Gamerscore & I

The Xbox Live Team created many new and interesting features for the Xbox 360’s version of Live, and how we would interact with the console and each other. One of the more pervasive of these new bits is the Gamerscore: a listing of all the Achievement points from all the games you’ve played lumped together neatly beside your Gamer Tag. The Gamerscore doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to me, and that’s coming from someone with a total of “14,588”. That’s the equivalent of obtaining all of the Achievements from fourteen retail games, two Xbox Live Arcade titles, and some change left over! The biggest names that helped grow my score are Kameo: Elements of Power, Viva Pinata, and Fuzion Frenzy 2 claiming 1,000 points each. The reason this total score doesn’t account for a hill of e-beans is because it’s totally dependent on the number of games you’ve played/rented. I have friends on my Friend List who have upwards of 46 thousand points!



Still, I think that the points per Achievement when compared to a friend who owns the same game is a great source of competition! I love to take certain games like Shadowrun, Halo 3, and Left 4 Dead which all have Achievements that are based heavily on Xbox Live play against buddies for bragging rights. The ease that Live lets you compare the G-score against your friends in specific games is a great facet of Live. Single player games too are picked apart by my buddies over Live, like when I took longer than someone thought I should’ve to get the “Music Maestro” Achievement for Banjo-Kazooie, or congrads for getting the “Soldier” Gears of War Achievement. (When said Friend also claims that Gears sucks in the same compliment! :P ) In conclusion: Gamerscore when compared on a game-to-game basis is a worthwhile endeavor to stir up a conversation with your pals over Live and to start some competitive fun, while the pile of Achievement points that is your TOTAL Gamerscore isn’t worth the pixels it’s made out of. Ooh! AND I just got the “Pimped Up” Achievement! Yay me! :P