The scores on the doors

Everyone knows about Gamerscore. Some people hate it, some people like it. At the end of the day it doesn’t really mean anything – it’s just a novel way of showing how many games a person has played, and how much of those games they’ve explored or unlocked. Or, in the case of Avatar, how quickly you can press the B button.

What it does do, though, is throw up some friendly rivalries – in a similar way that the online leaderboards do, such as this fine example from our forum. For example, just after Ready-Up swelled it’s ranks with Mark, James, Fran and Loz one of the first things I did was check out where they all stood on our Gamerscore leaderboard. I confessed this to Zoey one day over Live and she told me she’d done exactly the same thing. We both agreed that had we lost a position with the intake of new blood it would have been a very bad thing. It would appear that, even though it means nothing in the greater scheme of things, the top two places on the Ready-Up leaderboard are quite fondly regarded by the pair of us.

But better than all that, Gamerscore has let me do something that Jim’ll Fix it never did. I am now a nemesis. When I first met my challenger, it was outside of the world of gaming. I stumbled across him while poking around on one of my friend’s MySpace pages. I found one of his blogs, regarding a boy who was doing inappropriate things in a McDonalds toilet, and with the simple comment “I guess that’s why they call it a Happy Meal” a friendship was born.

Once it was discovered that we both loved gaming and both had a 360 the competition started. He has always said that he will catch up to my gamerscore and there have been times when he has come awfully close. It’s turned into a game of its own now. When I log into Live, one of the first things I do is check out the points situation. There’s round about 5000 points seperating us as I write this, a situation which has remained more or less steady for the past couple of months but with a slew of new releases on the horizon who knows which way the tide will turn?

Now if only the Avatar editor had the option for a leather chair and furry white cat.

Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.