Gamerscoring

Giving the strangeness and extreme subjectivity of what I’m going to write, I think I should start off telling you that I’m Micro-phobic. Well, not a totally incurably hopeless case, but still a Micro-phobic. Thus, when I’ve read an article a couple of years ago about Micro$oft designing their own game console I frankly couldn’t believe my eyes. Okay, I know we live in a free world (or so I’ve heard) and no one should be banned from releasing their own gaming system, but it just didn’t feel right. I’ve had this image of an Alexander-the-Great-of-a-company which, having already conquered the land of PC operating systems, chose to rob even more gold and take even more slaves by invading the neighboring land of consoles. And giving all the B.G.’s cash and the support of Windows game developers, the quest was just a mere formality. So there came the Xbox and, quite frankly, the only green-case game I’ve ever wanted to play was Dino Crisis 3, because I enjoyed the previous parts. To this day I haven’t played Dino Crisis 3.

Oh, but that was then and this is now. Today we have Son¥ struggling (or not) to have people playing their PS3, Micro$oft boasting about Xbox360 which in my opinion is one of the ugliest gaming systems ever released (for some reason it always reminds of a coffee grinder) and finally Ninten-dada with their... “peculiar” approach to gamers. (they did brilliantly with Gamecube only to mess things up completely with Wii – why on earth are they trying so hard to make the console as childish and toyish as possible, is beyond me). And while in Europe the only PS3 model available is 40GB (while in U.S. there’s 80GB) and the European version of No More Heroes supposedly got badly censored, I, a prime Xbox naysayer, had no choice but to close my eyes on the Red Ring of Death issue (which might be a good topic for another post, or, like ten thousand of them) and got myself a coffee... I mean an Xbox360.

Anyway, what I want to talk about are the achievements and gamerscores. I realize that it may be just me and my Micro-you-know-what paranoia, but I’ve always felt rather uncomfortable around them. When I’ve first heard of Micro$oft adding achievements to the x360 games, even when their PS3 counterparts had no such things, I thought there must be something fishy about it. I mean, why bother? Most of the games have already had unlockable content so why add another set of challenges completing which in most cases won’t even unlock anything? All they do is just add some number to your...

Gamerscore. Each of us Xbox360 players has this awful label proclaiming what kind of gamer we are. We can’t do anything with it, we can’t download exclusive content or something like that. It’s just there for others to see. As far as I’m concerned, I would just ignore the damn thing and go on enjoying Dead Rising, not even once thinking about bringing up this subject on low-res textures, but when first I’ve learned how many people actually fall for that, I was positively mesmerized.

Remember that post, where FallingStickman divided gaming society into a couple of groups? Well, I wouldn’t completely agree with that division because the more gamers I meet, the more diverse reasons of playing and game expectations I learn about, yet I feel Micro$oft managed to created one other group. The achievement collectors. The gamerscore whores. People who buy and play their games till their brains turn to mush and their eyes come dangling somewhere below their chins simply because they want to... ahem... “score”.

The point which I’m so desperately trying to make is that gamerscores create artificial and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary competition. We, human beings, happen to possess the competitiveness carved deep into our neocortex – the feature which constantly makes us try to do things better than others or just well enough so we don’t look like total losers. So normally, if the gamers want to compete against each other, they turn on some multiplayer deathmatch and test their skills. But achievements and gamerscores are more than just sitting on your couch for a couple of minutes, pressing buttons. They are about spending countless hours trying to kill that last antlion larva or cross the finish line upside down, on reverse. Worst case scenario would probably involve running to a nearby store buying another game, because that sixteen you own right now won’t give you enough points you need to feel good about.

Did Micro$oft think about these things when designing the achievement system? Did they purposefully invent and introduce that scoring web which alters the “playing games” phenomenon into “playing games better than others” chore? And even if they did, how can I blame them? I mean it’s perfectly natural for every console developer to try and make people play their damn system, isn’t it? They aren’t doing anything unequivocally harmful like brainwashing and reprogramming us to play and then play some more. You can switch it off, set your profile to “invisible”, ignore the others’ scores, or even go offline and then it’s just you and your console, like it should be. But the scores ARE there and looking at how many people are locked in that eternal struggle to be the best among the best players keeps me just a little unnerved.

On top of everything, I’m willing to bet that somewhere on the surface of this planet there is a kid with enough money and free time to buy and play the most of all green-case games. Let’s suppose he did. Let’s suppose he is the most talented, persistent, simply the best Xbox360 gamer ever with his gamerscore approaching eight-digit zone. So what? There are people who would call him a god. There are people who would call him an idiot. Some might call him a total nerd. Others might call him an addict. (As a matter of fact the mostly used name for that kind of person is “Point Whore” or “Gamerscore Whore”.) And in twenty years time, where all of the coffee grinders would probably have long since burned to ashes, no one would as much as buy him a beer for his ultimate achievement. (I seriously doubt anyone would buy him a beer even now). The dead-end cases involve people actually tampering with their saves just to add themselves more score (towards what fucking purpose, may I inquire??) and getting punished by M$ - the account is reset and marked as “cheater”.

If by this time it occurred to you this post is just a crazy talk of an overreacting, Mirco-phobic lunatic, then I guess you’re perfectly alright. But if, God forbid, any of the points I’ve mentioned seems suspiciously familiar, then I think you ought to ask yourself how many posh dinners B.G. and His Happy Gang is able to eat for all the hard-earned money people give them, in exchange receiving some arbitrary numbers without any actual value.

Oh, and one more thing. I fucking hate when my car keeps getting stuck between the rocks just as I wanted to run over that last head-crab zombie, I mean, Jezus-fucking-god, I need just one more, just one more zombie and OH FUCK, NOT AGAIN! C’mon, just one more zombie, you goddamn car....................

EXramp and I had a few conversations about achievements in the past, and even though we fundamentally agreed our opinions are slightly different.

First of all, unlike EXramp I’m am not Micro-phobic, but I do admit that I’m not very fond of Billy and his Happy Gang. I also never had the first Xbox because I regard its games library as diverse as Scottish kilts – they are all chequered, just in different colours. And even when there was a title I was interested in it would soon be converted to PC. So why would I bother?

After Microsoft released its first info about 360 I was positively surprised – the changes to Live, the Dashboard, support from Japanese developers and XBL Arcade, that all made we feel warm an fuzzy inside… I still think it’s a well thought out system, but there is one thing wrong with it – the community.

The thing that comes to my mind when thinking about 360 players is a German teenager shouting “MOTHERFUCKER” with an accent through his head-set right into my ear (but that’s today’s trend among gamers – more about that in another editorial).
The second thing that comes to my mind is achievement whores. I could understand people playing to get “high score” back in the days when I was a regular visitor at the arcades, but in this day and age?
I know a few people who play games on their 360 just for the achievements - to increase their gamer score. And I think that’s very sad. They buy a game, get the 1000GS out of it, and then they either sell it on Allegro/eBay or buy a new one and do the same thing again. I can’t imagine where the basic idea behind games in this; where is the fun.
Second thing that comes from building up you GS in this unhealthy way is the fact that it strangely seems to builds up ego of some people. It’s not a rare thing to meet people on the official Xbox forums who claim to know more about pretty much anything just because they have a higher GS, when in fact they don’t seem to know Jack shit.

Playing for the sake of getting points is like having sex with a prostitute without breasts – there a satisfaction in there somewhere, sure, but it’s not really fun, and the fact that you had to pay for it in the first place seems to undermine the whole idea.
You know, I’m not against it, but I think it’s all very pointless. I could find a rationale for this if the achievements would unlock something – like in Mass Effect, but trying out all the clothes in Dead Raising for 20 points seems to have as much point as rubbing a carrot against a telephone.

Could you imagine that instead of unlocking all the artwork/movies/costumes/modes in Resident Evil: Outbreak after playing your ass off all you would get is a few hundred points added to your Gamer Score? Christ, I would rather eat soap.

To further understand people who play for achievements I have conducted an experiment. I decided to try to get 1000GS from one game and check what’s in it for me.
I took Call of Duty 4, because it’s a fairly short game and doesn’t require any online play to unlock all the achievements. I can tell you this – completing Mile High Club on veteran was the most frustrating experience I had with games. I did get the 1000GS and I believe that was the biggest waste of time in my life - even bigger than painting a Warhammer Chaos army and not playing a single game with it, and believe me… that took over two months to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind achievements, but they seem really pointless to me. It’s just Micro$oft's another way to get more money. And I don’t believe that having a bigger GS makes someone a better gamer, it just proves that they have absolutely nothing to do in their spare time.

By the way, if Son¥ will introduce the “Trophy” system (or whatever it’s called) at least it might unlock models for your “Home” apartment, which would give a bit of a Animal Crossing feel to it and hence a bit more merit. Still, I wouldn’t bother to unlock anything unless it’s a statue of Metal Gear Ray.