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.

You couldn’t tell it by browsing this lame excuse for a blog, but I think about this site, a lot.

Every time I do something that I would want to tell a friend about, I think, “I really should post this on CONTRADICTION when I get home.” But I seldom if ever do.

It’s probably mostly laziness, but also I suffer from a self-imposed thought that just jotting something down is insufficient — a post here must be a long and thorough essay on the state of the something-or-other. I’m going to try to break that spell today, though. Even if I have just one or two lines to write, or just a thought, I’m going to log in & do it.

So in that spirit….

Yesterday I stopped by Games 4 Less (local used video game store) and picked up a used copy of Gun for my XBox360. It got poor reviews (largely because it was far from a “next-gen” title and very short) but I was interested because it’s a third-person shooter, which I enjoy, and it’s set in the wild west, which is a refreshing departure from space shooters & military shooters.

I’ve played about two hours into it and I’m really enjoying it. It’s got a fairly compelling and mature story and reason to get things done (which I appreciate) and sometimes just riding your horse around alone can be fun.

I wonder how many Chinese & Native American protest groups have condemned the western stereotypes portrayed in the game (there’s always somebody out there just standing by waiting to be angry about something), but they’re spot on with what you would expect from the old west that hollywood has established, so I find it a helluva lot of fun. Plus, it’s more achievements for me! (If you’re not familiar with XBox360 achievements, it’s addictive, so approach with caution!)