Dhobo's 100% Challenge (or: How I learned to stop touristing and completionate my games)

dhobo

published on June 28, 2016

Gaming was great as a kid

Growing up in a small remote town, I'd save up my allowance to blow the whole enchilada on an expensive SNES cartridge once or twice a year when visiting larger cities which had actual "malls" and "game stores," maybe get another game or two via birthdays and holidays via mail order catalogue.

You might be thinking, "Wait, what the heck makes that great? That sounds terrible!" especially if you're a collector!

Owning games back then was an absolute treat because you savoured the handful of titles you had. Playing and replaying ...and overplaying the ever living heck of of the titles you owned because they were your only options outside of the occasional rental or borrowing games from your friends. You got to know your games inside and out and could practically play them with your eyes closed by the time you acquired your next gaming treat.

Case in point: I beat Battletoads (no warping!) as a kid. /brag

$110 Chrono Trigger. Never forget


Learning How to Adult

Something drastically changes when you acquire:

  • Increased disposable income
  • Greater access to game sales and bundles

Suddenly, those 2-4 games a year turn into 8-10 games a year, or 10-30 games a year, or with the advent of bundles, digital distribution, ridiculous sale prices... hundreds of games a year (For some people, at least...) At this point, you're not just a gamer but also a game collector.

The problem that arises with being a responsible adult and having more games to play is that it creates a serious clash in priorities. You're investing a lot of your time into work, social obligations, family and find yourself trying to figure out how to most wisely spend your limited gaming time.

  • "I should beat World 5 in Super Mario 3D!"
  • "Oh, I forgot to put away Dragon Age Inquisition... How long's that been sitting in the drive?"
  • "I don't even remember where I left off with this game. I don't want to start over and do all of that over again... I'll get to it later."
  • "I also need to unlock more characters in Binding of Isaac: Rebirth!"
  • "Or maybe I'll chill out and do a couple of cargo deliveries in Euro Truck Simulator 2"
  • "While I'm at it, I ought to install that cool indie game everyone was fawning over that I got for cheap on the last steam sale!"
  • "I wanna try this new game instead, see how it looks!"

If this sounds anything like the process you go through when you're getting ready to hunker down for your game session, congratulations! You're what I call a gaming tourist.

Aforementioned cool indie game everyone was fawning over.... and with good reason!


Tourist Season

Like a tourist on a one week vacation in Rome, a gaming tourist will find themselves overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time to do it in. Bouncing from game to game to game, never quite getting into the groove of any single game to experience it properly from start to finish, or worse yet, leaving the whole thing abandoned. It becomes increasingly frustrating that while your collection is flourishing, you're not able to take the time out and properly enjoy the very things you're buying!

It's the situation I found myself in as my game collecting habits started to overwhelm my steadily declining game playing free time. New games would pile up, distracting me from what I was currently playing, but I'd keep buying new games to beef up my collection, repeat ad nauseam. It honestly got to the point of being stressful and aggravating.

Something had to change, but it wasn't going to be my game buying habits. I'm a collector through and through after all! It was my attitude that needed some re-configuring.


100% and Beyond!

I adopted a new philosophy when approaching my game playing habits. Whereas at one time, I might have upwards of 20-30 games in various states of being incomplete, I've since reduced that number to 2 or 3 games that I "focus" on. By focus, I mean making sure that I have experienced that game through and through. That means seeing everything that the game has to offer me so that I can honestly say that I have played that game in it's entirety. This goes beyond simply getting to a credits screen, or even filling out an achievement/trophy list. It's about getting the full experience that I would have received as a kid when my collection wasn't as massive as it is now.

  • Side quests? Check.
  • Challenge modes? Check.
  • Unlockables? Check.
  • Easter eggs? Exploits? Glitches? Checkarooni!
  • Etc...

If it's in a game, I want to experience it. I do my utmost to leave no stone unturned and no pixel unscrutinized for any secrets it may hold for me. If I were reading a book, I don't skip a page here and there, a sentence, a word, or a single letter (Alright, that last one's taking the analogy too far, but you get my drift!) It gets read from start to finish so that you get the whole story!

No exceptions.


Reconciliation

After I started treating games in this way, I discovered something interesting about myself. I began to feel a greater sense of satisfaction by the time I reached the end of a game that I had "completionated" rather than puttered about while in tourist mode. For example, by the time I'd reached the end of Final Fantasy for the NES, I had seen every enemy the game had to offer, talked to all the npcs, and opened every chest. When I finally beat Chaos, I felt as if I could properly retire the game from my backlog once and for all, not just put it aside for "later." Outside of challenge runs (a whole other topic) there was nothing else the game could offer me any longer and I didn't feel like there was any unfinished business when I went on to play my next game.

So while my game collection growth is still outpacing my ability to finish my games (even moreso now!) I've stopped worrying about all these unplayed games sitting there. Those are for "Collector" Me.

"Gamer" Me is going back to my childhood roots and having fun again.


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