Raising Your Gamerscore By PowerLeveling

Joystiq is reporting on a new outfit claiming they'll powerlevel your gamerscore for cash. For $300, they say, they'll raise your Xbox Live gamerscore by 3000 points. Ozymandias, a member of the 360 Launch Team, has commentary on the situation. From his post: "The thing that struck me as most interesting about this is that Achievements (and the Gamerscore associated with them) have become a currency... one just as valuable as virtual currency in MMOs, and one some people might be willing to pay real dollars for. I certainly don't condone it, but it does support my belief that competitors will need to have their own Achievements/Gamerscore system in the future as it's definitely a tipping aspect for some folks. (For the record, I now believe the rumor of PS3 'Entitlements' to be false; however, I fully expect a similar solution within the next year or so once the online service has launched.)"

mine's bigger.

[PSXer]

Am I the only one who doesn't care about my gamerscore? A lot of the achievements don't really measure skill, but just time spent playing the game. Oh man, that guy beat 30 Xbox 360 games? He's totally better than me who spreads my gaming time among other platforms as well.

On second thought, that was probably the whole point of the gamerscore in the first place. Hey kids, buy more xbox 360 games and you'll get more easy 'achievements' that'll give you a higher number and thus make you better than your friends!

I can not believe that people would pay $300 for a meaningless number. I'm sure that "my number is higher than you" will work amazingly well when they're being pounded in multiplayer.

Re:So..?

[kirun]

I believe they have already tried that plan, only they called it "The Spirits Within".

Oh man that will be some great spam

[Broken scope]

ENLARGE YOUR E-PENIS BY 2 DIGITS IN JUST 2 DAYS FOR ONLY $59.99 NO ANNOYING GAMEPLAY OR MESSEY STRATEGEY GUIDES! WE DO ALL THE ENLARGING FOR YOU! oh god... im gonna be sick.

That's just sad.

[Endo13]

Levels and unlocks in MMORPGS or BF2 actually give you some advantages or more options in games, however pathetic these might be. (In the end they're still mostly about boosting your e-peen, but at least they have a pretense of being more...) Since 'Gamerscore' is merely a way for you to keep score of what you've done so far (and make your e-peen bigger than your friends') it becomes worth exactly nothing when you have someone 'powerlevel' it, because it doesn't even show your score then. All it shows is that you have enough of an inferiority complex to pay someone to raise your score.

Maybe I should hire Tiger to play a few rounds of golf for me while I get a massage... that'll help the ol' scorecard.