Taking a cue from eBay, the service now has a feedback system where gamers can rate their rivals. Each player carries a reputation with him. By clicking on someone's gamertag, it's easy to file a complaint about someone. If the complaints pile up, Microsoft can remove the gamer from the service, said Aaron Greenberg, marketing manager for Xbox Live. Just by looking at the number of stars listed next to someone's gamertag, another player can see what kind of reputation that player has.
Greenberg says Microsoft has banned tens of thousands of players for bad behavior. Most of the complaints stem from Halo 2 games, but that's because it's the most popular game played on Live. The offenses include multiple transgressions on etiquette violations for foul language in the family zone, racism and cheating. The company will also force players with "inappropriate gamertags" to change their names or face ejection.
"For racism, we have a zero tolerance policy," he said. "It's like having someone over to your house. It's our house, and if someone is offending the guests, we will ask them to leave."
Of course, with new ways to monitor your friends such as inspecting gamertag descriptions, there are new ways to misbehave. One gamer said he was playing Rumble Roses XX on his Xbox 360. One of his friends looked at his gamertag, snapped a screen shot that showed what he was playing and emailed it to the player's girlfriend. Greenberg notes that most players don't realize that they can hide from prying "friends" by appearing offline.
Greenberg says that most of the problems are diminishing with the Xbox 360's version of Xbox Live. The bigger problems are with the service for the original Xbox.
Still, with two million Xbox 360 users and growing, the service is hard to monitor. With the addition of Xbox Live Silver (free for online communication), the percentage of online-enabled Xbox 360 consoles is at 60 percent. Dealing with that influx of people isn't an easy task, and it takes a NASA-like control to keep it all going.
Microsoft's time has to be preoccupied with the complexities of keeping the service up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year in 24 countries. Sometimes, that isn't a given.
Majita Biljeskovic, a 22-year-old electrical engineering student at Northern Illinois University, wrote in an e-mail that he loves Xbox Live except for "DISCONNECTIONS!" Last fall, he spent six hours a day trying to become the best FIFA soccer game player in the U.S. But his internet connection dropped him five times in 100 games. He says he lost a month's worth of achievement points, causing him to drop in the rankings.
"Three months of giving up lifting weights, going out with friends at night at college and fitness goes down the drain with five disconnections," he said.
Players get penalized for disconnections, mainly because it's a strategy that losers pull whenever they're about to lose a match. Greenberg says that many disconnections are the fault of third-party internet service providers or broadband suppliers. Microsoft has no control over them, but it strives to hit an uptime target of 99.9 percent of the time for its part of the service.
"We regularly meet and exceed that," he said.
Microsoft continues to modify Xbox Live to provide a better overall experience. One upgrade in spring made it easier to download more than one thing at the same time. Another upgrade will come in the fall. But just as with the real world, life in the virtual world is far from perfect.
Dean Takahashi is author of The Xbox 360 Uncloaked.
