So last night I spent some time looking through my games and their associated achievements. I found most games to offer up a couple online trophies, but some platinum trophies required the gathering of all trophies, and this includes online only achievements. I am not sure this type of paradigm works. Doesn't this limit the game's longevity!? What about the people that cannot go online due to circumstances outside of their control but are still into trophies?

In the future, just a couple years from now even, when people are trying to get older games completed to plat, they won't be able to. They're hope for a plat trophy will be stopped by a simple fact that no-one plays that specific game anymore. Now, I understand that not all games are meant to be single-player, I'm looking at games like Fat Princess and such where the ideal scenario is playing online against and with others, but a lot of games that are single-player in design have multi-player elements with achievements that are needed to complete a platinum game. Right now I am trying to Platinum Bioshock 2, but the online achievements are nearly impossible to get. I can't get some of them because frankly, there isn't anyone to join the co-op to compete against or with for the achievement. This game is only a few months old, but happens when games are a year+ in age!?

My basic gripe is that while I understand games are sometimes online exclusive, others are not. Games like Red Dead Redemption and Zombie Apocalypse offer a few achievements that are online or single-player obtained. I get that not all games or achievements can do this, they should still strive to become game-play-type independent so future players of the game can at least plat that game if they desire. Or maybe we shouldn't care, and that there are so many games to play, we will have a veritable smorgasbord of plat trophies and those games are just out of luck.

I personally am of the generation that says we don't want to waste things, so why make a game that isn't entirely re-playable in the future, but then again, how many people that play and buy games only play for the trophies they unlock.

My real question is:

Have trophies and achievements become the actual game now, and the actual video game the medium by which we complete it?!