It was about a week before the Xbox One released, and I'd decided I wanted to start the new console generation off with exactly 36,000 Gamerscore. For those of you who don't know, Gamerscore is a cumulative points system given to players who complete achievements in Xbox games. You typically earn Gamerscore by doing things like completing a game's story, finding secret collectibles, or ranking up in online multiplayer. On an Xbox profile, it looks like this:
However, many achievements are tied to doing activities that most players would never have done otherwise, such as completing a game without ever dying, or finishing a task with a specific optional character. Gamerscore is pretty much the only incentive to do these challenges, which are often frustrating, convoluted, or time-intensive. But Gamerscore is, in itself, completely meaningless and not worth anyone's time--there are no in-game rewards, no monetary payoffs, nothing. Basically, it only exists for people who like to watch the numbers go up.
I wanted to be sitting at exactly 36,000 Gamerscore--no more, no less, and for no reason besides it feeling like a poetic ending to the Xbox 360 era. To make sure I hit this arbitrary number by my arbitrary deadline, I compiled all the achievement and Gamerscore data for every game I had into a spreadsheet creatively named "Achievements and Gamerscore".
It wasn't meant to be impressive or clever. I just wanted to save myself the trouble of navigating the Xbox menus each time I wanted to check my progress. Reaching exactly 36,000 Gamerscore by November 22nd meant I needed to pay attention to how much each achievement was worth to ensure I didn't overshoot my goal, or put myself in a situation where the only options left for me were huge time sinks. I was still in college at the time, and this wasn't something I was going to dedicate any more time to than necessary.
The spreadsheet itself is an absolute eyesore. The colors are gaudy, the formatting wouldn't be out of place on the Time Cube website, and the few formulas present are so inefficient as to make my programming friend have to physically restrain herself from editing them behind my back (which I caught her doing multiple times).
You may notice that there's more information here than strictly how much Gamerscore I have in each game. We'll get to that.
With my spreadsheet on hand during both my play sessions and lulls in my lecture courses, I was able to plot out a route to 36,000 Gamerscore, and made it with time to spare. Although the number paled in comparison to many others (just four months later, the one-million Gamerscore barrier would be broken), it was higher than my dad's Gamerscore, which for years seemed insurmountable. (For those of you who are curious, the achievement that got me to exactly 36,000 was "Blow it up!" in Lego Indiana Jones.)
I remember taking a picture to commemorate the occasion and tweeting it out to one of my favorite online gamers in a shameless "notice me senpai" moment.
He never responded.
On November 22, I got my Xbox One (which I eventually nicknamed Anna after seeing Disney's Frozen five times in theatres) and a copy of Dead Rising 3 to ring in the new console generation. My goal of exactly 36,000 Gamerscore achieved, I booted up a new zombie wasteland to explore, eager to return to a life of unrestricted gaming.
But something had changed.
I don't know if my spreadsheet is to blame, or if it was just the catalyst for a condition that had been simmering in my psyche for years, but it didn't work anymore to just play. The game--the mechanics, the story, all the loving artistry--was no longer the point.
The point was making the numbers go up.
I viewed Dead Rising 3, and every game after, as a means to an end. Sure, I would only select games that I actually wanted to spend time in, but the journey no longer held the same weight it once did. It was the destination--an increasing Gamerscore--that mattered. And so my gaming priorities changed. I tried to find the most expedient routes to gaining every achievement in a game, even if it meant making the process less fun for myself--things like immediately jumping into a game's hardest difficulty, or making character choices that directly contradicted how I'd been playing them previously.
This actually caused some severe conflict in me for a few games, because suddenly it wasn't enough to just make my cumulative Gamerscore as large as possible. You see, starting a new game is almost always a surefire way to snag some easy Gamerscore, but it tanks your overall completion percentage. No, the best way to improve your Gamerscore is to tidy up those last few pesky achievements in games that you've already had your fill of, which means playing them in ways and for lengths of time that permanently sour your perception of them.
Example: In Fable III, I made a point of keeping my character, among other things, morally good and romantically single. Now I was suddenly expected to get married six times and murder two of my spouses just for a ten-Gamerscore achievement called "Henry VIII"? What was more important--keeping my Hero's story narratively consistent, or being economic with my time and avoiding a second playthrough for this one achievement? I eventually deemed my time more valuable, though I still wonder if that was the right choice.
I asked myself these sorts of questions more frequently as I realized what would need to be done to properly finish some of the games I'd started over the last eight years. You can't just keep buying new games without completing your old ones if you want to aim for those lofty completion percentages.
And, when you do decide it's time to jump into a new game? Well, you've gotta check the achievement list and make sure it's something you can reasonably perfect. You wouldn't want to play something you can only get to 60% completion in, right? That would be terrible for your ratio. Would this lock me out of experiencing certain games forever? Sure, but it was a small price to pay to make sure my numbers stayed pretty.
And Dead Rising 3? The poor thing became one of the most despised games in my library due to its comprehensive and exhausting achievement list. Although it was the only Xbox One game I owned on launch day, I quickly found myself regressing to my 360 games, where I could more quickly advance my new obsession.
It was during this shift in my gaming habits that my "Achievements and Gamerscore" spreadsheet ballooned into what you saw earlier. And since I was compiling all this data for each game anyways, I thought it would be fun to add things like release dates, platforms, and total amount of downloadable content, just to get a more complete profile of my gaming library.
And this is where the spreadsheet became more than just a tool for reaching a new, endless arbitrary goal.
It became a way to keep track of my life.
Eventually, I began to obsess over spreadsheets--not just the one tracking my Xbox achievements, but ones for dozens of other topics. They would slowly invade almost every aspect of my daily life, reducing my every established hobby and passing interest into a network of data boxes. I found myself using this information to not just track things, but define them. I found ways to calculate success and failure in things that had no end goals to begin with. Everything in my life found its way in some fashion into a neat row or column.
But before that happened, there were years of manic scrambling to increase my Gamerscore, and I put myself through hell on more than one occasion for the sole purpose of hearing that sweet, rapturous sound of an achievement unlocking:
But those are stories for another time.
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