Blackangels Eurogamer Interview

Moin Moin

Es ist mal wieder ein neues Interview von mir auf Eurogamer erschienen. 
Natürlich auch für meine Blogleser hier zu lesen :)

Viel Spaß damit ;)
Greetz Angel

-What was the moment you realised you wanted to be a Trophy hunter?

Oh well, it has been quite a while since I realised that I wanted to be a trophy hunter. Back in the days when I was playing Burnout Paradise, I enjoyed obtaining these trophies so much and I was very proud when my first platinum trophy popped up in the game ;)

-Do you remember the time you were first recognised seriously as a Trophy hunter?

During the first months after the trophy patch, a good gamer and friend of mine, Baraka2007, was placed first on the German leaderboard. I decided to play my way up there persistently, which turned out to work! When I started to rise through the ranks, I became more and more popular ;)

-How long have you been doing this?

I am playing for trophies since the day the patch was released. This equals 5 years and 5 months. :)

-What's a typical day like for you - has it changed much over the years?

My daily structure has changed over the years.  When I started the hunt, I wasn't even 20 years old, now I am 25. That being said, the main aspects remain the same: I deal with everything important concerning my real life before I dive into the digital worlds!

How do you select which games you play? Which have been the worst?

At first I play the games which seem to be fun. 

After these are done, I continue with those games in which I can obtain the platinum trophy easily & quickly. I mainly enjoy these titles because of the intense trophy-popping during the (hopefully short) time spent with them.
Afterwards, I take a look at the games that are known very well, but in which only very few people were able to obtain the platinum trophy. 
Handling it this way, I am able to earn a lot of trophies while still enjoying my time. Furthermore,   some very rare platinum trophies can be added to my trophy collection as well!

Frankly spoken, the worst titles are easy games that have been completed by many gamers but that are glitching on you. If this happens, every additional second spent on those trophies is a pain, especially because you have done everything correctly in the first place.

-Has Trophy hunting changed your enjoyment of games - presumably that's now not the only reason you play them?

Trophies definitely have an influence on my choice of which games to play. I sometimes skip good games due to their glichted or easily missable trophies. In addition, huge grinds for trophies are avoided by me from time to time, too.  The given aspects are the reason why for example the Vita-installment of Killzone has not found its way to my collection until now.
But I am not playing the games for trophies exclusively.  If I wouldn't enjoy what I do, I couldn't motivate myself to keep going every day.

-How many games do you own? Who pays for what you do?

Today (12th April 2014), 3 new games were added to my collection. I do now own 880 of them. This number is split up into 791 games for the PS3, 75 for the Vita & 14 for the PS4, including 59 US-imports and 109 imports from Japan.
These numbers increase every week as I keep enlarging my collection.
Of course it would have been possible to buy a middle-class car using this money.  But due to the aspect that I already own a nice vehicle, I can keep buying games, right? ;)

-How much did that real Platinum Trophy cost? Why spend that much?

I have already described the price of my real-life platinum trophy on my website, Real-life-platin.com
I'd like to keep it this way without going more into detail concerning this aspect.

Why one spends that much for something he loves to do passionately? I don't know for sure, I guess this happens because you fall in love with your hobby so much that certain borders just tend to fade.
Additionally, I enjoy owning things that are unique or very limited in order to have something that most people haven't.

-What do your friends and family say about what you do?

My parents appreciate that I finish everything real-life-related first before I start playing, and I wouldn't be able to be together with my girlfriend happily since almost 9 years if she wouldn't love to play as well ;)

-Has Sony recognised your work before - have you talked, met, been rewarded?

Oh, the topic Sony..  I sent an email to Sony like 2 or 3 years ago, telling them that I am of the opinion that the best trophy hunters should be rewarded for their accomplishments. I never received an answer..
In the course of me presenting my real-life platinum trophy, I wrote an email to Sony's support again, informing the company about the fact that I am a wholehearted fan, owner of an unique real-life platinum trophy and customer with more than 800 PS3-& PS Vita-games under my belt.

Well, I received an answer. In fact, the support only told me that it's not possible to take care of my concern online and they gave me an address to which I was supposed to write a letter. Of course I did this without further hesitation, but 6 weeks have passed by now and I Sony didn't contact me at all.

-You're fourth in the world, according to the leaderboard I've seen. How serious are you about topping it?

I would definitely dislike dropping down to world rank 5 or 6, on the other hand it would be awesome if I made it to rank 4 or 3. Being serious about thinking that I'll make my way up to rank 2 or even 1 is utopistic unless one of the two gamers stops hunting completely.

-Have you met those people above you - are you friendly?

Unfortunately, I am not in contact with xLukk & Roughdawg4, but I've already been chatting with Hakoom for a while, he is a very nice and helpful person. If both of us had the same mother tongue, we'd surely play together more often. ;)

-Do you own a PS4 - do Trophies earned on those games count towards your total?

This is where Sony actually did things correctly! You can continue to collect trophies on your PS4 as these carry over from your PlayStation 3 & Vita and count towards a sum total. Using this great feature, I am already going strong in terms of trophy hunting on the PS4 as well, I obtained 10 platinum trophies until now!

-Do you believe you are, or ever will be, a celebrity because of what you do?

I am of the opinion that my name is quite popular in the trophy-scene. Why don't you assure yourself? Just google my PSN-ID "Blackangel887462" and look at the results ;)

-What do you worry about - people overtaking you?

At the moment, world rank 5 is 68000 trophy points short of reaching my spot. This equals approximately 56 platinum trophies.  No, I am not afraid of somebody taking me over in the next blink of an eye 8)

-When will it be time to stop doing all of this?

Once my girlfriend and I will be living in our own house, have our full-time jobs and see our children running around, the spare time to play will possibly be cut down to a minimum. But I can't foretell the future. Right now, children aren't planned & InFamous Second Son is running in my PS4 ;)  

-Finally, what advice would you give anyone starting out as a Trophy hunter now?

Before you start, outline your trophy-targets for yourself. You have 2 options: either you play only for platinum trophies or you play for a completion of 100%. What you shouldn't do as a trophy hunter is to insert like 10 games and earn only 5-6 trophies in each title. This looks really bad on your trophy card and triggers a decrease of your average percentage which will be hard to even out.

If you are planning to earn platinum trophies as efficiently as possible, I recommend you to visit my blog first. There, I am giving as many tips as possible for difficult parts of the games I have completed (Link: http://blackangel887462.blogspot.de/p/all-meine-platins.html ). Afterwards, you should look up the corresponding trophy guide on playstationtrophies.org (Link: http://www.playstationtrophies.org/search.php). Once you have read all the information, you know everything that is important about the trophies in these games and you can start playing. In addition, you can for example avoid unnecessary walkthroughs because you would possibly have played past a missable trophy.

Enjoy your hunt and hopefully we'll read from each other again soon on my blog or my Facebook fanpage! In order to find me on Facebook, simply google my ID or search "blackangel887462" on Facebook!  

Greetz, Blackangel887462