5,000 and counting…

So this weekend saw me move past the 5,000 mark when it comes to my Gamerscore (as you can see from my Gamercard over there ->). Now before I go on I want to clear up a misconception. There are 2 kinds of points related to the XBox 360. There is Gamerscore and there are MS Points. This article is not about MS Points. These are things that you spend to buy extra content and Live Arcade titles. Gamerscore are the points that amass when you unlock achievements within games. This article is about these. If you came here looking for details on MS Points then please move along, there is nothing to see here.

So, as I was saying, I went through the 5,000 barrier, and it got me to thinking what this actually means. Firstly I’m under no illusions that I am the best gamer in the world. There are players out there who have 40,000+ Gamerscore, and all credit to them. There are also people on my Friends list who have Gamerscores in excess of 8,000 so I don’t even feel like I’m the best gamer on my list. So where does your Gamerscore fit in? Well, if there’s two things that achievements (and hence Gamerscores) have brought to gaming, it’s replay value and increased longevity of titles. The only things I get from having 5,000 as my Gamerscore is a sense of achievement (if you’ll pardon the pun) and some good gaming memories. Let me give you an example. I used to play EQ2 quite a bit, but I couldn’t tell the point at which I became a level 39 Shadowknight. I couldn’t even tell you what I did running up to that point, or what the game gave me for reaching this level. However, with achievements, there are the memories. I can look back at an achievement from a game I played months ago, and the achievement helps me remember what I did to get to that point in the game. It’s almost like building a feeling of nostalgia.

Also it’s good to look through them and see what is left to do within the game. This helps focus yourself on certain areas (if you need that extra little incentive to play a particular game of course!). However, I do find the games with “Secret” achievements are far more enigmatic, and the feeling when you get one of these, without actually realising you were close to one, is great (the little achievement unlocked noise is one that I love to hear!!). The idea is obviously one that has captured the market as well, with Sony set to use “Entitlements” in the upcoming Playstation 3.

So don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased with my 5,000, but I’m not getting carried away. There was an interesting article in a magazine recently about this, and a very valid point was made. Some games, it said, give away really cheap points (and I’ve been guilty of playing these myself!). Take Madden ’06 for example. The amount of points you can rack up in one game is stupid! 100 points for winning the Super Bowl is fair enough, but the rest were a joke. It was almost like “20 points for connecting your controller – well done”. So judging your friends list based on gamerscore is ridiculous as you will never find a person with the exact same collection of games that you have. Looking down an individual game and comparing what you’ve done against friends can also be a bit misleading. For example, I’m scoring fairly well in Test Drive Unlimited (my first thoughts are here) at the moment but does that make me a better racing gamer than my friends on my friends list if I have more points than them? No of course not. It just means I’ve spent more time on it than they have.

So what am I trying to say? Well I guess it boils down to the fact that Gamerscore allows you to be competitive if you want it to. You can compare scores with your mates and have fun like that, and it supports that very well (although they may give you a kicking when you play them online). For me, it’s a sense of achievement, and getting more out of a game. I’ll push myself further into a game than I maybe previously would have done, just to get another achievement. And I guess that does make me competitive. But it’s a different kind of competition than the one I expected when Gamerscore was announced. I’m competing with myself. And that’s a competition that can last a lifetime…