. Just don’t get sucked into the rabbit hole of exploring adjacent (and ultimately equivalent) achievement ecosystems, as you will just end up plugged back in the Matrix.
You Hate Every Game You Complete
Every trophy hunter worth their salt has been here before. You play a game that turns out to be inoffensive, yet not anything special. You feel overwhelmingly neutral about the whole experience. That is… until you start the official trophy hunt.
Whether in extortionate time commitment, poor game design, or ridiculous requirements, said middling title has long overstayed its welcome. This game that you didn’t particularly like or dislike has now dropped sharply into the shame bin.
Worse yet is when it’s something you actually liked. Now you can’t look at old favorites without some level of disdain creeping up from bad memories. Trophy hunts souring otherwise decent games is such bitter medicine.
Given that trophy hunting can be such a mixed bag, it makes sense that the occasional title might find itself squarely in this situation. However, if every video game you play ends up driving you mad, that should give you pause. Is it truly the game that’s the problem?
It is absolutely worth taking a sabbatical from trophy hunting if the above description matches your experience with shocking regularity. Take time away to reflect on what the common thread is to these recurring negative feelings.
Are you consistently undertaking trophy hunts that are too difficult for your current skill level, or do you need a mindset shift to stop taking every mishap so personally? Could it be that you may need to change your approach to trophy hunting altogether to prevent building up resentment? Some trophy hunters thrive by jumping between a handful of different titles concurrently, while others focus on one at a time until the deed is done.
Figure out what kind of trophy hunter you are and discover what makes you tick along the way. In my case, I always have a handful of different games on rotation to keep things varied and interesting. I very rarely start and finish a game without an intermediary title or three.
You’ll notice on my PSN Profiles page that many titles I complete have taken anywhere from a few months to many years. For example, I didn’t return to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered to get its platinum trophy (and subsequent 100% stack) for almost 10 years! I’ve learned that this method is what works for me, but it might not be ideal for others.
You Put Off Gaming Because It’s Work
Playing video games is an exceptional hobby for taking the edge off after a long day at the office (or retail store, we don’t judge!). It allows you to blow off steam in a safe environment, spend time with loved ones, and accomplish straightforward objectives that aren’t muddled up by management for once.
However, when it comes to trophy hunting, it’s all too easy to slip into an unhealthy mindset. This goes double for any perfectionists out there who are planning an entire year’s worth of platinum trophies in advance.
This type of objective setting can quickly create pressure on yourself to perform. If you tell yourself you need to earn 10 platinum trophies this year but fall behind schedule, you’re going to start overcompensating to meet your performance metric, or you’re going to stress out. And once you start getting stressed out over video games, the very thing that should be giving you relief, you know you’ve gone off the deep end.
Playing video games should be fun or fulfilling in some way or another. But when you’re forcing yourself to complete tedious, grindy tasks for the sake of trophies that don’t mean anything to you, that’s a sign. The sign turns neon, flashing red if you’ve started actively avoiding video games altogether, just so you don’t have to do these tasks.
At the end of the day, trophy hunting augments gaming. That means it takes the core of what makes video games great and improves them with additional context. The message here is simple: Don’t let the icing ruin the cake.
If you find yourself continuing trophy hunts for no other reason than because you must, I implore you to reevaluate your position. You have permission to drop a game for any reason. No one will scold you for deciding your time and energy is better spent on greener pastures than Birthdays the Beginnings.
It’s Taking Over Your Life
“Honey, we’re worried about you.”
If your loved ones are reaching out to stage an intervention, this is your sign to take it seriously. Video games and trophy hunting, by extension, are lovely pastimes that are rife with fulfilling rewards. But that’s just it—they’re a pastime.
When trophy hunting slips from a hobby you pop into here and there into a full-blown addiction, it’s gone too far. There aren’t hard and fast rules that dictate how much time spent playing video games constitutes an addiction.
However, once it starts interfering with your day job, relationships, health, daily responsibilities, and/or finances, it’s time to make the hard decision to step back. That includes staying up until 3 AM on a workday, you night owls!
It’s completely fair to be critical when a non-gamer suggests that your gaming habit could be unhealthy. Some people unironically state that gaming for an hour a day is too much (all while scrolling their social media feeds with the latest trendy show looping in the background, but I digress). But, in your heart of hearts, you’ll know if there’s any truth to their concerns.
Even if your support network doesn’t flag you down, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the clear. You should also think critically on your own about whether or not the above pillars of your life are being negatively impacted by excessive hours spent trophy hunting.
Acknowledging an addictive personality may be difficult. But just know that it doesn’t mean you have to abstain from something you love forever. You just need to learn how to engage with it in a healthy manner.
For my part, there are days where I spend 8 hours gaming. There are also days where I spend 0 hours gaming. I likely trend much higher than most people on average, though. Yet, my major life pillars are not impacted. If you can’t say the same, you should consider dialing back on trophy hunting and trying to find a better balance.
You’re Playing Games You Would Never Touch Otherwise
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Someone says one of the new PlayStation Plus game offerings is great, so you decide to give it a shot. It’s not usually your cup of tea, but maybe it’ll defy your expectations about the genre it hails from. Plus, it would be another platinum trophy on your line-up that didn’t cost you anything extra. That’s a win-win, right?
Shocker—the game is not great. It’s exactly what you expected from the outset. Why did you listen to that random comment on Reddit?
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Many trophy hunters have been fooled by a deceptively positive reception for a game. In fact, I can think of three examples offhand of titles that I should’ve known better than to listen to popular opinion: Maneater, Dirt 5, and SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated.
Can you guess how many of these I got the platinum trophy in? (All of them.) And can you guess how many of these I enjoyed? (Not a single one.)
Always trust your gut above any unknown source. Even “easy” platinum trophies can wear down your soul. If you still opt for these kinds of titles despite a history of getting swindled, you may need to reevaluate where you stand.
Trophies should have inherent value, above and beyond a simple +1 to your total platinum count. Nostalgic SpongeBob SquarePants fans almost certainly feel much differently than I did with Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, in which case the platinum trophy would mean a lot more to them than it did for me.
If you find yourself trophy hunting in games you have no real interest in on a regular basis, this may be cause for concern. This is especially true if you’re trending toward shovelware titles in a desperate bid to pump your numbers up as much as possible with no regard at all for their quality. It is truly not worth the effort to compete at the top level of the leaderboards, and doing so will only lead to burnout.
Conclusion
Choosing to take a break from trophy hunting can be a very difficult decision to make. It’s only natural, as you’ve likely invested thousands of hours curating your profile. A trophy hunter’s account is like a love letter documenting years of their history.
Some even choose to retire from trophy hunting after reaching a set milestone, like 100 platinum trophies. While this is a fun idea, I couldn’t imagine playing video games any other way than as a completionist. Which means I’m in it for the long haul.
Have you ever considered retiring from trophy hunting? Did you take a break and come back feeling more refreshed? Let us know in the comments below! If you’d like to connect with the trophy hunting community, check out our exploratory article about how much trophy hunters spend every year.
In the meantime, I propose a new gold trophy for everyone to add to their docket: touch grass. It’s currently got a low completion rate among the community, so let’s fix those rookie numbers!
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