Why you complete video games, and how it could tear you apart.
Getting caught in a cycle of completionism could be causing you to miss out on your life.
Every gamer has done it at least once. You play a game, absolutely adore it, and don’t want it to end. It’s a common feeling once you’ve beaten a game, since you’ve come to adore its mechanics, story, controls, and overall gameplay. Desperate for more, you go and complete a sidequest. Then, you go find a secret. And collect a rare item. And replay a mission for a perfect score. The cycle continues on and on, until eventually, an emblem shows up, telling you that you’ve fully completed the game.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, collectionism in video games is the practice of milking a video game for all it is worth. Playing through every level of a game, collecting every item, killing every enemy, et cetera. It’s standard practice for many, but most don’t understand why. Moreover, they don’t understand the effects that it may be having on their lives. And after unwittingly becoming a collectionist myself, I took it upon myself to find out everything I could about this odd practice.
AN ACCIDENTAL COMPLETIONIST
Back in April of 2020, I played through the game Celeste. I relished in the beautiful story, took in the gorgeous visuals, and lavished in the tight and natural controls. The emotional story about mental health hit me hard. It was perfect. However, after about 3 days of on-and-off play, I reached the peak of the mountain, completing the main story. For many, this is where their experience with a game stops. However, Celeste has a bonus level. This level, known as “Core,” requires players to get four crystal hearts (collectibles hidden in each level) to play. I decided that it sounded fun enough, and went back through the base game, collecting the crystal hearts along the way. Once I had four, I made my way through the level. It was just as fun as the rest of the game.
However, I wanted more, and the game was there to provide it.
See, Celeste’s levels are filled with collectible strawberries, obtainable through extra platforming challenges, or hidden behind secret walls. They’re put in the game for players seeking to replay levels who want a slightly different experience. I collected them all.
It wasn’t enough.
Luckily, in each of the levels, a “B-Side” tape can be found, unlocking harder versions of every level. These B-Sides are put in the game for more experienced players to put their skills to the test. I collected every tape and beat every B-Side.
Once you complete every B-Side, another set of levels is unlocked. An even harder version of each level, known as a C-Side, becomes available. These C-Sides are shorter, but infinitely more intense. Completing the B-Sides also unlocks golden strawberries, obtainable through completing a level with a certain condition, such as “no deaths.”
At this point, you’re probably realizing what was happening to me.
In no time at all, I had all but completed the C-Sides. The strawberries were mine. I had even collected the first golden strawberry. Without realizing it, I had been drawn into this game and was putting multiple hours a day into doing unnecessary tasks, and I didn’t even understand why.
AN OPPORTUNITY TO UNDERSTAND
In September, the school year began, and my obsession with Celeste had to take a backseat in my life. I would still open up the game every once in a while, to give a level a few extra tries, but it was largely absent.
However, in January, I was assigned a project that would relight the spark.
My AP Language and Composition class was given an assignment in which we were given free rein of a feature article. As long as our topic was school-appropriate, we would be allowed to write about it. At first, I bounced between topics that related to my favorite pieces of media, until I got home. As I sat down to play a bit of Celeste, I was reminded of the question that I had been struggling with throughout the past year.
Why do people collect things and fully complete video games?
After the topic was approved, I began work.
To try and get a grasp on the reason for my newfound collectionism, I dove into research on the practice of collecting items in general. Though it may not be an exact analog, the practice of scouring for bottle caps may be able to unravel my habit of fiending for strawberries. To my surprise and delight, it was a topic that was well researched. An article from Heritage Auctions proposed a few ideas on the roots of collectionism. According to them, collectionism has its base in the desire for personal pleasure, recognition from other collectors, or a desire to share a hobby with someone. They also proposed the idea of collectionism being based on personal connections to the material. An article entitled “Remembering Grandma” reaffirms some of these ideas, but explores a very important one that was left out: the collections of things that help one feel stable. Collections, though they might grow over time, always fundamentally stay the same, and can thus bring a sense of comfort in an everchanging world. Mark McKinley, a late professor from Ohio, points out that collectionism begins as a means of extending another hobby, whether that be baseball cards, comic books, or in this case, video games. The motivation may derive from a desire to feel control over something or to gain more value in the community, or, for many, to return to a piece of the past.
One only needs to look at the Pokemon card resurgence that has been occurring to see these ideas in action. Many millennial-aged influencers have been paying thousands of dollars for Pokemon cards, even though they may not actually have that much value. Part of the high price tag may be the rarity of the cards, but it is impossible to deny that it could also be the nostalgia factor. After all, millennials grew up at the time that Pokemon was rising in popularity, and anyone born after 1989 probably has fond memories of collecting Pokemon cards as a kid and trading them with friends.
After only about a week of research, I had already found some solid answers. However, I wanted to know more about collectionism in the realm of video games, and so I turned to my classmates.
AN INTENSE LINE OF QUESTIONING
[Note: all quotes in this section have been edited for concision and clarity.]
My interviewee was Eliot McAvay, a junior here at Xaverian. His most played game of all time is Minecraft, with over five thousand hours played throughout twelve years. He discovered it back in 2009 when it was still a simple browser game. “Even though all you could do was break and place cobblestone,” he says, “I still played it a ton.” His connection with Minecraft clearly goes deeper than a simple love of a game. He’s been playing this game since he was a child, which may prove the theory that collectionism is connected to nostalgia.
Minecraft is a sandbox-style game, with infinitely generated terrain, and therefore content. Though I was curious as to how completionism may work, my questions were quickly answered, when I discovered that Eliot had acquired every single item in the game, and completed every main objective.
FV: “How would you describe your collectionism relating to the game?”
EM: “Every single time I get an item, I keep it. I probably have a couple million items stored, just in case I ever need them.”
Unable to process the breadth of his collection in Minecraft, I turned to another game that he plays: Forza Horizon 4. Forza is a racing game that is lauded for its stunning graphics and accuracy to real cars. Every week, three to five new cars are added to the game, unlockable by completing various challenges.
FV: “So, have you ever had a tough time getting a certain car?”
EM: “Yes. There was this one car that I spent the whole week trying to get. It was a group challenge, so I had to invite friends to help me do it, for hours on end. I would spend most of my time working on it, and the only time I spent outside of it was school and homework.”
This was somewhat troubling to me. Not because it didn’t line up with my research, but because it was something that I had experienced for a bit while playing Celeste. The fact that it was a recurring symptom was… disturbing, to say the least.
FV: “Have you ever felt a link between your mental health and the amount of time you put into grinding out games?”
EM: “What would that mean, exactly, in the realm of gaming?”
FV: “Like, have you ever felt like you play games more when you’re in a dark place?”
A pause.
FV: “You don’t have to get into specifics, if you’re not comfortable with it.”
EM: “When I’m having a tough time, I turn to Minecraft. There’s a ton to do, and it’s kinda mindless and satisfying.”
FV: “So it’s like a stress reliever?”
EM: “It’s not so much about stress relief as it is the satisfaction of completing a project. The feeling of finishing something is just so satisfying, even if there’s something new on the horizon. It’s just nice to know you won’t have to work on this thing anymore.”
At this point, I had started to develop some connections between the ideas proposed by the sources and the information I had gathered through Eliot. Clearly, there was some credence to the idea that nostalgia spurred on collectionism. Having played a game since childhood only proves that.
What was most interesting to me, though, were the connections between Eliot’s collectionistic outlook, and the article “Remembering Grandma.” When asked why he collected so many items in Minecraft, Eliot said that it was “just in case he ever needed [one].” Having such a buildup of items provides comfort that, no matter what may happen, the collection will always be there as a pillow. It’s a form of comfort that leads to hoarding in real life, but has no real detriments within games.
However, his story about becoming enveloped in his games entirely still didn’t sit right with me. I did the only thing that I could, and researched more.
AN OPPORTUNITY TO UNDERSTAND, PT 2
My research quickly led me to a Vice article by Matthew Gault, a freelance journalist and “semi-reformed video game completionist.” Though I went in with the hope of finding out that there was nothing wrong with video game completionism, the opening line crushed it immediately.
“There are healthy ways to deal with stress and unhealthy ways to deal with stress. When backed into a corner, I tend to go with the unhealthy options. Which is how video games helped destroy my first marriage.”
This seems fun.
The rest of the article details Gault’s loss of control over his life to video games. Instead of paying attention to the rest of his life, he had become addicted to video games. In his own words, he had “settled for the small dopamine kick that comes from accomplishing quick repetitive tasks in a video game.” Though the rest of his life may have been able to provide that same rush of dopamine, the simplicity of video games drew him in. Being able to accomplish things so quickly is almost infectious, which is why so many people turn to them in times of trouble.
That’s not to say that all video games will inherently cause problems due to their addictive nature, but rather that the opportunity is always there. “In some ways it’s just the sense of completion and fulfillment,” says Fletcher Wortmann, author of Triggered: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. “If things are going wrong with your life or you’re bored and nothing seems rewarding, it’s very easy for people to latch onto [a video game] and say, ‘I can do this perfectly.’”
My immediate thought was of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. In the experiment, children were left in a room with a marshmallow for fifteen minutes. If they waited for the whole fifteen minutes, they would be given another marshmallow on top of the one they already had. If not, they would get nothing. Though it may seem obvious to wait for the second marshmallow, many don’t find the option appealing. They would rather have a quick burst of satisfaction now, and miss out on the marshmallow they otherwise would have received. Gault became so addicted to the quick thrills, and eventually lost his wife, his job, and the life he had been living up to that point.
And we can see this in Eliot, too. He found satisfaction in the completion of tasks that were simple and mindless. However, when one leans too far into it, it can quickly become toxic, and tear your life apart. Putting so much effort and time into completing those simple, attainable tasks causes you to lose sight of the larger picture, and forget about life outside of the game. Allowing this to spiral can cause problems on a larger scale, which may feed into the addiction even more.
TROPHY EARNED: 100% COMPLETE
There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about video games. That being said, it’s extremely easy to fall into bad habits.
But how does all this tie back to me and Celeste?
Honestly, I think that I can relate to every single reason that might lead to completionism. Playing the game began as a hobby, and I wouldn’t have begun playing the game if it weren’t for the game’s passionate community motivating me to.
But what about having an emotional connection? Sure, we could assume that it has to do with the story of the game (which is likely somewhat accurate), but it has to be more than that.
And I know exactly why.
The first time I played Celeste was April 2020. Just around the time that the pandemic became an inevitability. This radical change in attitude caused me to return to the thing I was most familiar with: video games. I subconsciously submerged my entire self into Celeste and didn’t realize it until school came along to wake me up. And the most terrifying thing is that some people don’t have anything that can wake them up until it’s too late. If it weren’t for school, work, and my family, I might have spiraled out of control and lost my entire life. It happened to Gault. It could have happened to Eliot.
This is not a piece warning you not to play video games, though some may take it as one. Rather, it’s a piece reminding yourself to remain aware of your life when playing video games. Don’t allow yourself to get caught in your own tracks. Realize why you’re playing, and when you need to take a break.
Otherwise, you may find yourself losing your life as you gain items.
SOURCES
http://www.msjudith.net/other/040599.htm
https://nationalpsychologist.com/2007/01/the-psychology-of-collecting/10904.html
https://www.ha.com/intelligent-collector/why-do-we-collect-things.s?article=collect