The Curious Case of Completionism

The first step to solving a problem is admitting it, they say. I am a completionist (to a degree). I attempt to 100% Assassin's Creed games. The best I have ever done is 99.52% on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, but I have approximately 95%-ed all the other games in the series (save for Origins which I am currently working through and Odyssey which I cannot afford right now). According to Matthew Gault, the author of this article on the harmful effects of overindulgent completionism, I do it for the dopamine (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kd57v/confessions-of-a-semi-reformed-video-game-completionist-stressweek2017). All those chests and mission icons and manuscripts and synchronization towers and the rest in the Assassin's Creed: Unity map picture above; well I cleared all of them. This completionist streak I have with this series has become a semi-joke/semi-serious talking point I have with my friends who are familiar with the games. I would hesitate to say that my completionism has impeded my life in any significant way, but that might be the addict in me talking (I'm here at UChicago, aren't I?) Then I played Braid. In a 2010 interview about the ending of the game, Jonathan Blow says, "...I make video games, or one of the many reasons, is that I want to do some art things - I'll say art, right - and what I want to do is communicate certain feelings, situations" (http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a284605/braid-ending-explained-by-jonathan-blow/) I was perplexed by the ending because it did not end tidily. The texts were quasi-non sequitur, the ending did not answer all my questions, and his explanations did not answer them either. But he wasn't attempting to close the circle. His goal wasn't a neat narrative that began and ended to satisfy the player. "You're burdening me with your ridiculous need," says the epilogue, and maybe Blow speaking directly to my completionist shoulder-devil. Blow is procedurally telling all the completionists out there, "stop completing and just feel." As Bogost says, the game deals with guilt, time, doubt, and forgiveness, not with a narrative that wraps up and goes to rest with the press of the power button. Blow is provoking, not satiating; wresting, not comforting. Braid's artistic accomplishment, for me, is a direct challenge to larger production teams and triple-A game titles that inundate the player with thousands of tasks to do, playing to their dopamine receptors and keeping eyeballs glue to the screen. Blow reached out to me through Braid and says, "You deserve better. You aren't just a hedonist. You're a fully realized human with more than just a completionist streak. FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE." I will carry Braid with me for the rest of my life, not because it was a narrative that spoke to me in droves. No, Braid challenged my schemas of what video games could be. Braid was art to me in that it shifted the medium to a place that, I think, it should explore more. Will I still attempt to 100% games? Probably. However, 100%s have no longer become the achievement they once were for me. I no longer judge a game based on all the stuff it wants me to complete. You can complete Braid, sure, but is that really the point? Blow wants games to be more than that; games should be experiences that provoke, making us feel uncomfortable and rethink what we take for granted.