Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The gauntlet has been thrown

Somehow I've ended up in a competition with Kevin over Gamerscores. For those who don't know, XBox 360 games come with a list of tasks or goals called Achievements, and each Achievement is worth a certain amount of points. For example, it might be 20 points for finishing a level, 50 points for completing a major story milestone, 10 points for killing a certain number of bad guys, 100 points for finishing the game, etc. All of the points earned are called a player's gamerscore (mine can be seen to the right in my Gamercard).

I've built my gamerscore up over the course of the last year. Kevin, who only got an XBox about two months ago, has already surpassed my score. I don't care for it. It may be silly and it may even petty (though it is good natured), but the competition has begun. I've stepped up the amount of time spent gaming. I'm not achievement whoring as much as I could; while I may be putting games into circulation that have easy achievements, I'm limiting it to games we already own, that I enjoy, and that I'd play independent of this competition. This is merely incentive to make more time for gaming I've been wanting to do anyhow.

Microsoft policy is that all games must have 1000 points in the base game, the title may ship with less than that provided that later additions are available free, and up to 250 points may be added later through downloadable content. XBox Live Arcade games have 200 base points and up to 50 points allowed to be added later. I doubt I'll ever max out the achievements of any game. It's not that I think I can't do it, because for some games I'm sure I could, but it's just too much of a time commitment.

Currently Kevin has 3210 to my 3140. I narrowed the gap a little last night and I'll hopefully narrow it a bit more tonight. Slow and steady wins the race, and as such I'm working towards a coup d'état that I hope will set Kevin back enough for me to maintain a lead.

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