Achievement haters, stats and having a life.

Recently a good friend of mine, Cru, managed to hit 200k in gamerscore. Obviously, she is not the first person to have done so nor will she be the last but what is notable is the fact Kotaku based an article around her endeavours in gamerscore.

The first article was, in my opinion, fairly harsh in its assessment of achievement hunting in general even questioning whether of not it was having a negative impact on other aspects of her life. Naturally the anonymous masses of the internet took this one step further and started with the hate, insults and even ridiculous youtube videos. Considering the fact most of the people who would have read that article would be gamers too - can they really justify such a reaction? Sure you may give up some of your social life to game, but saying that you are a bad wife or a bad mum? That crosses the line.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions but when they stray into insults and vulgarity then do they even have a valid point to make? It seems like they are just hiding their own issues and jealousy behind the safe anonymity of the internet. Seriously. If someone wants to spend their spare time earning achievements then what harm is it doing? Real life always comes first for even the most dedicated gamer and a lot of the haters out there seem to forget that.

The original article was a fair while ago now, but after Cru hit 200k there was a follow up piece to see if she was done for good. Cru is a gamer through and through, so she will no doubt keep picking up points here and there, but anyone who follows her on Live or Twitter will know that she plays a lot more casual games of COD with friends than crap for points. Plus, her twitter feed is full of social activities that I can only dream of. So it is safe to say that she is happy with her level of gaming. Sadly though there was still the same level of negativity even when she said she would only play for fun - what is the dillio?

A lot of the negative input is simply down to ignorance. People see a gamerscore of over 100k and generally assume, wrongly, that such a person must game all day every day and has no life. Same happened with Cru, they saw her score and thought that it MUST mean she never had time for anything else which couldn't be more wrong.

Let me break it down in words that even the biggest haters can understand:

The Xbox 360 was launched in November/December 2005 - so has been around for five long years. So 200k over that amount of time is only 40k a year, sounds a lot but let me go further.

There are currently 763 (roughly) retail games available across all regions, some of which also have DLC worth up to an extra 750 points. Add in about 344 Arcade titles worth 200 points each, some with DLC too, and you have a big old pot. So you are looking at 831,800 points to go at - which does not include multiple versions of the same game, PC games, DLC or anything else. With all that on top then the figure is probably approaching 1 million.

Some retail games (eg Bioshock, Fallout 3, Batman AA) can be played more than once on the same gamertag to gain more points. This is due to either GOTY editions or region specific versions, which have exactly the same achievements but class as a different game in terms of xbox.com and your profile.

There are over 100 games that can be completed in less then ten hours (assuming you get the full 1k, if you settled for 500-700 points you could halve this time). In fact there are games on this list that can be finished in as little to three minutes to an hour for a full one thousand points. See here: http://tinyurl.com/ltp2c3

There are also close to 200 games that can be easily done in between 10-25 hours (some dependant on skill and online play) and again that is assuming you are going for ALL one thousand points.

There are also, obviously, dedicated websites, guides, and players should you so wish - which all helps cut down the time it takes to complete titles.

Assuming you played all of the easy games (and I'll use the max time of ten hours for arguments sake) then you could get 100k in 1,000 hours of gaming. Which is 41.66 days of work. So that is 8.3 days a year over the five years since launch. So that is 200 hours of gaming a year and that, in turn, works out to about 35 minutes of gaming a day (or just over 4 hours a week).

THIRTY FIVE MINUTES A DAY!!! Oh my God, this monster has no time for friends/family/Jesus etc. In case you were wondering - that was sarcasm.

So that is just how easy it would be to get 100k. But what about 200k. Again we will assume you did all of the above and then a bunch of 15 hour games (50 of those) and 25 hour games (another 50). So that is roughly 3000 hours of gaming, over five years would be 600 hours a year, which is roughly one hour and forty minutes a day. Or about 11 and a half hours a week if you like.

Still hardly excessive. Especially if you were a stay at home mother whose kid was at school. Same would apply to students, unemployed gamers or even billionaires (would they so wish).

You could argue that players will also play harder games, some games would take longer than I stated etc. But on the flip side you could get 10k in less than a day too, I didn't include arcade games which can be amazingly quick to complete, and DLC can also be chalked off in short order. Not to mention that even the hardest games (which never factored into the lists) can give up an easy 500 points most of the time. So if anything I think the times stated are rather overstating things.

Obviously the regular gamer does not see this, or even care, they play games how they want to and anyone with such a high score is treated like some kind of pariah that spends all of their time glued to the console. How many 'regular' gamers spend over 11 hours a week on COD, the Wii or a PS3? Probably a lot, but because some people choose to use that same amount of time chasing achievements somehow makes them different when, in fact, it doesn't. We all choose to play games how we want to so why not just leave it at that. Some people play a game once and then never return to it whereas others have completed Mass Effect 2 over 23 times - why? Because they enjoy it.

At the end of the day people can do what they like with their own consoles, so why should the world at large see fit to judge them just because they feel a sense of superiority? Let people play how they want to play, as I'm pretty sure no one with a high achievement score has ever gone on a hate campaign against those with lesser scores.

Sure I may be slightly biased, as I'm sure that will be the first accusation for anyone looking at my score, but in my five years of 360 ownership I've also permanently had a full time job, met and married my wife, got a new house, had amazing trips to Cologne, Prague, Rome, Tokyo, L.A and Hawaii and generally enjoyed myself to the max. I also write reviews for x360a which severely hampers my points pimping - but I wouldn't want it any other way.

So for all those who think gamerpoints = no life, I urge you to think again.