Complicating the Curious Case of Completionism

Earlier this week, a classmate posted about “The Curious Case of Completionism,” describing how Braid forced them to overcome their desire to attain 100% completion and instead focus on the experience of the game. This is a valuable perspective, and I think both Braid and Problem Attic are all-but-explicitly trying to evoke this sort of response. However, I’d like to offer an alternate perspective.

Like ajbarnhardt, I am also, to an extent, a completionist. I am the sort of gamer that can’t bear to leave a quest marker uninvestigated in games like The Witcher 3, nor can I leave a Burial Urn un-looted in Skyrim. My proudest “100% completion” is The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and I had to work hard to resist the urge to spend my summer Korok hunting in Breath of the Wild. I suppose I live for that dopamine release.

When I played the games for this week, particularly Braid and Problem Attic, my completionist instincts kicked in, like they always do. I was eager to solve Braid’s tricky puzzles, and collecting each puzzle piece gave me that same feeling of satisfaction that my gaming career has trained me to seek. Now, I had played Braid once before, but while I had a vague memory of the challenges, they still held enough mystery to satisfy my solution itch. It was a blast. I loved it. However, the only aspect of the game that I was able to study academically was the narrative text, and while the text is a layered and fascinating topic for study, it is far from the whole experience of the game. I was so distracted by the puzzle-solving goal that I missed out on much of the game’s artistic aspects.

I found this to be even more of a problem in Problem Attic, for a number of reasons. One of the most obvious reasons, I think, was that this was the first time I had ever played the game. This made me even more focused on completing the puzzles, and less able to focus on other aspects. Another reason I had difficulty experiencing the game as art was the obfuscating nature of the game, both in terms of its puzzles and its mechanics. The fact that the game was so difficult to figure out made it necessary for me to focus on the gameplay even more. And not only that: I wanted to focus on the gameplay more. My stubborn, completionist tendencies pushed against the game’s difficulty like a fish fighting a current; the tougher the challenge, the harder I tried. Even though we were only required to play the game for an hour, I spent two and a half making it to the end of the game, only consulting the guide when I was truly stumped. I ended up pitting myself against the game, committing to achieving victory over it. As with Braid, the artistic elements fell by the wayside, trumped by the excitement and stimulation of a challenge.

Granted, most people aren’t as stubborn as me. And that’s a good thing, because this isn’t a particularly good way to play games, especially when the games have artistic goals. It could be argued that the ‘art’ aspect of the game experience happens regardless of the player’s attention to its details, but I’m not so sure. I knew beforehand that these were ‘art games.’ I read the Liz Ryerson piece before playing Problem Attic, and, as I said, I had played Braid once before. I knew that the games were trying to engage me on an artistic, aesthetic level, but I found myself distracted by the actual playing of the game, and considering the prevalence of “completionist” culture in the gaming industry, I doubt I am the only one. It seems likely that a significant portion of the gaming world blocks out the artistic elements of these types of games, which means a significant portion of these games’ audience misses the point.

So who’s to blame? Of course, it is easy to argue that it is the responsibility of the player, especially any player involved in the academic study of a game, to develop the skills necessary to participate in the game’s experience more wholly. As a scholar, I did not fully engage with these texts, and that is my responsibility. However, this problem could complicate the idea of the ‘art game.’ It may be wise for game developers to keep the completionist mentality in mind as they craft their game, in order to make sure their art is properly received.