The gaming life

The thought occurs that a lot of gamers are turning into minor celebrities. Obviously, Stallion is the most notable example thanks to his massive gamerscore, but it is also true of other people that have now lost that shelter of anonymity thinks to Xbox Live and gamertags.

Records for games have always existed but you'd be hard pressed to name the people responsible. Now we have tags like Major Nelson, TriXie et al being widely recognised by the vast majority. While score whores like Stallion, Rand al Thor and (sadly) stripclubdj have become famous, or infamous, for their exploits. The strange thing here is that even when a player reaches the top of the pile they are very rarely universally acclaimed.

stripclubdj obviously got to the top with less than legitimate means, but he never made any excuses for his actions and was openly honest about his techniques. In fairness, even when he was reset, he didn't bitch and moan about it - at least that I saw, and he still had his supporters.

Whereas Stallion has got to the top through hardwork and the ability to play any old crap. Yet he is constantly called out as a cheater, hacker or someone with no life. It would probably be no great shock to find out that he got as much hate mail as fan mail (in a personal message sense). It seems unfair that gamers feel the need to tear each other down rather than celebrate a great accomplishment.

The thing is that both of these individuals came to the public eye because of online leaderboards, forums and, most obviously, gamerscore. Factors that would have never been in play in the not too distant past. The 360 is the first machine to make checking out other players as easy as typing in their gamertag - from there you can pretty much paw through their friends, games played and score - not to mention post messages at a whim. Obviously players can block these features too, but why should we be forced to? I think players gunning for the top know that they are going to get slated regardless and are happy to live with that, but it still puzzles me why people feel the need to abuse random players that they don't even know.

My position as a reviewer opened me up to a glimpse at the bad side of things. I don't mind people asking me questions about reviews, but I do mind getting mindless insults just because they don't agree with a score or random friend requests just because you saw my name. I can only imagine how often the top players inboxes must fill up - as mine seems to be spammed constantly by people I've never heard of.

Not that I can complain. I'm an active member of a great forum and thoroughly enjoy writing reviews on the side. So if a slight bit of message filtering is the price I have to pay then so be it. My only qualm is just how much protection is offered to those people who truly need it.