My wife bought me an XBox 360 for Christmas, but I'm predominantly a PC Gamer, so the idea of Gamer Score is a new concept to me. Perhaps it's because of my neophyte status that I find the whole concept so enthralling, but I can't help myself looking at in-game leader boards and checking out gamertags. It's become almost as compelling as playing the games themselves.

So I put it to you, Escapist Forums, how important is Gamer Score to you?

Well..I don't own an Xbox 360, so it's not at all. :P

But, speaking from the sense of if I DID own one, it probably wouldn't be very important. I'd be more interested in the individual leader boards for games, or seeing what games my friends were playing. Gamerscore just seems to be a machine to get xbox players to buy more games from Microsoft. Quite ingenious, actually.

I'd say it's fairly important (I am, in fact, currently on a Divine Crusade to get over 50% of the potential gamerscore for my Xbox games, need about 1500 more). But what's more important to me is the achievements themselves, rather than the score associated with them. Doing something a little off the beaten track to make something go *plink*, or going back and practising something to the point I can do it well enough for the achievement keeps me playing games much longer than I otherwise would.

The most telling thing, of course, is that if there's a game which is otherwise functionally identical on both platforms, I'll get the Xbox one instead of the PS3 one for the achievements.

Gamerscore is a right of passing 4 some people. I know 4 some clans U need 3000 or up and some don't care. Personally it's a load of sh*t with chips thats only good for overachievers and bonuses for multiplayer (Halo 3 armors. Hyabusa in particular).

Ever since I saw ZeroPunctuation I will never talk the same. All my friends are obsessed with it but I'm the first to sign up.

As long as I'm having fun, I don't really care.

I don't really pay too much attention to my Gamerscore. I know it can be raised very quickly with certain games (Guitar Hero II just throws points at you, and Assassin's Creed, Gears of War and Halo 3 award you loads of points simply for completing the game's levels), so putting a lot of stock in a player's high score may just be the sign of someone with a lot of money to spend on new games. What's worse is that in many multiplayer games, you'll run into people who want to basically forego the game simply for racking up achievements. There's an endless stream of voice chatter on Halo 3...

"Anyone doing achievements? I need the two-for-one achievement with the Spartan laser."
"Sure, I'll do that, but you gotta let me kill you right after; I need that achievement too."
"Hey, let me in on that achievement action!"

Makes the achievements seem worthless if you're going to get them that way.

That said, I do enjoy looking at my friends' records and comparing our accomplishments, just for kicks.

Gamerscore is that useless highscore function they have on old console games. It has no function, and noone who sees it is really going to care.

I've never cared, and hopefully, I never will. To me, gaming is about just that, playing the game. On the other hand, I find it a lot of fun to help my buddy Matt get a better gamerscore. Matt's obsessed with Gamerscore (his is currently over 16000, possibly 17000 or more at this point). My own is pretty low (about 2000) because I just don't even try for them.

Gamerscore is fairly trivial to me, although I enjoy the achievment system. The gamerscore itself seems flawed, as some particularly brutal achievments yield low gamer points, while sports games shell them out like free candy. When it comes down to it, I am more impressed with certain achievments than I am a 10,000+ gamerscore, mainly because I can think of about 1000 ways to be cheap about it all, and rack up easy points.

I like the achievements, I think it's a good way for people to get more out of their games. What I DON'T like is how unimaginative so may of them are. Sure you should get achievement points for beating the game and some of the levels, but there's so much more room for imagination that could easily expand the lifespan of a game. The Orange Box has got some great achievements, like the one-bullet for Episode one or the (evil) gnome-carrying achievement.

The achievements can extend the lifespan of a game long after you've beaten it, which is great if you're not too bothered about multiplayer, like me. There is one problem though, when certain achievements stop you from playing the game the way that you want. For example, I played through mass effect making decisions that I probably wouldn't have picked otherwise to get the Paragon of virtue achievement. This changes the way that the game is intended to be played and can slightly spoil the gaming experience. Having said that my scores tiny, so maybe I don't really care that much anyway :P

I really, really like the concept. The idea of putting in little rewards for being creative, playing a little longer, or going someplace you'd never normally go, all work in tandem to increase the gaming experience.

In practice....it can be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, hearing that cheery little 'ping' always makes me happy, whether it's intentional or not.

On the other, some are so hard as to be downright nasty. The "Flawless (insert instrument here)" Achivements in Rock Band just pissed me off to no end, and I still need the drumming and singing ones. Not from lack of trying.

If you're really obsessed, then you fret about not getting some obscure Achivement that no one else cares about. That time could be better spent playing newer, better games.

And sadly, I fall into the "Fairly Obsessed" category. I've got nearly 6000 points so far, and I really try hard to get as many as I can. I will admit though, it's pushing me hard to be a better gamer. My Halo skills have sharply spiked from trying to get the multiplayer Achivements, to the point where it was me vs. my friends and I still won 75 to 50 and down.

So, I like them for the chance to get more out of a game that you wouldn't normally.

However, I do hope that my gamerscore never hits like 100,000. That just screams "No life!" in my opinion.

I do try for the achievements to give me the illusion that I'm not completely wasting my life away, but I wouldn't call myself obsessed with them.

I only care about my score insofar as what game items/characters/maps it would unlock... IE, Mario Kart or BF2142. I rather prefer nothing NEEDS unlocking, cuz I truly don't give a shit about my score. I can't trade it for money, it doesn't impress the ladies, and makes you look like a dick to your friends when you gloat about it.

i particularly enjoy the achievments idea, it gives you something to shoot for in a game and in some instances extends the life of a game until you can do this or that. my friends and i keep track of particular acheivments on a specific game sometimes but overall gamerscore isn't that important to us, of course it helps that i have the highest gamerscore of all my friends, seriously they could add theirs together and it still would be smaller than mine is so thats always fun. however it's only come up once so thats how important it is really, enough to notice, but not enough to make anything out of it.

I care about achievements if they unlock stuff (i.e. Mass Effect), but other achievements I do my best not to care about. I'm well aware that I have a type A personality, but I also hate being that way, and try to defy it as often as I can. I play games through several times, generally, but my golden rule is that if an activity is actively unfun (Get some Grub and Little Rocket Man come to mind), I will not go through it just to unlock an achievement.

That said, my gamerscore is over 8000 points, and while that doesn't seem that high to me, I've got everyone on my friend's list beat.

- J

I like it, but I'm not going to become obsessive about it. I've had my 360 (well, technically) since last year and I've got about 7500 points. Oblivion is the only game I'm anywhere close to having every achievement for(unless you count each individual game in The Orange Box as seperate, in which case I have every TF2 achievement). I'm only currently missing 2, but getting them aren't high on my to-do list. Gamerscore adds replayability to a game, and certain achievements are nice for bragging, but I'm not consumed with them. Though I'll admit that I'd miss them if Microsoft decided to do away with them.

Gamer score? Are those the numbers that show up in my profile that I've never paid attention to once in my life?

I think they're a neat carrot on a string and I will go out of my way for them on occasion if they seem fun or have a cute name, but more often than not, I ignore Achievements and Gamer Score altogether.

depends on gh3 is the only place were it really matters for me

I H8 Achievments...

I paid for the game, they already have my money, so let me have the full range of guns and gear or next time I'll buy games from a different company.

Could you imagine how annoying Crysis would be if you only got ONE suit power to start, and had to unlock each of the other 4 by beating the different difficulty levels? I'da tossed my CD out the window.

But that isn't what an achievment is at all. It's completely optional. There's one instance in which I can see an achievment effecting gameplay, and that's the Hayabusa armour recieved in halo. Which is also useless. Achievment's are there for a way of justifying some stupid stunts pulled, or gratifying some amazing ones.

Honestly the ideal of achievements are good in nature and really bring a new audience that needs that "thing" on the record that they did accomplish something(enter your standard bragger who thinks he is better than you). However I really cringe at the gamerscore system because although most achievements are gained by playing the game(or playing the game until you're really good at the game) Makes people focus more on completing the objective for a score rather than experimenting with the game after they mastered it or those who challenge themselves that drive to be the best.

It is especially sad when you hear both adults and kids rate a player in person by their gamerscore as their experience with video games and their knowledge of the industry. I know a guy at work that is a solid video buff, but I really don't focus on the size of my tv screen or the surround sound system to define myself as a gamer. And if I dont know these he mentions why he is better with his gamerscore.

In the end developers should focus their efforts on putting in more DEPTH and content into their game(or even making the game shorter but better) and have those extras as fun rewards for being great at the game. The only good thing about achievements is that you do have that record that you did complete this game and did said objective(assuming someone else didnt do it for ya)

And from reading most posts it seems that it is also an addictive drug for some to get that high gamerscore(thank goodness most dont care here) but people really go overboard that they DO play for the gamerscore over the actual game. And I dont know about you guys but having Dora the explorer as an achievement isnt exactly saying I'm the better gamer versus I'm desperate for points.

i personally really like it. i like being rewarded for my game play. i have both a 360 and PS3 so when games come out for both i buy it for the 360 (not just for the better online play) but for the achievements.

nilcypher:
So I put it to you, Escapist Forums, how important is Gamer Score to you?

Not at all, but I love Achievements. Achievements force my obsessive-compulsive side to go to war with my often limited game-attention-span. And they have, several times, caused me to go back and put more time into a game that I likely would have left on the shelf and never played again on any other system. There is intangible joy in hearing the 'ping' and seeing the Achievement award notification pop up.

I also find it bizarrely interesting to be able to look back at all the Achievements I've ever earned and see what games I played, when I played them, and for how long. And it's interesting to use them to compare gaming tastes with friends (by seeing which games were played, and what achievements they unlocked. Not by comparing scores). For example, my profile makes it pretty obvious that I don't care for shooters, and don't play online often.

The score itself though, I wouldn't mind if it were gone entirely. While I like the Achievements, I like them as objectives. I don't really care for them as a competition metric.

I am one hell of a score whore. When I play games I look up the possible achievements and get em. I even bought Avatar just to get 1000 points in two minutes. Didnt play it any more. Same with CSI or King Kong. BTW: Gamerscore stands at 29.000.

I like the secret achievements. Like how every achievement is secret in Dynasty Warriors(I think, I didn't actually go down the list, just the first coloum). Just getting a reward for doing something the creators thought was cool.

I think the achievements are an awesome social tool, but giving point values to them is kind of silly (especially given how skewed the numbers are). The real power of achievements is to give a shared experience to gamers that is a little above and beyond what someone who rushed through the game got. Some of the better achievements don't just have points, but whole STORIES. You can recount that epic combo that got you the last Bejeweled award, or the night you and your friend spent trying to get a Co-Op Legendary completion on Halo 3 (note that these stories are not at all interesting to anyone else).

Did anyone here ever play Super Mario RPG for the SNES? There was a secret item you could get for landing 100 jumps in one turn. Or what about the WEAPON monsters in FFVII? Who here HASN'T seen just how many people they can kill with the chainsaw in GTA[insert numeral:subtitle here]? They are ridiculous, but I tried for it anyway. And even if I failed, I still tried something I otherwise wouldn't have. Later, I could compare notes with my friends, and it gave us something to talk about besides the riveting social commentary of Crackdown.

That's what some of these achievements are like. They ask gamers to try and find every "lambda" symbol in Half Life or win 200 ranked basketball games, and along the way, create a shared experience that reaches out beyond the scope of the game itself. Something you can look back on with a friend and say "Remember that night we tried to get the Pacifist achievement in Geometry Wars?"

meffex:
I even bought Avatar just to get 1000 points in two minutes.

See, that's something you should be ashamed of. There's a limit below which one should not sink. (I also don't boost to get online achievements, that's stupid as well, if you can't do it straight, admit that you suck and move on).

Yea, I don't care about my gamer score either.

I care more than I should. However, the only games I'm 1000/1000 on are Mass Effect and Oblivion. Some games make poor decisions with how to award gamerscore, like Burnout:Revenge, but in most cases it's something extra and fun to do with a game after you've beaten it.

I think I might be lying to myself when I say, 'I don't really care about gamerscore or achievements.'
I think I do.
I mean, I want my gamerscore to be respectable, y'know? (I think I have about eight hundred points, but, mind you, I only own about three 360 games.) Some of them I'm not really happy about doing (No, I'm not going to Get Some Grub) but I try for ones that seem relitavely easy (I.E Two Points).
So I'm actually going to have to go with 'Yeah, I care about Achievements and Gamerscores.'

Gamer Score to me just shows how much free time one person actually has. I have about 2500 and that is very very low in comparison to the XBox community and I play about 1-2 hours a night during the week (mostly online which of course doesn't normally get you points). For those that have over 10K in points...LEAVE THE BASEMENT AND GET SOME FRICKEN SUN!

The short answer would be no, don't care. I care more about the mute button and "avoid player"

I have a bit of a completionist mentality, but I still won't do something in a game that seems totally pointless -- unrelated to the storyline, doesn't help my character, you know. In Zelda games, for example, I'll always collect all the heart pieces, but I'll never collect the bugs. In Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I went through the main quest, all the guild quests, and all the Daedric quests, but the other side quests went largely ignored.

Gamerscore is that little incentive that puts me over the edge and makes me a REAL completionist.

I'm currently working on Little Rocket Man. No way in HELL would I go to all that trouble if there wasn't an official mandate with a totally arbitrary reward! :)

I find it a bit hit and miss.

You get all these people who have huge gamerscores, because theyve gone out and played alled the games where the acheivements are laughably easy to get (Such as Samurai Warriors 2, where you get all your acheivement points just by playing the game and unlocking all the other characters)
Those people bother me, because its not like they are playing and getting the acheivement to show how far they are in a game or all the extra stuff theyve done, but its more of a 'look at my score, im more hardcore' thing to them.

I think what bothers me is how differant some of them feel. It can easily range from 'That hardly felt worthy of an acheivement' to 'Do I really want to spend all that time for just a few extra points?'
Theres a few games that only require you to play for a short time before it just throws an acheivement at you, while others will have you do something that can take a such a huge amount of time (Not including acheivements for completing or getting so far into a game)

My biggest issue with it probably, is that it reveals what games you play. While some people dont mind this, it can be a problem for others, can make you wonder why none of your freinds have played game x, or if your the only one who hasnt played game y.
Add that to the fact that you only have to let a game load up for it to be listed forever in your profile, which is especially annoying when it comes to demos of the live arcade games.

I'd like it if there was a way to hide the games your played, so it only shows your score and rep, or to select games to be hidden if you never got any achievement points and/or never really bothered playing the game.

Ive actually created a 'test account' on my 360, so I can play a game for a bit to see if I like it before using my actual account to play it...