Achievements are a long debated topic among any crowd that would consider arbitrary scores based on progress through videogames any kind of intellectual discourse. Their usefulness, whether or not they encourage the right type of gameplay and any other subsequent discussions were divided along the faultline between the fans of different consoles, more so when Sony announced they would be bringing Trophies onto the PS3, a very similar reward system that acted as a meta game where you level up by earning them. While Trophies were announced, it took quite a long time for games to get implemented with them and many launch titles will likely never see the rewards. Now that it is a mandate and becomes more commonplace the next step is to match the real obsessive nature of the Gamerscore that Microsoft has implemented for the Xbox 360, the ability to log on and view your friend’s activity and continually compare your scores. In what has become an obsessive game for some, the competitive nature of earning that impossible-to-get achievement has sparked a lot of fierce competition, and Sony has taken that oh-so-important first step with the ability to look at your own trophy list through the PlayStation website.

This first stage does not allow you to have the same robust features that are featured through the Xbox Live website, in that you can not directly see or compare yourself to your friends to see who has the elusive “Burnout Elite” license or who spent 3 minutes idling in Flower. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to not have this feature, and it isn’t something that has been a glaring omission, but it adds to the social aspect of the network, and having the ability to interact with and understand the gaming habits of your peers is going to extend the use of the system and ultimately how people associate themselves with the brand. Trophies add a new meta game to using the PS3 as a platform, and has you level up the same you would in an RPG. Each trophy, depending on its level of difficulty, counts as a certain amount of experience. It’s an interesting take on the concept, and having it more prevalent online will do a lot to help make online communities more aware of just how many people are actively playing games, PS3 exclusives, and utilizing an online experience that has absolutely no fees associated with it.

When the next stages of development for this service roll out and allow direct trophy comparison, we should see it hit a big note with PS3 users, myself included. Extending the functionality of trophy watching to other services will only help build the PlayStation brand and show off the community that is being built around their platform.