How I Tried to Buy Myself a Title

For years, I've wanted to be The Guy.

You know--that person who is known for having or doing something interesting, even if it's just within my circle of friends. The Guy With the Antique Books. The Guy Who Plays Slide Guitar. The Guy Who Spent a Month Writing a Novel in a Cabin.

The problem is, I don't have the attention span, money, or talent to be The Guy in any truly fascinating capacity. But I also don't have the self-awareness to really convince myself that I can't ever be The Guy, so I keep creating new, often convoluted scenarios in which I could become The Guy. These goals, like Gamerscore, are pretty meaningless overall. They really only exist so I can have some sort of clout, as if I'm not worth knowing if I don't have a gimmick.

I'm sure I'll get into a number of these attempted goals, but today we're going to talk about the time I decided to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

For anyone who isn't aware, Disney Infinity is a video game franchise that started in 2013 and makes use of real-life figures of various Disney personalities. When scanned into the game, these figures allow you to play as their respective characters, which means that the game expands in playability as your collection of toys increases. The gameplay itself is roughly broken down into two modes: mission-based adventure worlds focusing on specific franchises, and a free-roam creative zone called Toy Box mode, where all characters can interact and build or destroy the world as they see fit.

Despite coming from a variety of franchises--Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Phineas and Ferb--the figures sport a universal art style that makes it reasonable for, say, the Lone Ranger to get into a paintball fight with Elsa.

Now, as with most things Disney, this wasn't an entirely new idea. The "toys-to-life" genre was first tested out in 2007 with Mattel's U.B. Funkey, which is that Neopet-looking thing at the bottom of every garage sale toy box:

While it started there, the toys-to-life concept exploded with 2011's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which featured 32 figures of mostly brand-new characters to collect and play as, but was able to capitalize on the name of a beloved purple dragon to get its footing. By the time Disney Infinity came on the scene, the Skylanders franchise was two games deep, with a third just around the corner. 

While Skylanders captivated millions of kids, I remained distant. The technology was fascinating, but I had no connection to any of these new faces. Plus, I wasn't a fan of the figures' artistic direction. I accidentally won this goober from a bag of Doritos, though:

But then Disney Infinity was revealed, and everything clicked. It was the novelty of the toys-to-life genre infused with the personality of characters almost everyone already knows and loves. How could that bomb goblin up there compare with Rapunzel, or Jack Skellington, or Buzz Lightyear? In short, it seemed a surefire success. And, at least initially, it was. With all that Mickey money powering the new franchise, Disney Infinity quickly gained an enormous foothold in every store's video game department.

It's worth mentioning at this point that, although the figures are delightful, Disney Infinity isn't a particularly great game. The creative Toy Box mode is severely hampered by a strict complexity limit, but even worlds that don't hit that cap tend to lag severely. The story modes were varying degrees of "alright". I still have fond memories of the Pirates of the Caribbean world, if only because there historically haven't been many decent pirate games to compete. On the other hand, my most vivid memory of the Monsters University world is just that I had MS MR's Secondhand Rapture album on repeat during the time I was playing it.

But, weirdly enough, the game has little to do with this story--at least, for now.

When Disney Infinity launched, I was attending college with my cousin (not the one I go camping with), and she has been a lifelong Disney fanatic. So when Disney Infinity came along and perfectly intersected her love for the House of Mouse with my longstanding collector's mentality (more on that later), I saw an in. An in on being The Guy, even if my sphere of influence was only this one person.

I don't blame her for what happened next, but I will attest that she was the catalyst behind my declaration:

"I'm gonna collect them all."

I didn't know it at the time, but this was a threat. To myself.

So, I'd decided to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content. But what exactly did that entail? How many figures were there? How much did they cost? What about other merchandise, like posters and controllers and carrying cases?

My solution to many of these questions was to make a spreadsheet.

The figures for the first Disney Infinity game were released in two waves: seventeen characters across five franchises available at launch in August 2013, with an additional twelve characters arriving between October 2013 and April 2014. Figures were priced at $12.99 each, with a few exceptions. Certain characters were available in three-packs for $30, while others were only found in "playset" packs, which paired two characters and their own campaign world together for $35.

Let's do some math.

After factoring in the $75 starter kit, determining which combo packs I would have purchased, and assuming I didn't take advantage of any sales at places like Toys "R" Us or Target (which I definitely did, and that helped a lot), I can say with relative confidence that the total cost of obtaining all 29 figures for the first game was approximately:

That's not a good number.

Now, it's important to note that I did take advantage of several sales, so I would estimate my real investment to be a bit les. Let's call it $400.

But I left out a few things.

First off is Jack Skellington's "special edition" packaging, which provided a custom display case and retailed for slightly more than the standalone figure. Let's call him $20 total (or, $7 extra for the case), because I don't remember the exact price point and it's currently one of the only Disney Infinity items that has increased in value.

Next are the Crystal figures--Toys "R" Us exclusive transparent variants of seven figures that are marginally more powerful than their regular counterparts, but mostly exist purely as collector bait. They were the same price as regular figures, but sometimes a bit harder to track down--especially since I only visited Toys "R" Us for Disney Infinity merch, and only had one store in my area.

Then we have the Power Discs, the other major part of the game's marketing. These plastic tokens could stack on the game's base to provide extra content--powers and costumes from the round discs, and new items and textures from the hexagonal ones. They were sold in blind bags of two discs each, and they were massively over-produced--which, as it eventually turned out, was a recurring problem with the franchise. It wasn't uncommon to see huge sales on racks and racks of blind bags.

A quick thing about blind bag products: they are inherently more desirable to collectors if they are labeled in a way that acknowledges the possibility of completing a set. When I walk past the displays by the checkout stand, even a product I wouldn't normally care about becomes more interesting if it's marked "Collect all 12!" At that point, the product becomes somewhat irrelevant, because they're selling you on the idea of a checklist that you can complete in order to give yourself a sense of accomplishment--even if the accomplishment is having a dozen squishy plastic animals cluttering up your desk. The sentiment is doubly true if something is marked as "Series 1", because not only does it imply a set pool of items to collect, it also acknowledges the possibility for future sets that will have their own checklists, allowing for more potential worthless accomplishments.

I'm not trying to make it seem like I'm a genius for figuring out their marketing strategy. But it's important to note that even though I'm very aware of how it works, they still get me with it all the time. Heck, they even got me with baseball cards once, and baseball literally puts me to sleep.

And, let's face it: when you're twenty-something and feel like you'll never achieve any real sense of social, financial, or professional success because previous generations have shut the doors to stable careers and white picket fences behind them, and your peers have all spent years cultivating social media profiles that project lifestyles inherently more interesting than your own will ever be, marketing tricks like ""Buy this and feel something!" are very effective.

Anyways.

A total of 67 Power Discs were released during that first year, spread out across three series. Of those discs, a handful were Toys "R" Us exclusives, which came in their own specially-marked packs.

Now, I've been collecting trading cards off and on for over twenty years, so I know just how frustrating it can be to try and complete a collection when you can't see what you're buying. Thankfully, Power Discs had a few workarounds. First, you could feel the shape of the discs through the packaging. If you knew you were only missing a couple of round discs, you could filter out anything with a detectable corner. Second, although there were seven "rare" discs that were printed at a lower rate than the others, they featured lenticular labels that could be felt through the packaging as well.

So, yes, I would spend 15-30 minutes standing in Toys "R" Us, fondling pack after pack while I tried to find the most likely candidates to complete my collection. Thank you for asking.

A third workaround, which I don't believe I ever did personally, was that the game's base could detect the discs through the packaging. Therefore, you could buy them, scan them, and return them if they were duplicates (or, if you were just interested in unlocking them once for their in-game badges, you could effectively complete your digital collection for free).

I'm sure that after a while I got sick of dealing with the blind bags and switched to buying single Power Discs off eBay, but for simplicity's sake we're going to assume that I bought exactly as many packs as I needed to get every Power Disc--34 packs at $5 each.

Oh, there's one last figure I forgot to mention.

This is Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey:

And this is the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey variant figure, only available as a giveaway at Disney's D23 Expo in August 2013:

The only difference? The stars on his hat are silver instead of blue.

Only 5,000 of these suckers were made, and they are almost identical to the standard figure released a few months later. But technically, technically, it's a different figure. So I had to have it. My eBay history doesn't go back that far, but I believe I paid $135 for it.

The last item that unlocked in-game content for the first Disney Infinity game--but wasn't actually a Disney Infinity product itself--was the Magic Band, a type of digital pass/wallet for use in the Disney theme parks. I ordered one for... let's say $10. I mean, at this point it's obvious I had no respect for my own money.

And that's how I spent $713 on one video game.

Now, I will freely admit there were a few Disney Infinity products that I made no attempt to collect. These were mostly accessories, though--carrying cases for Power Discs, branded third-party console controllers, and other merchandise that did not qualify as actual game content. I ignored these the same way a Foo Fighters super-fan would collect all their music, but maybe not every t-shirt and poster they've ever printed. They don't really count towards completion.

So, there you have it: one complete Disney Infinity collection. Sure, I was over $700 deep into a game that I'd played for maybe thirty hours, and I didn't really have the space to display all the figures, but I'd done it. I was, at least in my small circle of myself and my cousin, The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

I really, really wish the story stopped here.

On September 23, 2014, a second game released: Disney Infinity 2.0 Edition. And instead of being all over the place with like the first base set, this one had a focus:

You guys, I love Marvel. I'm still working on my familiarity with the comics, but I have a huge place in my heart for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To this day, Avengers: Endgame is one of only three films that has made me shed a tear. So you best believe I was all over this new wave of Disney Infinity content (which also featured a healthy mix of Disney original characters). Plus, referring to it as "2.0 Edition" meant they were using a similar naming convention to the blind bag products I mentioned earlier, so you know I was hooked.

A total of 32 new figures were released over the next year, including two variant figures: a Crystal version of Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey (really getting some mileage out of that mold), and a Black Suit Spider-Man, which for many months was exclusive to the PlayStation Vita starter set (or, in my case, purchased for $34 off eBay). Additionally, four of the new figures had special display cases similar to Jack Skellington's, and I know I accidently doubled up on figures at least once because of that.

Besides the figures, 84 new Power Discs were released. Two of these were only available in a bundle with Aladdin and Jasmine figures, while another two were released as a "Rare Power Disc" pack. Instead of dealing with the blind bags again, I made two bulk purchases to obtain every disc except the two featured in the "Rare" pack. I also had to snag the two special mini-game discs which were included in the alternate starter set:

And, just for the heck of it, I snagged a Frost Giant statue/display stand that originally came with the PlayStation Collector's Edition when I saw it on clearance at a used game store:

After doing some more sticky-note math, I believe I actually spent a little less on the 2.0 releases than the 1.0 collection. Not much less, mind you--we're still talking probably $600-650. But it was an improvement! I'd gotten everything for both installments, with the exception of the two "Rare" discs, which I would just keep an eye out for when I--

Okay, here's the thing.

I don't even like Star Wars.

I've never cared about it. I think some of the characters look cool, and I've seen parts of several of the movies, but as a whole the franchise does nothing for me. So I wasn't exactly stoked about this new iteration of Disney Infinity.

But I said I was gonna be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

And that meant collecting all--*gulp*--fifty-three new figures.

Seven of these were "Light FX" variants, which allowed the glow from the base to feed through the characters and into their lightsabers. They had no in-game differences from their standard counterparts, but they were technically--technically--different figures.

Thanks to the ridiculous number of figures, we're already over $700 before we even get to the Power Discs for this round (which, thankfully, were now sold in guaranteed sets instead of blind bags). Not only was this collection taking a huge toll on my wallet, but I'd long ago run out of space for my collection. Instead of earning a spot on my media shelf, new figures tended to be scanned into my game and then immediately dumped into a large cardboard box where my other figures lived. The process of collecting everything Disney Infinity had been fun for the first year or so, but now it was just a chore--a chore where the only consequences for stopping were good ones. But I plugged on.

As with the previous games, the figures for 3.0 were released steadily over the next several months, beginning with the starter set in August 2015. The holiday sales let me make significant progress on my collection at a reduced cost, but the figures were becoming more difficult to shop for since I was unfamiliar with many of the new characters. But by May 2016, releases were slowing to a trickle, and it was about time to start the hype train for 4.0 Edition. Where would they go next? Would they continue with one of their previous themes, or move into a new realm, like their ABC Studios content? Would we get a Pretty Little Liars playset?

I'm not sure you can imagine how much of a relief this was.

Apparently, all that Mickey Money was being spent on producing far more figures and discs than were being purchased, all in an effort to overrun the competition instead of cultivating a smaller, more stable market share. The cancellation came as a shock to many, from the general public who saw the Disney Infinity logo in every video game department to the hardcore fans who were already drooling over mock-ups of upcoming figures like Peter Pan and Doctor Strange.

Nemo and Dory from Finding Dory were released that June, marking the end of Disney Infinity's release cycle. Despite this, leaks continued to trickle in for what could have been, including a line of deluxe 12-inch figures including Darth Vader, Hulk, and Jack Skellington.

By the time the franchise was cancelled, my collection was almost complete. I was still missing those two Power Discs from 2.0, as well as figures of Nemo and Mickey Mouse (in his standard outfit) from 3.0. I'd even snagged up another D23 exclusive: a costume Power Disc that unlocked a Kingdom Hearts costume for Mickey. At only $82, it was a steal! (This is sarcasm and I'm numb to my own self-loathing.) I was so close, but I needed a break. So, for the time being, I turned my attention to the one last completion task. 

You see, all three Disney Infinity iterations were available on Xbox consoles, as well as Windows 8/10. And that meant there were achievements.

None of the games are particularly challenging, and having a collection of over 100 figures made several achievements very easy to obtain. Some of them took a while, but rarely was skill a factor.

But then in March 2017, the online servers for the entire Disney Infinity series were shut down. This meant that players could no longer join each others' games or share their creations, and any online-based achievements were made permanently unobtainable. Thankfully, we had some warning that the servers would be closing, which was a blessing. The only thing more frustrating than having a game with achievements that you don't want to get is having a game with achievements that are physically impossible to get. Because of this, I made sure to not only get all the Xbox online achievements out of the way before the shutdown, but I even started the Windows 10 version of 3.0 Edition in February 2017 solely to pop the one online achievement present in that game. That way, I would someday be able to not only have a complete physical Disney Infinity collection, but I could also say I obtained every achievement in the franchise.

March 3 arrived, and the servers closed. It was a bummer that they couldn't even allow for players to connect directly, which many games can do without a dedicated server, but ultimately I had little interest in that part of the game. I played it almost entirely solo, and losing connection to the broader web of players was of little importance so long as I'd already gotten the online achievements, the only ones that would be inaccessible later.

This is the profile for the Windows 10 version of 3.0 Edition. Do you see how the number of "discontinued achievements" matches up perfectly with the total number of achievements? And do you see how my achievement total does not?

This is because, for whatever reason, even the single player achievements in the Windows 10 version of the game are tied to the online servers. So when they shut down in March 2017, the entire game was bricked as far as achievements were concerned. Meaning my one achievement on February 22--an attempt to make sure I'd be able to someday get every Disney Infinity achievement--actually condemned me to a game where I am eternally stuck at only 1 of 15 achievements. I will never be able to improve this score. There is no workaround, no cheat, nothing sneaky I can do. It's just...there. A permanent stain.

The complete shutdown of the Windows 10 game turned out to be the last straw for me. I haven't booted up any of the games, even the ones I'm still capable of completing, in over three years.

I still have all my Disney Infinity stuff, tucked away in a large box at my parents' house. I've yet to get those final two figures and discs, and I still can't decide if I ever will.

Part of me loves the idea of someday creating a display of the entire franchise's legacy, a way to commemorate its brief life and my foolish attempt to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content. I imagine a three-tiered shelf with perfectly-shaped slots for the figures' bases, with LEDs installed under the Light FX and Crystal figures to showcase their designs. The collection would take up more room than it deserves considering how quickly it switched from hobby to obligation, but it's a nice idea.

There's another part of me that just wants to get rid of it all--save the space, recoup a tiny fraction of the two thousand dollars I spent over three years, and acknowledge that it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. The sunk cost fallacy suggests this would be a waste, but we all know it's the healthiest choice. Well, all of us except that little voice in my head telling me I need to be The Guy somehow, but I think we know by now how crazy he is. 

And then there's one last, tiny part of me that wants to go even further.

You see, some of those unreleased figures--Peter Pan, Doctor Strange, the oversized characters--actually made it into early production. There aren't a lot out there--maybe a few hundred Peter Pans, and probably only a handful of the rest--but they exist. That last part of me wants to take this project to its illogical conclusion and track down every last figure, whether they saw a retail release or not. Then I'd truly be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

Of course, the prices for those figures are absolutely insane.

But let's be honest, we can all see that I clicked on them.

How I Ruined Camping With Achievements

With only a few exceptions, I have gone camping with my parents and my older cousin every year since I was five. We are by no means "hardcore" campers, but my mom did try to enforce a "no phones" rule for as long as possible. My cousin was the first to routinely break this rule as a teenager, when his hormones kicked in and his hierarchy of needs underwent a small adjustment.

I, of course, eventually became a teenager myself, but I tried to uphold the spirit of camping longer than my cousin did. In fact, it was actually sort of relaxing being entirely separated from the larger world for a few days. I would spend the better part of each camping trip curled up by the fire, enjoying a good book and the sound of the rushing river behind the trees.

Then came 2014.

On January 12, just two months after ruining video games for myself forever, I discovered a website for broken people like myself. It was called TrueAchievements, and it was my personal Xbox achievement spreadsheet on steroids. Here's a sample page:

Not only did it include all the information I'd been tracking on my own (presented in a much more attractive fashion), it also featured achievement guides, discussion forums, and community challenges. One of the site's most novel features--which we'll touch on later--was community-organized "Boosting Sessions", where players would gather at a specific time and help each other obtain specific achievements.

I had known other players collected Xbox achievements, but this was a whole new ball game. Now this was where I belonged.

After getting over the initial flood of offerings TrueAchievements provided, the feature that most interested me was a personal statistic called "Achievement Streaks", the longest stretches of time a player obtained one or more achievement across consecutive days. And, wouldn't you know it, I had racked up a 13-day streak in late 2013 without even realizing it! I eagerly rushed to the leaderboards to see how I stacked up against other users and--

Well.

I knew I was years behind making a dent in the site-wide leaderboards--which would naturally continue to move further from my reach as the top players continued their streaks--but I could still try for a personal best. I decided to set my sights on 100 days. One achievement minimum per day for just over three months. It would be a challenge, but hardly impossible. And once I'd done that, I would go back to my new normal of getting as many achievements as possible, as fast as possible. No point dragging things out when the pool of available Gamerscore was growing with each new game release.

The streak began on February 8 with "Close to the Animals", a fairly simple achievement in the new Zoo Tycoon game for the Xbox One (which, in case you're wondering, pales in comparison to the PC original). From there, I bounced around to numerous titles including Tomb Raider, Lego Batman, Jeopardy, Call of Duty, and Burger King's PocketBike Racer.

(These are all real games, available from Burger King restaurants for $5 each in 2006. None of them are very good, but they are interesting for being--as far as I know--the only discs to contain both the Xbox 360 and original Xbox versions of the same game on them.)

I didn't initially plan out the streak, because I knew I would be unlocking plenty of achievements naturally. Fable Anniversary--an HD remake of 2004's Fable--had just released at the start of the month, and I played it almost nonstop for about a week until I perfected it. That momentum carried me into bingeing several games over the next month, with brief pit stops in other titles.

During this time, I even participated in several boosting sessions for several multiplayer achievements I would have had a bear of a time obtaining organically. Besides just generally being more well-versed in achievement hunting, many of these gamers were from Europe, so I had to battle both poor microphone quality and international accents in addition to already feeling like a novice among pros. These sessions plumped up my Gamerscore and helped take care of some of the ugly black clouds lurking over my completion percentage.

(I would like to take a moment to remind you that this story started with camping, and assure you that we will return there at some point.)

It wasn't until the back half of March that I began actively planning my 100-day streak. Instead of unlocking a dozen or more achievements in a single day by bingeing a new title, I became more methodical in my game choices. I began plotting out which achievements I would get each day, often saving very easy achievements for when I knew I wouldn't have much time for a more labor-intensive alternative. I would make progress towards cumulative achievements and stop just short of completing them, effectively chambering them to fire off when I didn't have any other options that day. I would frequently start progress on achievements after 11 p.m. and aim to complete them at 12:01 a.m. so I could sleep with the day's achievement already taken care of. In some cases, I was planning full weeks in advance.

I reached my goal of a 100-day streak on May 19, in the middle of a two-week run of achievements in Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. As it turned out, the streak really hadn't been that much of a challenge. Sure, I played some clunkers along the way (the only redeeming quality of the tie-in game for Brave is that they managed to get Kelly MacDonald to reprise her role as Merida), but overall it was a fun exercise that helped me clear some of my backlog. Plus, it let me role-play being a master strategist, putting the pieces in place to secure daily achievements well down the line.

So, I figured, why not go for a year?

And with that, my streak continued. I was playing mostly a mix of Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, but I also branched out when I discovered some Windows 8 puzzle games offered easy achievements. Now I was working on three fronts to develop a roadmap that would carry me towards 365 continuous days of achievement popping.

And then came camping.

We never went anywhere far--being in the Pacific Northwest, you only have to drive about 30 minutes in any direction to start finding suitable camping sites. This year, as with most years, we would be heading up Stevens Pass, a winding road littered with small towns and campgrounds. We planned to head up the morning of Thursday, July 17, and return that Sunday. I knew I could pop easy achievements before leaving Thursday and after returning Sunday, so I only had the two days in between to worry about.

There was no way my mom would let me bring my laptop, and even if I could I wouldn't be able to get an internet connection. For the briefest of moments, I considered having someone else log into my account and trigger something I'd already set up, but that wouldn't have sat right with me. Better to fail honestly than succeed unfairly.

So. No Xboxes. No laptop. No cheating. What was left?

So, it turns out that Microsoft has published a small handful of games available on Android devices, meaning as long as I could get a strong enough data signal for even a few minutes a day during my camping trip, I could take a sneaky trip away from my mom, pop a single achievement, and she'd be none the wiser.

But there's a problem with this list. Well, two. The first is fairly obvious: a couple of these titles are listed for platforms that aren't mobile phones--VR and Kindle, for example. The second is that I pulled this list in 2020, so some of these titles wouldn't have been options for me in summer 2014. With that in mind, let's look at what options I actually had:

Alright, now let's take a look at TrueAchievements's estimated completion times for our two contenders.

The choice wasn't hard.

After staying up until after two in the morning playing Payday 2 to get my Thursday achievement, I made sure Wordament was downloaded to my phone and rested up for the trip. My cousin and his girlfriend arrived at our house late that morning, and we were on the road by noon. As we ascended the pass, I kept an eye on my phone's service bars, willing them to stay strong as we neared the campground. Things were fine as we passed through the last small town before our turnoff, but soon the evergreen canopy thickened around us and I saw my data bars shrink to nothing. Cell service, sure, but no data at all.

As we unpacked and settled in, I was of two minds. Part of me was coming to terms with the end of my streak on day 160--leagues ahead of my original goal but less than halfway to a full year. The other part of me was trying frantically to devise some way to still keep the streak alive. Maybe somewhere on one of the trails was a pocket where I could get juuust enough data?

Maybe I was actually enough of a cheater to have a friend log into my account and pop something for me?

Nope.

Somehow, my solution was even worse than that.

It turns out that, despite having been camping annually for well over a decade, we still had yet to figure out the right amount of supplies to bring--things like perishable food, firewood, ice for the coolers. While we would certainly have been able to survive with what we brought, I used it as a way to leverage my dad into making a trip down to the nearest grocery store on Friday.

And again on Saturday.

I sunk a knife deep into both my dad's and my relaxing outdoor time just to drive down a winding gravel road to the nearest sign of civilization, where there was barely enough data service for me to pop a single easy achievement in the deli aisle of a grocery chain before heading back to camp. Even though these trips to town were "only" an hour or so, going from tree-filtered sunlight and river burbles to fluorescent bulbs and contemporary pop completely took me out of the camping mindset. It was a tonal whiplash that I should have expected, but didn't.

Returning to camp should have been the solution, but it was like a switch had flipped in my brain and jammed itself in place. Suddenly camping was no longer a getaway for me. It was a setback, something to endure until I could be back at home, controller in hand.

This was the year that I began mapping out the timeline of the camping trips, thinking about how many hours could be burned playing specific card games, actively looking forward to nightfall so I could go to sleep and fast forward eight hours, putting me that much closer to the return trip. Even once I stopped trying for achievement streaks, I retained this way of thinking, and no matter how much I enjoyed subsequent trips, I would always be aware in the back of my mind of how much longer I'd have to wait until I could go home.

And it all started with playing Wordament in a remote grocery store.

Not only was I breaking my mom's longstanding "no phones" rule, I was doing it in likely the most egregious way possible. I think by this point she knew it was a rule that was on its way out, especially since she herself was becoming more invested in social media, but I wish I could have given up my arbitrary quest to preserve the blissful simplicity of our camping trips just a bit longer.

When we got back home on Sunday, I helped unload the camping equipment, took a much-needed shower, and hopped onto my Xbox 360 to play some Halo with a friend. I popped five achievements no problem and, while still guilty about the way I had to do it, pleased that I had kept my streak alive.

Not long after this, I realized that karma had played me like a fiddle.

This is my overall achievement log surrounding the 2014 camping trip:

Remember how I said I needed to be connected to the internet for achievements to unlock? That's because streaks on TrueAchievements are based on timestamps that are only created when an achievement is unlocked while online. Offline achievements will eventually sync with your account, but they will lack a timestamp and therefore not count towards a streak.

So those two Wordament achievements with "offline" next to them? Those are the ones I popped while camping. And, after all that work, they didn't count towards the streak.

What's more, the achievements unlocking offline has nothing to do with my spotty data connection or anything. It's because the game itself just flat-out doesn't provide timestamps. It's one of just nine games with that quirk.

Note that the only other Android game available at the time, Wordament Snap Attack, is also on the list, so neither option would have worked. And so, according to TrueAchievements, my streak ended on day 160, with my late-night gaming session in the early hours of July 17.

Now, technically, I hadn't failed. I was still gaining at least one achievement every day. I actually continued to do so after I got home, all the way until November 16, 2014, resulting in a second streak of 120 days. In fact, those two streaks remain my longest on the site.

But according to TrueAchievements, the site that had become my new source of approval and motivation in the gaming world, all I had were two streaks of little merit separated by a pair of offline achievements representing the time I prevented myself from enjoying a once-a-year family tradition.

Technically, technically, I went 282 consecutive days, but the site doesn't reflect that. I earned 1,370 achievements for a total of 30,245 Gamerscore. But, as I mentioned in my last post, Gamerscore has no inherent value.

I ruined camping for nothing.

How I Ruined Video Games

About seven years ago, I accidentally ruined video games for myself forever.

It was about a week before the Xbox One released, and I'd decided I wanted to start the new console generation off with exactly 36,000 Gamerscore. For those of you who don't know, Gamerscore is a cumulative points system given to players who complete achievements in Xbox games. You typically earn Gamerscore by doing things like completing a game's story, finding secret collectibles, or ranking up in online multiplayer. On an Xbox profile, it looks like this:

However, many achievements are tied to doing activities that most players would never have done otherwise, such as completing a game without ever dying, or finishing a task with a specific optional character. Gamerscore is pretty much the only incentive to do these challenges, which are often frustrating, convoluted, or time-intensive. But Gamerscore is, in itself, completely meaningless and not worth anyone's time--there are no in-game rewards, no monetary payoffs, nothing.  Basically, it only exists for people who like to watch the numbers go up.

I wanted to be sitting at exactly 36,000 Gamerscore--no more, no less, and for no reason besides it feeling like a poetic ending to the Xbox 360 era. To make sure I hit this arbitrary number by my arbitrary deadline, I compiled all the achievement and Gamerscore data for every game I had into a spreadsheet creatively named "Achievements and Gamerscore".

It wasn't meant to be impressive or clever. I just wanted to save myself the trouble of navigating the Xbox menus each time I wanted to check my progress. Reaching exactly 36,000 Gamerscore by November 22nd meant I needed to pay attention to how much each achievement was worth to ensure I didn't overshoot my goal, or put myself in a situation where the only options left for me were huge time sinks. I was still in college at the time, and this wasn't something I was going to dedicate any more time to than necessary.

The spreadsheet itself is an absolute eyesore. The colors are gaudy, the formatting wouldn't be out of place on the Time Cube website, and the few formulas present are so inefficient as to make my programming friend have to physically restrain herself from editing them behind my back (which I caught her doing multiple times).

You may notice that there's more information here than strictly how much Gamerscore I have in each game. We'll get to that.

With my spreadsheet on hand during both my play sessions and lulls in my lecture courses, I was able to plot out a route to 36,000 Gamerscore, and made it with time to spare. Although the number paled in comparison to many others (just four months later, the one-million Gamerscore barrier would be broken), it was higher than my dad's Gamerscore, which for years seemed insurmountable. (For those of you who are curious, the achievement that got me to exactly 36,000 was "Blow it up!" in Lego Indiana Jones.)

I remember taking a picture to commemorate the occasion and tweeting it out to one of my favorite online gamers in a shameless "notice me senpai" moment.

He never responded.

On November 22, I got my Xbox One (which I eventually nicknamed Anna after seeing Disney's Frozen five times in theatres) and a copy of Dead Rising 3 to ring in the new console generation. My goal of exactly 36,000 Gamerscore achieved, I booted up a new zombie wasteland to explore, eager to return to a life of unrestricted gaming.

But something had changed.

I don't know if my spreadsheet is to blame, or if it was just the catalyst for a condition that had been simmering in my psyche for years, but it didn't work anymore to just play. The game--the mechanics, the story, all the loving artistry--was no longer the point.

The point was making the numbers go up.

I viewed Dead Rising 3, and every game after, as a means to an end. Sure, I would only select games that I actually wanted to spend time in, but the journey no longer held the same weight it once did. It was the destination--an increasing Gamerscore--that mattered. And so my gaming priorities changed. I tried to find the most expedient routes to gaining every achievement in a game, even if it meant making the process less fun for myself--things like immediately jumping into a game's hardest difficulty, or making character choices that directly contradicted how I'd been playing them previously.

This actually caused some severe conflict in me for a few games, because suddenly it wasn't enough to just make my cumulative Gamerscore as large as possible. You see, starting a new game is almost always a surefire way to snag some easy Gamerscore, but it tanks your overall completion percentage. No, the best way to improve your Gamerscore is to tidy up those last few pesky achievements in games that you've already had your fill of, which means playing them in ways and for lengths of time that permanently sour your perception of them.

Example: In Fable III, I made a point of keeping my character, among other things, morally good and romantically single. Now I was suddenly expected to get married six times and murder two of my spouses just for a ten-Gamerscore achievement called "Henry VIII"? What was more important--keeping my Hero's story narratively consistent, or being economic with my time and avoiding a second playthrough for this one achievement? I eventually deemed my time more valuable, though I still wonder if that was the right choice.

I asked myself these sorts of questions more frequently as I realized what would need to be done to properly finish some of the games I'd started over the last eight years. You can't just keep buying new games without completing your old ones if you want to aim for those lofty completion percentages.

And, when you do decide it's time to jump into a new game? Well, you've gotta check the achievement list and make sure it's something you can reasonably perfect. You wouldn't want to play something you can only get to 60% completion in, right? That would be terrible for your ratio. Would this lock me out of experiencing certain games forever? Sure, but it was a small price to pay to make sure my numbers stayed pretty.

See what an aesthetic insult that is? An elegant cascade of completion devastated by one elusive achievement. This is the sort of situation I now wanted to avoid as much as possible.  

And Dead Rising 3? The poor thing became one of the most despised games in my library due to its comprehensive and exhausting achievement list. Although it was the only Xbox One game I owned on launch day, I quickly found myself regressing to my 360 games, where I could more quickly advance my new obsession.

It was during this shift in my gaming habits that my "Achievements and Gamerscore" spreadsheet ballooned into what you saw earlier. And since I was compiling all this data for each game anyways, I thought it would be fun to add things like release dates, platforms, and total amount of downloadable content, just to get a more complete profile of my gaming library.

And this is where the spreadsheet became more than just a tool for reaching a new, endless arbitrary goal.

It became a way to keep track of my life.

Eventually, I began to obsess over spreadsheets--not just the one tracking my Xbox achievements, but ones for dozens of other topics. They would slowly invade almost every aspect of my daily life, reducing my every established hobby and passing interest into a network of data boxes. I found myself using this information to not just track things, but define them. I found ways to calculate success and failure in things that had no end goals to begin with. Everything in my life found its way in some fashion into a neat row or column.

But before that happened, there were years of manic scrambling to increase my Gamerscore, and I put myself through hell on more than one occasion for the sole purpose of hearing that sweet, rapturous sound of an achievement unlocking:

But those are stories for another time.