"I hate sports games," Kristen says with a weary laugh, reminding me for about the fifth time this Thursday night "I had to ask someone what a sack was. They said it's when you tackle the quarterback. I said, 'Which one is the quarterback?'"

Only in name are Kristen and I playing Madden NFL Arcade. Instead we are "boosting," - throwing games to each other, more or less, to rack up multiplayer achievements. I've already gotten 50 points the easy way. Now it's her turn.

It is a substantial part of how Kristen, whose last name I'm withholding out of concern for her privacy, has become, according to one leading compilation, the No. 4 ranking woman, worldwide, in Gamerscore. Her tag is CRU x360a - go ahead, look it up. Kristen - CRU or Crubie to some online - is a 24-year-old stay-at-home mom in northwest Indiana. You call her extremely motivated. You can call her obsessed. You can also call her an achievement whore, like she hasn't heard that from every piss-ant with a 5,000 gamerscore in the underground zone.

Bottom line, she's is really effective at piling up her gamerscore. But she's not sure when, or if, she will stop.

A Race to the Top

"It was a friendly race at the time," Kristen says of the beginning, three years ago, when she got serious about her Gamerscore. "It was to 20,000. My buddy was at 15,000 and I was at 13, I was 2,000 behind him. I said, 'OK, this might take years.'

Kristen had bought an Xbox 360 in early 2007 and, like most, it wasn't because it offered achievements. She was a multiplayer gamer on a few titles she enjoyed - shooters mostly. Then she joined a Gamerscore league. And then she got into this side bet.

"Once I found sites that had guides on which were the easy games, I beat (20,000) in like a month and a half," she says. "It got me hooked and it was like a drug. A bad drug. A bad habit."

Soon enough Kristen managed to fall in with some elite players in the achievement grinding world. One, named Smrnov, who is the global No. 10 on MyGamerCard, praises Kristen's team-spirited achievement hunting. "CRU was unselfish in the help she offered our team, and has always been reliable for getting the game time in, which is a very hard trait to find for spanning so many different games, versus a single one," he says.

Stallion83, the global No. 2 on that list, played with Kristen in those early days, and was most recently her boosting partner on Damnation - a terribly received game. ("We managed to have fun talking about The Leprechaun movies," he says. "Party chat has made some of these games less painful.")

"She was just a nice person," Stallion83 recalls,"like one of the dudes. Most girls cause drama and try to get attention. I didn't see that with CRU." Both he and Smrnov heap praise on Kristen's FPS skill. "A great FPS player," says Smrnov. "In addition, she's very good about figuring out the best strategy for completing a game quickly and doing all associated research. She has both gaming skills and gamerscore skills."

But that doesn't keep Kristen from going after the kids' stuff, too. Last week, Spongebob: Truth or Square put her over 165,000. It's a cute detail but it barely scratches the surface of Kristen's performance over the past three years. Nor does the four-game Gamefly subscription, in constant rotation. That's to be expected. And the shelf full of games, many of them years old and still waiting to be played, well, what would you consider impressive? A hundred and sixty?

She bought Jumper: Griffin's Story - one of the worst reviewed games ever in Xbox 360 history. The day Modern Warfare 2 was released, she spent all her time on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. American Idol? She put the microphone in front of a speaker and played songs into it to ace the performances that much faster. It didn't work for Sing It: High School Musical or Hannah Montana, so, she had to belt those out herself.

"They're easy enough songs; It's not bad, there's no one looking at me while I'm playing it," Kristen says, "but my friends (on Xbox Live) see it, and all the guys can't believe I'm playing that game."

Remember that deal a few months back, when a someone tried to round up a 1,000 players to log in to NBA Live 07 and get the 100 gamerscore achievement for 1,000 players being online at the same time? Kristen was a part of that, with two versions of the game, one she had to go out and find for $3 at a game store, and the other playing on her Japanese 360.

Yes, she has an NTSC: J console. Kristen got that to play BioShock's Korean version, which has a separate achievement list. She's gotten 1,000 gamerscore in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. She's gotten 1,000 gamerscore in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand in Japanese. "I haven't even opened the Saint's Row 2 Japanese version, or the Saint's Row 1 for that matter," Kristen says. She's eyeballing a PAL console, but even an Arcade will be close to $300 with shipping and, "Do I really need to play BioShock again?"

Some of the region-locked Japanese games she plays are bought by pooling money with Stallion83, Smrnov and others in the ultra-gamerscore crowd, and the group then trades the discs around by mail. One game, Clannad, was picked for its low-hanging fruit. It's a "visual novel," sometimes called a dating sim, but as the choices are all text-based the gameplay should be pretty easy, right?

"It's a text game, and you have to choose A or B, you only have these text options," Kristen said. "But I'm sitting there on Google Translate trying to translate these strategy guides and match up (Japanese) characters to make my choices. And I'm thinking 'Why the hell did I buy a Japanese Xbox and this game, this is just retarded.' It's so embarrassing trying to match characters to a language I don't even know. I've spent $400 on a game I can't even read."

It makes me wonder. These are called games. And technically, she's playing them. But is this even fun? Is this ever fun?

"I definitely play more games I don't enjoy than games I do," she says. "Like, maybe 65 percent of the games I play I don't enjoy."

Kristen's husband doesn't even know why she sticks with it, if something like CSI: Hard Evidence is so unfulfilling for her to play.

"Sometimes I'll be playing, and he'll ask, 'Did I have to buy that or did someone else buy it?'" Kristen says. "And I'm like, 'Do you want the truth or do you want me to lie to you?' And he walks away, saying 'I can't believe you're playing that.' To me that's more embarrassing than playing Disney: Sing It."

A Mother's Work

Kristen is careful to remind me that she does have a life outside of gaming. "I'm an avid paintball player; I have my own gun, although that's also another expensive hobby," she says. "But yeah, I'd much rather go out to a bar, go bowling, play darts or pool than sit at home and boost games all night. I'm still young."

She's also the mother of a six-year-old girl. You can do the math there, it means Kristen became a mom at age 18. Before then, she was a rather typical kid, if a little tomboyish, and absolutely delighted by video games. Kristen says she's played them since she was five. When she lived with her parents, new games and new consoles were common, especially around the holidays. When she had her daughter and moved out of the home, her original Xbox and her beloved NES - which she still has even though it won't work - stayed behind. The Xbox 360 she bought a little more than three years ago marked her re-entry to games since having her daughter.

Sometimes mother and daughter play - Spongebob was one such example. But Kristen had to load up one of the five other gamertags she keeps on the console for family and friends to play. Boosting games might sound out of bounds to some gamers, but it's entirely within the ultra-gamerscore ethos. What isn't, however, is having anyone get an achievement for you. Even your six-year-old girl.

"She climbed up and said, 'Let me play,' so I said, 'Just a second,' and put her up with another (gamertag) and let her play," Kristen says. "Sometimes she'll say 'Look, Mom, I got an achievement too!' She gets excited."

This isn't something Kristen wants to encourage. "I don't want her to get addicted like I am though," Kristen says. "She doesn't really see me play too much, actually."

Her husband, Jeff, doesn't game much at all himself. He owns a towing business that provides a comfortable lifestyle and accommodates both his interests and Kristen's gaming. He's rather mellow about all the time she spends with games, if not the money, and keeps both in perspective. Some guys have wives who spend a ton of money on clothes, or dislike spending as much time around the house as she does.

"I have some hobbies myself that are fairly pricey and I can't really blame her for that," Jeff says. "However, occasionally a string of new games will come out within a two day span and magically a few hundred dollars will be missing from the bank account. With as much time as she has allotted for video games and the kid I can account for her whereabouts at any given moment so I'm certain that she isn't cheating on me."

Even pressed for a ballpark estimate, Kristen doesn't know how much her obsession with Gamerscore has cost in the preceding three years. "My pro system is $250, my Japanese console cost $400, the hard drive I put on it was $50 - I don't want to see the number, and I'm sure Jeff doesn't want to see it," she says. "But I think it would be cool to know."

There's another number about which she seems even less enthusiastic, though. And that's the next big milestone for her gamerscore.

Calling It a Career

Two hundred thousand. According to MyGamerCard, only one other woman has a total that high (with a second very close to reaching it.) And yet when Kristen brings it up, it's with a tone of voice that ponders what she will do then. It's almost like she doesn't want to get there, for what it will force her to consider.

The simplest answer is by far easier said than done: Just quit. "I keep saying when I get 200,000 gamerscore, I'm going to retire," Kristen says. "There are people who do that. I say it now, but I don't think you can ever actually quit. It's like a drug. It is addicting."

And she uses that word often enough that I figure I should bring up the subject. Carefully. I would never say video game addiction isn't real, knowing that real people do indeed battle it. I also believe it's a topic given to alarmism. And I'm not a psychiatrist, so it's not my place to go diagnosing other people's behavior. But I ask Kristen anyway. Maybe, has she ever considered talking to someone about her gaming?

"I wouldn't say I need to talk to someone," Kristen says after considering the question for a long moment. "I'm not hurting someone by doing this. My family life is not being hurt. Granted, it's like an addiction, but I'm not hurting anyone. Well, I'm getting little sleep sometimes, but that's on me.

"Besides, I saw where someone had gone to be treated at a rehab center for video games, and it was something like $30,000 a year, and I thought, 'Do you know how many Xboxes and games I could buy with this?'" she says, without a trace of irony. "I don't think so."

When Kristen is most at ease with her gamerscore is when it describes how she's good at something. How she's figured out a way to beat the system; or how she's actually put in the time to get the "General" achievement in Call of Duty 3 - getting 40,000 points in ranked matches - to collect a rare 100+ gamerscore achievement.

"It's very much a personal pride thing, being ranked in the top five in the world in something, whether it's gaming or the fact I'm a female gamer," Kristen says. "I'm never going to be in the Olympics, so I'll be a great gamer. It's something I know I'm good at."

But I hope when she breaks 200,000 she can put the controller down. She spent the first three years of her adulthood being a mom. I suggest to Kristen that, maybe, she's spent the last three in front of a console, trying to get some of that lost time back.

Kristen ponders this, and seems to agree. "Maybe," she says.

Maybe then she can call it even.

Gamasutra acquired data on the top 13 Xbox Live Games for 2008 from Microsoft Game Studios user research expert Bruce Phillips, which he gathered to explore the problem of why people stop playing games. The data was culled from a selection of 14,000 Xbox Live players, and the list of games are generally those that attract the more hardcore crowd. If that is the case, then why are more than 50% of them stopping playing before earning all of their Gamerscore points?

As far as MGS is concerned, this is a serious issue. Players are quitting the game without striving to explore everything. Another chart in the article tracks games that dole out achievements for simply finishing the single-player game, and the numbers are much higher for most titles, but again that speaks volumes. Players are playing through a game without exploring, or attempting to achieve more. It could be an issue of frustration, boredom, distraction, or just plain laziness.

You can read more on the data by following the link below. What I want to know is, how many of you actually go out of your way to score achievement points?

Xbox Live Gamerscore, Completion Stats Show Major Trends [Gamasutra]

This is a warning or maybe it's a helpful hint for those striving for just one ... more... point.

Me? I didn't notice until someone sent me a message over Xbox Live to remark that the DJ Hero developers had included a one-point Achievement.

You get it for playing your first mix of songs, which is the first thing you'll accomplish outside of the game's tutorial.

My gamerscore now ends in a 1, not that I could even tell you what it is. Looking it up, it is... 18,521.

I've got a request in to the DJ Hero developers to find out what they were thinking.

1 vs 100 has one thing in common with every other Xbox 360 game. The massively multiplayer Xbox 360 game show will have Achievements. And that means that even people who don't want to play it can mine it for Achievement Points.

There will be lots. We didn't win any when we tried the game, but we still got the good news about them for Achievement fiends.

Microsoft's plan for 1 vs 100 is for the multiplayer game show to run for 13-week seasons. Each season will offer players the chance to gain 200 Achievement Points. New season, new Achievements.

Because 1 vs 100 is free to Xbox Live Gold subscribers (who have to pay annually for Gold, of course), these will be some of the cheapest Achievement Points achievable on the system.

No word yet on what the Achievements will be.

X360A's Alan Pettit noted that the new batch of Fallout 3 achievements broke, once again, the stated maximum of 1250 Gamerscore (per title) Microsoft set forth in 2007. His complaint about the inconsistency brought him a response, he says, from an unidentified someone inside Microsoft. This person spelled out two revisions to the Gamerscore/Achievement maximums.

According to X360A, they are:

• A maximum of 1750 points and 80 Achievements for a full retail title. The Orange Box's 99 achievements seem to be grandfathered in, although it's an open question if they'll be allowed to add more achievements should a Team Fortress 2 update come to Xbox 360.

•A quarterly maximum of 250 points and 10 Achievements for any additional DLC associated with that title. Additionally, these totals are cumulative, so a company could wait three quarters to do a large expansion with 30 achievements and 350 points, or parcel them out in smaller additions. X360A says its source explained the rule is meant "to stop companies from releasing a whole slew of content immediately after a game's release to hit its 1750 max right away."

The source had no answers if there were rules regarding rumors "no achievements for free content," or requiring other peripherals or titles to unlock certain achievements. Still, this info, if legit, sheds a little light on how Microsoft tunes its policies with the goal of sustaining interest in a game.

The Current Achievement Rules Explained [Xbox360Achievements.org, thanks Heape.]

Gamasutra asked a number of prominent developers, from Infinity Ward (Call of Duty) to EA (Skate) through Naughty Dog (Uncharted), just that question. And while all recognised the importance of implementing them correctly in a game (as this can increase both sales and time spent playing), they each had a few different ideas on implementing them.

The Skate guys believe you need to earn them. Naughty Dog reckon that they're there to recognise skilful events, while Infinity Ward (and this is the way I like my achievements) think that they need to be spread gently, and evenly, throughout the experience, because "It's really nice to get a pop-up every hour or two saying that you've done something cool".

Unlocking Achievements: Rewarding Skill With Player Incentives [Gamasutra]

It seems that certain Windows Live ID email addresses that you need to have in order to set up an Xbox Live Gold account are set to expiring after a certain period of inactivity on the users part. once the email addresses expire and are deleted, taking any Gamertag associated with the account with them, even if the user has updated their Live account with a new email address in the interim.

GamesIndustry.biz looked to Microsoft for comment on the issue, receiving the following response:

"We are investigating this issue and don't have any further comment to make right now. Any consumer with any issues regarding their Xbox 360 or Xbox Live account should visit xbox.com/support or call their country's customer support number."

Until such a time as the issue is fixed, we suggest you take a moment to log into your Hotmail account every once in awhile, just in case.

Xbox Live accounts hit by email expiry blunder [GamesIndustry.biz]

We heard last week that the blog had been shut down, but there was always the chance that was simply part of a public relations realignment, and the team would be relocated and put to work on something else. Turns out, no, as part of Microsoft's mass layoffs the entire crew are now out of a job.

The news comes from the Twitter account of former GamerScore boss Chris Paladino, where there's a saddening play-by-play of the day's events.

CPaladino [Twitter]

In the final post, published yesterday at 5 p.m., Gamerscore said that internal housekeeping had organized community outreach into several channels, making Gamerscore a little redundant, making its closure appropriate.

The content it usually offered or pointed readers to can now be found elsewhere:

• Behind-the-scenes content, interviews, and featured game videos are on the console's Inside Xbox Channel.
• Microsoft's Xbox blogging corps can be still be read on Xbox.com's Voices page, and, of course, Major Nelson will continue his blogging and podcasting.
• If you're looking for the latest news and press releases, go to Xbox.com's Press site.
• Finally, you can sign up for email newsletters or go to xbox.mobi from your phone, if you want to keep up that way.

"We had a blast being part of Gamerscore blog, and we want to thank you for your support, but as you can see from the list above, there is no shortage of methods to snag the latest word from all of us at Xbox," they write.

Gamerscore Blog Changes [Gamerscore Blog]

Before I got Pac-Man Championship Edition, I never understood this whole Achievement obsession. But now? Now I'm giddy with delight when I get a free copy of Time Pilot on Xbox Live Arcade, shameful when I realize I've just spent the better part of the afternoon unlocking "Smooth Operator" for 20 gamerscore points. A recent Attack of the Show profile on the life of an achievement whore brings the seedy underbelly of point fiends to light. You might think the joke is as long as the first five seconds, but they get plenty of mileage out of these ladies.

The Scoreboard #1 [OXM Online - Thanks GetsomeYo!]

I'm sure that Microsoft—and many third parties—would love to add these options to older Xbox re-releases. The cash revenue from achievement whores could make even Psychonauts finally turn a healthy profit.

Will Xbox Originals have Achievements? [Microsoft]

For those who'd like to add a bit of sexual objectification to your otherwise very healthy, loving and mutually-respectful relationship, this feisty garment will run you $13.

ACHIEVEMENT LOCKED UNDERWEAR [via playgadgets]

Could the Gamercard be a facet of the just announced agreement with GameSpy to license its tech? Such a thing sounds not too dissimilar from the Gamespy "Sake" system. Or is it the "Atlas" feature? Regardless of the implementation, I'm sure we'll be hearing more about the mysterious Gamercard soon.

'Gamercard' spotted in UT3 demo - is this PS3's answer to the 360's Gamertag? [Games Digest]

More ideas! MTV's Stephen Totilo has come up with a novel use for that Live Vision Camera. A pretty good use at that — Having it set so it takes a pic every time you score a 360 Achievement. These photos would next appear next to your Achievements for your Xbox buddies to see. He writes:

We'd wind up with a visual chronicle of the time I'd spent at any given game. There'd be shots of me bright-eyed and thrilled, winning an Achievement for completing the first section of "Halo 3," followed by a photo of me slouched lower in my seat, winning the Achievement for advancing to another section of the game. There would be a picture of me bleary-eyed next to an Achievement for finishing the game. There'd be ones for me winning various multiplayer Achievements, the photos snapped across several months and showcasing subtle changes in my hairstyle and the decor of my apartment.

Goofy, definitely, but not a bad idear at all. Brian Ashcraft

Totilo's Live Vision Idea [MTV]

NBA Live 07 fans and achievement point whores everywhere are grousing over the games 100 point "Online with 1,000 people" achievement, which requires you be playing the game and connected to live with at least 999 other players doing the same. While not an impossible achievement to reach alone, Acheive360Points.com has decided to organize an event on the 10th of this month to make sure that as many people obtain it as possible. To that end they are asking NBA Live 07 players around the world to boot up the game this Saturday at 8:00 pm Eastern time and stay connected for at least an hour to make sure everyone has a chance at the elusive prize.

It strikes me as bizarre that such a thing as 100 lousy points to your gamer score could draw people together in a concentrated effort of the magnitude they are aiming for, but I've always been a big fan of bizarre, so I might just rent a copy of the game and lend a hand. Michael Fahey

Achieve360Points.com - 1,000 People Online Event [Achieve360Points.com - Thanks David!]

Xbox Live player StripClubDj has broken the 100,000 gamerscore mark, thus heralding a new age of world peace and prosperity for all of mankind! Let the children take to the streets, singing songs of victory while carrying posters of our hero! You there! Fetch me my chisel so I might forever capture his noble visage in the purest marble! Drape across his shoulders a mantle of woven gold so that all shall know him!

So yeah, StripClubDJ has reached a milestone atop a list that ultimately means nothing by spending money on games and systems from multiple regions and then playing them incessantly. It is a grand accomplishment that will live on in our hearts and minds for days, possibly weeks if you take some of the slower to update gaming sites into account.

You know what we need to do with fanatics like this? Harness their obsession by attaching real-life goals to game achievements. Make a game where the final, secret achievement is finding an actual cure for cancer or achieving peace in the Middle East. Achieve something real and become more than the punch line in a snarky blog post. Michael Fahey

StripClubDJ's Gamer Profile [Thanks Aaron!]

The SmackTalk is bad. This is worse.

A company who shall go unnamed and unlinked is offering to powerlevel your Xbox 360 Gamerscore for ridiculous amounts of money. Considering that Gamescore means nothing, changes nothing, and will impress no one who matters, this site is truly baffling.

* +500 gamer points: $39.99 * +750 gamer points: $59.99 * +1000 gamer points: $99.99 * +1500 gamer points: $149.99 * +2000 gamer points: $199.99 * +3000 gamer points: $299.99

Not only are the prices ludicrous, but the site is peppered with phrases like "impress your friends" and "for the true player".

But much like infomercials, pyramid schemes and the like, I cannot blame the business itself. I blame anyone who supports such a service, but being that brutally insecure is probably its own punishment.

If you're going to spend money for this, I'm developing a competing system where I smile at you and pet your head while fanning you with stacks of Monopoly cash. It only costs $30 for every five minutes, and I guarantee that I can soothe your shrivelled, flaking ego with more skill than Xbox Live. Eliza Gauger

[thanks Metzger]

Over at Xbox360Achievements.org, an almost complete list of Splinter Cell: Double Agent achievements has been posted up., along with descriptions and enumerations. There's 38 achievements in total, equalling (as usual) 1,000 points.

But something appears to have gone a bit screwy when they decided to dole out the points. For example, completing the first two training missions will give you 40 points, which is worth exactly the same amount as beating the game on Hard. The training missions better involve me running through nuclear land mine field if it's comparable to beating the game on hard. Florian Eckhardt

Splinter Cell Double Agent Achievements [Xbox360achievements.com]

Xbox Live's GamerScore system is the gaming equivalent of tattooing the length and circumference of your penis on your forehead. So how'd you feel about paying someone to take the tip of it and pull?

Enter Levelmy360, a service that allows you to pay a group of "powerleveling veterans" (think: ex-gold farmers) to level up your score for you. Pricing is pretty screwy. You can purchase points in 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 3000 denominations. But 500 points costs $39.99, where as 3000 points costs $299.99. See anything wrong with the math there?

Still, an invaluable services for those gamers burdened with too much of a life to publicly boast that they have none. Florian Eckhardt

GamerScore Leveling Service Opens Up Shop [1Up]