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.)"

this is what turns me off online gaming

[cliffski]

It's this attitude that totally wrecked MMORPG games. there is fuck all role playing, there is fuck all exploring, fuck all entertainment, fuck all GAME. All we have are endless parades of people doing *whatever it takes* to score the points to get to the next level, and then the next level, and so on. Every MMO i've played has been like this. Its weird. Its even polluted FPS games with high scores like BF2. Ever played a BF2 game where everyone is a medic?

"I need to get my next medic badge dude".
"yeah fine, how about we play in a way that we all have fun, and play as a team huh"?
"shut up n00b"

I hope one day someone will make an online game that doesn't rack scores, or give a fuck about them. they can count me in.

So..?

[kirun]

If you're paying somebody to play the games for you, perhaps the games in question aren't actually fun and you should buy some different ones? Or, is there a market for games where you start off with all powers and infinite ammo, then just go around destroying stuff with absolutely no challenge? Should developers release a £200 ultimate box set winners edition of the game that consists of one DVD that plays the end credits?

I have a 360 but...

[Travoltus]

what in the world can you do with gamerscore points?

Buy things?

I thought that was what the for-pay Gold membership was for... which is why I never got onto Xbox Live AT ALL. (I'll get my updates via download&burn, thank you.)

Anyways, this gamer score crap is why things like Game Shark hasn't come out (and why 360 games are so brutally hard to play); alas, the ban on cheat code generators has been rendered moot by this run-around with the gamer score. So now we have neither cheat codes for single player games nor any integrity for the gamerscore system. Joy.

Tell me why again I bought a console??

Re:So... uh...

[pla]

You buy a $400 system and games, then pay someone else $300 to play it for you?
WTF is wrong with people these days, seriosly?

Simple - The combination of three factors:

1) Widespread acceptance of reward in a token economy as a primary reinforcement. You can compare this to sexual fetishes, where the object of the fetish can elicit a stronger response than "real" sexual activity.
2) The use of money - A "token" economy even if also the basis of the "real" economy - has conditioned most humans from a VERY young age into exactly what I describe in #1.
3) The easy creation of new shared token economies by videogame companies online.


These lead to exactly what you bemoan - We've gone so far from the original reinforcers (food, sex) via a virtually ubiquitous subsitution (money can buy food and sex), to the point where people can no longer fully separate one token from another (points in a video game may lead to improved pack status, but can't exchange for food or sex). People "know" that the tokens issued by their home govevernment have a certain consensual fungibility, which points in a video game do not; but they "feel" more-or-less equally satisfying to collect.

Re:this is what turns me off online gaming

[Cornflake917]

"I hope one day someone will make an online game that doesn't rack scores, or give a fuck about them. they can count me in."

Second Life.

I'm sure theres more.