The implementation of the “trophy” system on the Playstation 3 is a pretty cool idea, but it has a few drawbacks.

It’s nice to be able to boast my gaming accomplishments against my friends on PS3 like X-Box 360 players could since launch. However, adding trophies in to games that previously didn’t have them is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, I can get more enjoyment out of older games, but on the other hand I’m hesitant to put in a large time investment in a game that doesn’t have trophies because I’m afraid the developers will patch in trophies.

I only have so much time in my day to dedicate to gaming these days. There are a lot of games I would like to play through a second or third time, but I often can’t because I have too much to do between school and work.

If I can only play through a game once, I want to receive the entire experience. As a result, I stopped playing “Pixel Junk Monsters” as soon as I heard the game would eventually receive trophies.

This wouldn’t be a problem if trophies were retro-active, but that would create a problem with gamers copying saved data to obtain trophies without earning them.

Gamers known as “complete-ists” are likely annoyed every time new “trophies” are put in to games for things they’ve already done. A “complete-ists” strives to finish everything—reasonable—in a game.

There has to be a better way, right?

Pixel Junk Monsters added “trophy” challenges” to the game as a way to encourage even annoyed “complete-ists” to play the game again. The games trophies are earned in a new “challenge mode” that was added to the game as a free expansion.

Why can’t more developers implement a similar strategy?

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