At first, I let the gamerscore addiction get to me. I used to be super-competitive with people on my friends list. After a while, I became more and more aware that it really is petty. It's just a silly number after all, but the main thing I loved about it, was the act of achieving something in a game (I wrote a previous post about how I love it, btw).
Before, I had a lot more time, and could afford to spend it playing games. Recently, in the last four months, I've had a lot less time and even less desire to play games (for gamerscore, or not). Even when I did have time on my hands, I be waiting for a game to come from Gamefly (REALLY upset at their delivery time and game availability as of late). Most of the time, the game that I really wanted to play was not available (ex: Oblivion), so I ended up playing some stupid game that I'd rather not waste my time on.
Now, when I happened upon DEVIL JIN27, I was playing Dead or Alive 4 online (read earlier blog post) and I thought: 'Now this is a cool guy. I'd like to become friends with him.' So, I sent him a friend request while playing online with him and we've been friends ever since. For a while, our gamerscore was so close, there was a little competition and it came out one day while playing online how competitive we both were. I had comprised an oath that I didn't want our "friendship" to be spoiled by petty gamescore jealousy and bickering. We'd form a pact that we'd never compete with each other like that and not to get mad at the other. I said that if it ever came to that, we'd stop being friends, because I like to play to have fun and I want to play with people that aren't immature and childish. I'd been like that and realized that it's just stupid to stress over gamerscore that much, that you begin to really resent your 'friends' if they have more than you.
DEVIL JIN27 eventually got far past me in gamerscore and I was okay with it, happy for him to get so many points and playing lots of fun new games (that I wished I could be playing, as well). He got so far ahead of me, that there was no chance for me to catch up with him (he's currently around 10, 000 more than me). I didn't really care that he was ahead of me, but I really wished that Gamefly would actually send me a game that I wanted to play. He's far enough ahead of me in raw gamerscore, that there definitely shouldn't be any competition between us.
I calmed down a lot about the gamerscore, and with my new job, I have much less time and energy to afford to gaming. So, I really enjoy the rare times I get to play games and I like to have enough time to really get into them (this almost always happens on the weekends, if at all). Out of the blue, I get this message last week on my Xbox 360-
From: DEVIL JIN27
6/29/2006 6:38 PM
(Voice Message): "Damn you and your 740 in PGR...Now you make me want to go play that game, and I don't want to play that game. Ahh! It's so hard; I don't know how you did that. I don't know if you did platinums. It's so crazy!"
[DEVIL JIN27 must have been looking at my achievements and comparing mine to his in Project Gotham Racing 3 specifically and felt that I couldn't be 'better' than him at any game and it just 'irked' him that I was better than him at PGR3]
I thought to myself, "Okay." Well, I did play PGR3 and I got all of those legitimately, and they were hard and very time consuming to get and I'm proud that I was able to do it. There were times I was about to give up on getting all gold medals in the single player, but I kept on determined to get them. Now, I'm not going to lie and say that every achievement that I've gotten in every other game has been received legit, but most of them have been legit (there are websites, like achieve360points.com dedicated to helping people get them, sometimes using less honorable methods).
Then, I start playing Top Spin 2 yesterday to play with Sovereign Phil online as we had agreed before I left for the holiday weekend. While I waited (a few hours actually), I saw that DEVIL JIN27 came online and I was bored, so I checked out to see what games he'd been playing recently. I noticed that he'd been playing PGR3 and I was shocked to see that he somehow had more points/achievements than me in that game (the game he was just complaining about was too hard and that he wasn't very good at). I investigated to see which points he had in that game and I went online to Xbox.com to compare scores. I was shocked to see that amazingly, he'd gotten not only the achievement/score for "Gold", but also "Platinum" medals (which I gave up on/see earlier post) and "Online Professional" (which until recently had been un-glitched so more people could get it). The mysterious thing is he'd gotten all of these achievements in one day, or VERY quickly (much faster than when I got them legitimately and he could have if he'd played legit himself). The telling thing is: all of these achievements, he received while not connected to Xbox Live (including the "Online Professional" which isn't really possible to get if you are offline).
When I first got his voice message, I thought he was silly for 'competing' with me and complaining that I had more points in PGR3 than him and that it made him want to play a game he wasn't very good at. I didn't seriously think he would cheat (which I had a serious suspicion of) just to get them. That made me a little mad that he would stoop so low just to 'compete' with me (especially when I never wanted us to "compete" with each other in the first place). He can do whatever he wants with his console and it doesn't affect me personally, but it felt more like a slap in the face and it made me feel betrayed and like all the time I spent getting those achievements legitimately were all for nothing. [personal note: I was still extremely tired from not getting enough sleep after coming home 1:30AM the previous night and having to wake up at 7AM for work the next day, so I was a little grumpy and probably over-reacted. Anyone that knows me personally, knows this fact: when I'm tired, I'm VERY grumpy.]
So, I sent him this text message yesterday-
To: DEVIL JIN27
7/5/2006 7:-- PM
"Oh, in response to your last voice message: 'Damn your legitimate PGR3 score, makes me want to cheat just to get more points than you'. : p If you did got those achievements for real, then good for you, otherwise: >: /"
He replied with this message a few minutes later-
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/5/2006 7:15 PM
"boo hahaha... think what u will... im the best racer"
Now, I had a sneaking suspicion, but I left it open if I really was wrong about him cheating. Now, I was willing to let my anger subside depending on if he was honest if he cheated or not and depending on the tone of the message. I didn't like the tone (which was rude and haughty and without having an emoticon or being a voice message to guage if he was being silly or not, I took it at face value). This didn't sit right with me, and I decided that if that's how petty he is with gamerscore (to cheat just to 'better' me in a game), then I didn't need that kind of stress and 'competition', so there was no reason for him to be on my friends list anymore if he was just going to try to 'show me up' like that. I took him off my list and forgot about it.
I was going to go to sleep because it was around 9PM (which is about the time I usually 'should' go to sleep), but I got a message from Sovereign Phil that he had fallen asleep and wanted to know if I could play with him online right then. I decided to stay up and help each other get some online achievements. While playing, I asked Phil if he had talked to DEVIL JIN27 recently and told him about what happened between us.
When I got home today after work and checked my Xbox Live messages, I found these four text message from DEVIL JIN27-
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/6/2006 1:34 AM
"wow thanx 4 the goodbye there wat! u sure have a funny way of being a friend.. maybe if u had something 2 ask me u could have talked 2 me not phil.. its sad that u act this way."
[I assume that Sovereign Phil must have talked to DEVIL JIN27 after I signed off last night. I did tell DEVIL JIN27 what I had to say in my own text message to him before I took him off my friends list and I wasn't talking about him to Phil without talking to him first.]
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/6/2006 1:40 AM
"you think im a cheater or i used a friends save 2 get points? and what if i did? how does that effect u? so when i help u in a game or give u hints that will make the game easy, your the cheater? i mean really.. u get mad and spy on me?"
[I did and still do think he cheated on PGR3 (he pretty much confirmed my suspicion that he cheated and his method of doing so by this: "i used a friends save 2 get points... and what if i did?". I don't care if he cheats or not in a game, but I don't like that he cheated just to get more points than me and to a lesser extent that he's competing with me in the first place, but the fact that he knows that I'm better than him at PGR3 and he had to cheat just to 'one-up' me. If he had gotten the achievements legit like me, then he would have gotten my respect and I gladly would have given it (like I did in my text message to him). I have rarely asked him for tips or explanations of how he got certain achievements, but that is public knowledge that I could have gotten elsewhere had I been so inclined (most likely his original source for these 'secrets', as well). While some of these methods might not be completely what the developers intended to achieve points, this is most likely the same way most people have gotten them. I have never stooped so low that I have someone else get achievements/points for me or used someone else's save game to get them.]
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/6/2006 1:46 AM
"i have 2 say you have alot of growing up 2 do man. u act like a untrusting little kid. i dont know what your problem is and why u over react 2 not.. but go on your way. i have no time 4 u anymore! get a life and stop worrying what others are doing.."
[I can't say that the fact that it hurts him so much that I have more "points" than him in PGR3 that he has to cheat to 'achieve' them is very mature behavior. If I have a reason to be suspicious, and he's never denied that he didn't cheat and almost admitted he did, then I was right to be "untrusting". Yeah, sure. I know how I reacted wasn't mature either (taking him off my list without warning), but I was tired and over-reacted. I figured he would have gotten the message that I wasn't pleased with this type of behavior directed towards me (I've done it before, btw). Oh, I know I have a life (that's what keeping me from gaming constantly and I sure don't "spy on what others are doing" (in fact, it seems the reverse is true of him). I don't think it's very mature to imply that others don't "have a life", either.]
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/6/2006 1:51 AM
"i will not be your friend again.. you lost that along with my respect.. im blocking u so dont bother writting back.. ~The Greatness that is... ME!!! DEVIL JIN"
[I told him before that if he would be compete with me and become petty like that, then I wouldn't want him as a friend and would be off my friends list. Well, I thought I had his respect for getting PGR3 achievements he couldn't get and was going to take his weird voice message as just his way of giving me a compliment. After the way that he cheated just to get those points to 'better' me in a game that I slaved over for months and his slanderous text messages, I have lost all respect for him, so I don't value his opinion anymore. I only took him off my friends list; he could still send me messages (which he did). If he had been mature, admitted that he cheated and sent me another friend request, I would have accepted it, too. If he didn't cheat, then I would have apologized. Now, he's blocked me from even replying, hence one of the reasons I felt to post this on my blog. Finally, his 'signature' is also a reference to Sovereign Phil favorite personal title, but it also shows how highly he thinks of himself. ;) ]
Now, the best place to put this would be in an email to him, but this is a good example for me (and others) not to become petty about gamerscore and ruin your friendship, so I thought I'd put this up on my blog. I let myself get my feelings hurt when he cheated. He's right: his cheating didn't directly affect me. It got me angry because it made all the time and skill I used to get my achievements legitimatly seem wasted. It also seemed he got those points for no other reason than just to make me look inferior (I also know he's VERY obsessed about his gamerscore and having "incomplete" scores on games). I would like to apologize to DEVIL JIN27 (Pete) for over-reacting and getting my feelings hurt. I'm writing this here to document how a good internet 'relationship' can go downhill because of something so petty. This to remind myself (and possibly others) what not to do when comparing yourself with others and how jealousy can become infectuous. If anything, this experience has turned me off playing my Xbox and video games in general and has shown how pointless the time that you put into getting gamerscore/achievements are if someone can cheat their way through it.
Edit (July 28, 2006):
What is with this guy? It's been weeks since he told me to get a life and quit spying on people and today I received this message from him:
From: DEVIL JIN27
7/26/2006 9:49 PM
"Hiding your achievements? Wat Wat Wat"
What is his problem? I've gotten over it, and he still wants to antogonize me. In fact, I've only hidden my achievements from people who aren't my friends (and I'm glad I've done so). Now, I'm even considering hiding them altogether. I just want to remove this whole competitive element of gamerscore anyway (comparing yourself to others). I'd recommend removing the score/points and instead having separate "percentage complete" for each game you've played.
This is just ridiculous! Why does he need to see my achievements? The reason: he's still trying to compete with me, for some reason. Anyway, he's got his achievements hidden, as well. : P
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