Don’t Shut Me Out

I recently found myself in the curious position of being a gaming creed neophyte in the order of the Xbox 360. Being an orthodox gamer meant that this was a novel position for me to find myself in. I usually play on the PlayStation 3 partly because for some reason I never found the online multiplayer gaming lure of the 360 to be all that, well, luresome. But when this console failed on me not long ago, naturally all I could think about was 360ing it up. My hands ached to be filled with that hulking beast of a controller and my mouth watered at the thought of screaming inane, nonsensical abuse at player-controlled WWII veterans regarding their mommas. I had to get the thing repaired.

Not seven days later I receive a brand new Xbox 360 and eagerly start connecting it to my TV. This is when the feeling of being in foreign territory begins. Connecting the console via the supplied HD AV cable yields the most annoying of buzzing noises. Connecting it via a separate HDMI cable yields the most annoying of completely blank TV screens. In moving the TV around for investigation I realise there is a loose connection somewhere as the picture suddenly returns. I freeze mid TV-turn and contemplate the feasibility of viewing the screen at this new angle. It wasn’t going to work. I therefore continue to move the TV and quite predictably the picture promptly vanishes. This pattern continues for some time as I incrementally edge the screen towards my goal angle. Moving the TV that last inch can only be described as a tense and exasperating experience. I twist the screen further to the right and become increasingly excited as the picture actually remains. Yes, it’s working. Just that last push and… oh for the love of Ares!

I will refrain from boring you with the painstaking TV-shifting experience that ensued. Suffice to say many expletives were uttered and many an electrical appliance was kicked. But I eventually got my screen to display in a direction that wouldn’t mean sitting on my oversized potted cactus to play a game.

Now to get online with this baby. But wait… what was my gamertag? It had been a while since I’d used it and I just couldn’t remember it for the life of me. It’s here that I meet the next barrier to the Xbox 360 gaming world; attempting to create a new tag was yet another trying experience. Like many a cocky gamer, I wanted a name with a little attitude. One that screamed ‘here be a consummate, independent and self-assured gamer’, or just one that would make the other kids wanna play with me. So I spend what must have been a good five minutes thinking up this great name: ‘PixelSlut’. Unfortunately it’s taken and no amount of affixing numbers to the end of it was apparently going to change that. So what else can I call myself? Ah, that’s it: ‘BitChi’, a tag which implies a bitchy girl gamer with some ‘tude but one that also respects the, um, ch’i of the computing bit. I enter this luscious name into the keypad and… it’s taken. Damn it!

A good ten- to fifteen-minute period elapses whilst I fabricate ridiculously cool (you know it) names and receive increasingly frustrating rejections before I reach the firm conclusion that Xbox Live is in fact broken. It’s clearly not possible to create a gamertag of any kind. I’m so confident by this point that I decide to test my theory. I type in a random sequence of numbers and letters until I reach the maximum allowance. Then I click ‘OK’.

What the…? You’re friggin kidding me Microsoft! On the screen before me lies my ridiculously long and entirely incomprehensible new gamertag, the name by which those in the circles that matter will, from this point forward, know me by. How could my theory have been so flawed? How could I have gotten this so wrong?

Trying to shake off the surprise, I begrudgingly provide Microsoft with my credit card details for membership. In a manner I have become quite familiar with by this point my details are inexplicably rejected. Luckily the free one-month gold membership Microsoft offers me will suffice for now. That and my mum’s credit card details (shhh!).

So, after all that, here I am, an active Xbox Live player, diving into online games like Jack Thompson into lawsuits. I didn’t much enjoy the identity-shaking experience I had to endure to get here though and I sure hope the gamingverse doesn’t deem it necessary to unnerve me like this again. But for now I’m a 360 maestro. I’m an Xenos Jedi Knight. I’m J Allard.

But you can just call me ‘jklss87iovwxqjc’.