Game Developers Have a Love Affair With Weird Collectibles

"Where's my damn coffee?!"

I just beat Alan Wake, Remedy and Microsoft’s psychological horror thriller, and while it’s a great game one thing baffled me – well, beside the entire plot. Throughout the game are scattered 100 coffee thermoses; their inclusion (I’m inferring) is that they keep A. Wake awake (har har). But acquiring them is completely optional. The haunted writer doesn’t have a ‘stamina’ or ‘sleep’ gauge that needs to be maintained, which makes the coffee collection one of the oldest (and most tired) gameplay mechanics: the pointless collectible.

The success of achievements – and to a lesser degree trophies – have only encouraged the continued inclusion of arbitrary collectibles. If gamers have proven anything over the last few years it’s that they will actively seek out 200 Golden Acorns or 50 Shiny Buttons if it nets them an additional 15 gamerscore or a bronze trophy. This focus on helping gamers inflate their nerd cred means developers are opting out of offering players tangible rewards for their scavenging, like invisibility codes or new costumes.

Of course certain games feature collectibles that do both – provide that warm feeling in your stomach when the “Achievement/Trophy Unlocked” box pops up and award you with new in-game abilities. God of War III is a great example of this: seeking out godly possessions like Poseidon’s Conch Shell gives Kratos unique powers or otherwise tweaks the gameplay. But for every God of War III is an Alan Wake or Modern Warfare 2, where nabbing collectibles is merely busy work to artificially extend play time. And “busy work” is the antithesis of the concept of video games.