The act of collecting is very satisfying. Whether you collect stamps, coins, or in the case of gamers, virtual items you get a big payoff. That’s what collectathon games are all about. Getting the big payoff. Getting the dopamine hit. Then doing it all over again. Exploration is only part of what makes them so rewarding. It’s almost like a genre that encompasses everything a game can do, discovery, the coloring of a world with a crayon—making that world a delight to visit.
My introduction to the charmed world of collectathon games occurred through the awestruck doorway of Super Mario 64. What left me so enamored was the presence of a plethora of unexplored territories teeming with clear-as-day incentives to do so: baked into the format of Super Mario 64 was so much exciting exploration that its fine print didn’t feel as grand as it came to be known. The collectathon genre is oft-derided in modern reviewing circles, but it left an indelible mark on this college life journey with the characters and the damn-near unabridged play of 16-bit hour games.
The real joy in playing a collectathon game, the kind that makes it worth all the frustrating moments when a seemingly reachable item can’t quite be reached, comes from a sense of, “I found that.” The game being played in the series of videos below, Giraffe Town is an indie take on an old idea that’s been twisted around a bit; the payoff in the series of videos also happens around the tenth minute.
The game Banjo-Kazooie, created by Rare and launched in 1998, is a classic case in point. The title characters, a bear and a bird, go on a mission to save Banjo’s sister from Gruntilda, an evil sorceress. Meanwhile, the player picks up a bunch of gold and silver musical notes and Jiggiesy puzzle pieces and other prizes you can collect if you do the things that the designers clearly want you to do (like jumping from one precarious platform to the next). The player is also exploring a strange and wonderful land on a mission to crack its many secrets.
Collectathon games are different because of their non-linear design. You don’t have the same A-to-B imperative in a collectathon. You’re not just moving from one part of the level to another part of the level; you’re not even moving from level to level in any particular order either. Collectathon games, in their more linear platforming siblings, tend to generate a different kind of forward momentum. The open and closed structure of each world feels like it ought to give me the right to be in that world because I held that right for the last one.
Another classic title to emerge from Rare is Donkey Kong 64, which shows off these collect-them-all tendencies even more than Banjo-Kazooie or Banjo-Tooie. The setup, in many ways, is the same as the Banjo series: there are central hub worlds that connect to a variety of other environments. The sheer scope and enormity of it all are overwhelming, making the D.K. game itself an epic. But what sets it apart as a 3D platformer is the variety of characters at work. Rare became part of Nintendo’s division after Microsoft failed to renew its contract in 2002.
The charm of collectathon games extends well past simple exploration and uncovering what’s been left in the environment. There’s a potent and powerful sense of satisfaction in pulling together the odds and ends that these games are designed around. The never-before-seen pieces of concept art and the yesteryears of some younger audience’s music taste that the developers were too sheer to re-assemble lies at the heart of some of the things that players hold the most dear. As we amass more items in our inventory, the sheer amount of collection drives us, giving us a sense of accomplishment that with every item we pull into our gravity.
A persuasive theory associated with the concept of endless motivation is elucidating the enigma of the buzz for the banal. These types of games are great at fostering what researchers call intrinsic motivation—keeping the player chugging along through the sometimes 8-to-10-hour experience because they want to, not because they have to. And, moreover, the better class of these so-called blue-collar games succeeds in relentlessly motivating the player with an unbroken current of electrified intensity.
The social gaming component that collects computers is very powerful. At no time in the development of the medium has there not been a will for players to form communities—sometimes even when the game designers might not have made explicit plans for it. Every era seems to have its collectathon games. An incredibly diverse array of virtual clubs around these games have sprung up as play has gone either local- or global-scale.
Decades on, the lineage of collectathon games can still be traced through to the way we play games today. The influence on modern design is felt in plenty of recent entries. If you pick up a laundry list of 21st century collectathons that have come to be, almost half of the games were released within the past four years. Beneath the hot streak of fun, familiar, and “fck-it-all, I’ve got to have it” new entries, there’s a renaissance happening with old classics that are making a comeback and paving the way for a rebirth of the genre.
What makes collectathon games so attractive is their power to create game spaces that are worth spending time in—places where you can really get lost. And if you’re going to get lost somewhere, let it be a space that has something in it you might actually enjoy finding. That’s what I love about these games. By creating environments that feel and act like real places and are populated by all sorts of hidden trinkets and doohickeys, the designers of collectathons give me a reason to look around, poke in corners, jump up and down in a very odd and deliberate way in front of anything even sorta suspiciously like a platform, and open all the doors, nooks, and crannies in search of… the next door, nook or cranny, or that one special thing I’m supposed to find or half-remember.
