Collecting Artifacts: Real Life Edition

Resident News Section Editor, Beth Nicholls, explores the similarities between collecting gems in games and collecting experiences through our wild dazzling lives.  

Growing up, I have many fond memories of playing on my family’s PlayStation 2 (PS2). Though as a child, I was more accustomed to games like Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet and Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, not the timeless classics like Tomb Raider and Spyro the Dragon, which I have now grown to love at the ripe age of almost 21. 

Quickly the PS2 became the PS3, which was what I spent many of my tween and teenage years playing on, the ones I have the best memory of: games like Big Little Planet spring to mind. 

I remember buying a PS2 off Facebook Marketplace in 2020 during the pandemic, and yes, I was still salty about my dad donating my childhood one. 

My collection of games and consoles has continued to grow, and I’m still trying to finish Crash Bandicoot with 100% completion and all the gems (though when you have started it on four consoles, that becomes a bit of a challenge). 

Over the years I’ve picked up many different games, fell in love with some and hated others. Finished a few, not finished more than just a few. My obsession with this collection phenomenon reminds me much of going through a game and collecting artifacts, such as gems, tokens, and eggs, and the more you collect, the more paths you unlock throughout the game. 

Spyro the Dragon, originally released in 1998 for the original PlayStation console, is an open-ended 3D game that revolves around the titular character (Spyro) and his quest to save the six dragon home worlds that Gnastly Gnorc has taken over. Throughout the game, the player collects gemstones, crystallised dragons and stolen dragon eggs, and finding each collectable unlocks different parts of the game that can otherwise not be accessed. You can either finish the game collecting the minimum requirements, or you can finish it with 100% completion, meaning that you explored the world to its potential and collected all the possible eggs, dragons and gems.

In this reality, we go through life changing and different experiences, both good and bad, meeting a wide range of people, some that we become friends with and some that we hate, and just overall carve out our paths. 

Not one single human will ever be the same; we all live our own lives, and one tiny action could change the course of everything. All with our passions and interests, dislikes and hatreds. 

As we learn and grow through life, we collect things much like you would in a game. Things that contribute to our experiences, well-being, and overall quality of life. 

Sometimes, you feel like you are incomplete or missing something in your life, and when you find that something, suddenly, your life is changed. Each time you discover this, you have essentially unlocked another path or experience you would not have otherwise, but you may not have known it. 

Life is all about collecting things, whether those be experiences, memories, people, or even literal objects. 

As cliché as it sounds, you only live once; live the way you want to and experience whatever the fuck you love. Don’t let something or somebody hold you back from finding the path of life you’re meant to be on. 

Your ending will come one day, no matter if you reach fifty percent or one hundred percent in the “game of life”, and I don’t know about you - but I would rather finish my life having experienced as much as I damn could.