The psychology of the Xbox Live Gamerscore (for those to whom it matters) has been pretty widely analyzed.  Verdicts range anywhere from it being an arbitrary number with no value, to it being a brilliant tally to which the success of Microsoft’s Xbox can be at least partially attributed.

For the uninitiated, let me give you the Reader’s Digest summary of just what this number is.  From the moment you power on your Xbox 360 and play your first game, you have a gamerscore.  A new player has zero at the outset, and additional points are doled out by the games you play for performing specific tasks or reaching goals.  This can range from the obvious “reach this point in the game” goal to the more obscure “drive an entire race in reverse” sort of I-never-would-have-thought-of-that-on-my-own type.

Commercial games (on a disc) can award you up to 1000 points while Live Arcade (downloadable) can dole out 200 gamerpoints.

That’s the system in broad strokes.  If it doesn’t make sense I’m sure you can find a more detailed decription elsewhere online, but let’s get to the point.

As I mentioned, not everyone places any value in the gamerscore number, but I do value mine.  It’s true that it has no tangible value — I can’t redeem points for cash and prizes, and they don’t have any direct impact on life outside of the Xbox Live environment.  Instead I see gamerscore as a badge of accomplishment and a sort of running tally of my own gaming enjoyment.  As my own number climbs, achievement by achievement, it reminds me of all the ones I’ve gotten before, and just gives me a little gratification.  Even if you don’t know what

I played, and for how long, and how well I did, you know I did something because you can see the gamerscore value I extracted from it.  It’s nerd cred distilled down to a number.

So, that being said, my gamerscore broke the 35,000 mark yesterday.  And it wasn’t an accident.  As I noticed my score approaching the 35k mark I started deliberitely considering what game I wanted to be playing to get the final 100 or so points I needed to break the barrier.  I thought about going back to big-name titles that I had yet complete, like Grand Theft Auto IV or Gears of War 2, when an unassuming Live Arcade game called The Maw appeared in the game marketplace.

I read a few reviews, tried the demo, and bought the full game.  It seeemed to be beyond the standard fare for a Live Arcade game — a full 3D platformer with some interesting mechanics (incidentally, this isn’t a review of The Maw, so I’m going into any depth here on the gameplay) and a lot of charm.

After tearing through the first two levels of The Maw, I decided that this would be the game I’d use to push me oer the 35,000 mark.  It’s not a perfect game, nor one I’ll likely go back to time and time again, but it did lots of things right, and really spoke to what m

ade me love video games in the first place.

So in no particular order, here are the things I appreciated about The Maw:

• Bright & colorful art design, reminiscent of early arcade characters (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc.)
• Characters have tons of personality without a line of dialog (unless you count Frank saying, “Maaaaaawww” over & over)
• Freebies!  Twice in the game you’re awarded free gamerpics, and for finishing, you’re awarded a free premium NXE theme
• Just the right length for a adult gamer with a family & job.  These days some games are too long for my own good — I lose interest before I find enough time to finish them.
• Fun.  Just fun.
• Good challenge.  Not too hard, not too easy, but satisfying.
• Realistic collecting!  I’m not a fan of collect-a-thons in games (find all of the coins, find all of the hidden scrolls, find all of the impossibly obscured widgets), but this was just right.  You were asked to have The Maw eat every edible creature in each level, and it was a challenge, but certainly easily do-able.
• Great value.  At only $10, I got several hours of play out of it (not to mention the points!).

Essentially, The Maw did so much right, that I was easily able to overlook the things it did poorly (camera control, clipping).  I still have 20 points left to milk out of the Maw (it’s one of those silly ones, and it requires I play the game at various times of the day, not accomplish a certain gameplay goal), but I played through the entire story yesterday, finding all of the hidden bugs and eating all of the edible creatures for 180 gamerpoints, pushing me right over the 35,000 mark.

In the end, I feel like The Maw was a worthy game for crossing a barrier like this.  I would have been embarassed if it had been the Doritos advergame with dinosaurs eating delivery trucks that carried me over the line.

My 360Voice Blog congratulates me for 35,000.

You know, some things just speak for themselves, so I won’t bother to write any more about the chart below, except perhaps to mention that it’s the only pie chart to every make me chuckle out loud.

The “Rep” system on XBox Live is broken.

I’ve been playing a lot of Fight Night Round 3 boxing on my 360 lately, and doing pretty well at that, winning roughly 70% of my fights. What’s aggravating me is that sore losers are using Live’s “Rep” (reputation) system to lash out at me because they don’t like losing.

Your Rep is essentially a record of whether online opponents either chose to prefer to play with you (positive review) or avoid you (negative review). If they avoid you, they then must indicate why. However, none of the choices are, “Because I just got my ass handed to me and I want to lower this guy’s Rep.” And that’s the one they should be selecting. I’m not doing anything unsportsmanlike, I don’t cheat (can you really even cheat?), I don’t use Flash KOs (big super-punches that stun you instantly) and usually don’t even turn on my microphone to talk unless I hear my opponent asking a non-rhetorical question. But none of that matters.

So in essence, the more I beat people down win fights, the more sore losers I encounter, the lower my Rep goes. My reputation should be indicative of how I interact with my opponent, not whether I won or lost (that’s what your score keeps track of). I could understand it if I was trash-talking, or pausing at crucial times, or quitting early when losing, or generally making the online interaction unpleasant, but I’m not. The only thing I’m guilty of is winning too much.

I certainly understand that Fight Night is a very viceral game: it’s just your human avatar (very realistic-looking I might add) duking it out with another human avatar. No on-screen meters or gauges — just your human trying not to get beat to hell. But I wish these people would acknowledge and separate the difference between the gaming experience itself (my behavior) and their dissapointment in losing.