So i'm pretty bad at finishing games. I always have been since the NES era. Maybe its lack of gaming skill or the frustration of getting stuck in one section, but i barely finish games UNTIL THIS YEAR.I am an avid video game collector, and ive always been annoyed that i spend soo much money buying games, but i never seemed to finish anything. Off course there are the occasional games like Call of Duty or Final Fantasy, but ive had a pretty bad history of abandoning games. Its weird what spurred this on, but ive beaten about 11-12 games this year because i started trophy hunting and found a website backloggery.com. Thats more that i finished in within the last 6-7 months than i have in about 3 years even while still playing my multi player games (cod and other sports games). I've been having a blast gaming, and feeling a bit of validation for purchasing games.

Trophies- i have to admitt, i thought trophies and gamerscores were pointless mechanics. I thought they were too hard and detracted from my experience because some trophies required me to play a game in a way that i did not want to (cod waw where 1 trophy required me to play a level using only a knife). I also thought there was no incentive to get all trophies. Well i was wrong. I started going after trophies purely out of boredom. Then hunting trophies became a competition for myself to try to have the most trophies among my gamer friends.

It brought 2 things to my gaming experience-

• it raised up the replay value for any of my games. I replayed through games or gaming sections to get trophies. So a single player campaign that took me 8 hours to beat, i would play double that, or play through the single player campaigns 2x or more (my first platinum da:o i put in 100+ hours)
• it motivated me to beat games- since games had trophies for beating single player campaigns, it motivated me to power through frustrating sections or it allowed me to push through the first couple of hours when the story/game mechanics arent fully fleshed out.

trophies introduced me to an extra dimension to gaming, and its been beneficial...so i'm sorry gaming trophies/achievements- i was wrong.

Backloggery- I've always been competetive, but not in the " I always have to be the best" kind of way, but i always wanted to be among the respected. So my fellow CCU (candid Collectors Union. check this union out especially if you are a game collector) members introduced me to backloggery.com . This website made finishing a game a sort of competition with other fellow members, or just to show to yourself your gaming progress. It took my desire to be respected and used it as extra motivation to complete games. I don't want to know that i have only completed 33 % of my games, and i have 154 unfinished games.

Gaming is an awesome hobby. It allows people to escape to a beautiful world not seen in reality, a stress reliever, another collection hobby,or a way for friends to enjoy each others company without being phyiscally in the same room. Whatever the case why gamers play, some of us might forget that completing a game is fun. A gaming experience is fulfilled by seeing a game to the end, and not doing so constricts the experience, so find that push or motivation and power up that console and beat some games.