Today marks the end an era in the short life of Microsoft's achievement system. Jason Young (@Morgon on Twitter and Xbox Live) decided to shut down his innovate gamerscore site http://www.mygamercard.net/ in the five years the site has been up has been an impressive run. And is honestly what got Me into gamerscore in the first place back in 2005. Jason had a great vision early on and managed to keep it going longer than most would have had the patience and time for. Knowing this site is built on the fact Stallion83 has the worlds highest gamer score and I myself being somewhere around a lowly 35th. We looked to the site as a sense of accomplishment.
Mygamercard.net gave us all a spot to go and take pride in. Even if you weren't going for that "Number One Spot" there were plenty of things to aim for. You could set custom leader boards to compete with your friends if the trying to catch Stallion83 was just too much for you. A lot of users took pride in the genre leader boards. Just Creech has dominated the strategy leader board, Don Manolito has been the King of shooters, Pants x360a took pride in the RPG's, K4rn4ge chose XBLA games as his poison. I'm not saying the downfall of MGC.net has nullified their individual accomplishments in anyway. It certainly will make it tougher to stay motivated in the journey.
Jason had done a great job of keeping the leader boards cheater free when he had the time and resources to do so. A combination of real life and changes in Microsoft's policy made it near impossible for him to stay on top of it. I had a chance to talk with him about it a little bit in person at PAX Prime in Seattle last September. It was unfortunate to hear about how Microsoft had all but abandon the community development program and allowed certain sites to operate outside of the rules set for obtaining data. It's unfortunate to see yet another strong point of the user community get crushed by Microsoft and their inability to see value in the achievement system they have created and the passionate users that are dumping their time effort and hard earned money into it.
Microsoft should do the right thing and bring Jason on board as a consultant in bringing the best features of mygamercard.net to the Xbox dashboard it self. Why not be able to sort your friends list as a leader board. why not have a global leader board on the community spotlight tab? The technology and data is already there, the issues of screen scraping and data mining are gone because it is managed in house. We live in a day and age where Internet connection speed is no longer an issue and hard drive space is a plenty. Why not role the dice on a project like this and take the achievement system to a whole new level. A few dedicated individuals could make this community tragedy into a shining light in the next Xbox dashboard update. Yeah, I know it's just a crazy idea of wishful thinking on my part but looking at the number of tags on MGC.net there is definitely a large group of gamers out there that are interested in getting a little more out of their achievements.
Best of luck to Jason and all of those who have contributed to MyGamerCard.net over the years. I hope you find success and happiness in your next venture. To all of you that are reading this just remember to raise a glass in honor of MGC.net
- Stoph Johnson
Nicely said Stoph. I was going to reply to your post with a comment then realized I had a lot to say. It's a sad day indeed. And I have to give it up to Morgon. Even if we never saw eye to eye for whatever reason. Looking past that, My Gamercard/Morgon got me on the achievement horse I continue to ride. The same probably goes for thousands of other like minded people in this world. Yes, world. Gamerscore is a world wide thing. It has brought countries together with sites like mygamercard and Xbox Live being the anchor. A lot of the people that are really into gamerscore probably have a diverse friends list.
Peace is happening, inside an Xbox near you. For instace, the recent protests that brought tragedy to Egypt had gamertag MightyMango, a US citizen, concerned about a fellow gamer whom he thought was in the middle of the mess. Bottom line, gamerscore communites and Xbox Live are making people around the world more comfortable with each other. Perhaps killing/popping in the name of peace is fitting.
There is so much Microsoft could do with bringing the features Stoph mentioned to the 360. It would make Xbox Live more enjoyable for everybody if they did it the right way. Think about it for a moment. The possibilities are endless.
What's holding Microsoft back?
1) They are already making tons of money and they can stay pace. (DING!)
2) They just cant do it. (I don't buy that)
3) They underestimate the people who like gamerscore. Yo Microsoft! Everybody has copied this feature. It's popular. You copied the Wii, everyone else copied achievements. (Possibly)
I'll put my business cap on for a moment.
Mygamercard got eyes according to Morgon:
"Nor could I ever fathom that the handful of requests that saturated my home cable modem would eventually require five servers to handle the load of thirteen million daily requests!"
Mygamercard was an outside site that people had to actively seek out. If it's on the dashboard itself, it automatically makes gamerscore/achievements more appealing to the masses. What's the hold up? Gamerscore is more popular than a lot of stuff already integrated into the dashboard. They currently have bare bones achievement tracking capabilities, we should want more. Again, what's the hold up?
Without Morgon there would be no achievement community. Period! Your contributions to the achievement/gamerscore community will live on. Microsoft, Morgon gave you the blueprint, now it's time for you to carry it on.
- Raymond Cox a.k.a. Stallion83
I like your ideas stophy
ReplyDeleteI found this out when I logged onto my blog this morning. (Pours one for dead homies.)
ReplyDeletetotally agree, and agree with the frustration. Not sure why they don't have API's public and encourage folks to manipulate the data to their hearts content.
ReplyDeletetrueachievements.com is better anyways.
ReplyDeleteTo guy above me I think your missing the point
ReplyDeleteIt’s a sad day indeed.
ReplyDeleteMGC was the Unofficial Official Leader board for the worldwide Xbox 360 community and was one of the greatest thing ever happened to hardcore gamers. So, why there isn't an Official Official Leader board?
I think the reason is that MS has accepted their inability to sort hackers from gamers: a leader board where Stallion is in the second page makes no sense.
WP7 games offer only the friend's leader board. Probably worldwide stats were too heavy for the phones but it also shows that we can live with that. Unfortunately I think we'll never see a worldwide leader board again because hackers are too expensive to fight. But like Stoph said I do hope that sooner than later MS will understand the relevance of stats and boards and will integrate them in the Xbox site and dashboard, even if only for friend list.
I think Morgon should Work at Microsoft! Microsoft destroy the whole Community whicht something like this =/
ReplyDeleteI hope Jason Young will sell his site to someone who would keep it going. Don't be selfish Jason, let someone continue your work. That way Jason would get some money back from his project.
ReplyDeleteFor whatever reason, Microsoft appears to be distancing themselves from their loyal customer base. They seem more interested in selling Kinect to little kids and keeping the Call of Duty marks happy rather than prompting a strong community among those who spend the money; the 20 and 30 something achievement whores.
ReplyDeleteAs a fairly active member on 360voice and TA, there have been plenty of times over the last year where it's become more and more difficult for those sites to track achievements due to "changes" MS makes. Why is this? MS is not creating similar sites that offer GSL's, challenges, goals, stat tracking, etc.
While I won't be leaving Xbox any time soon, DON'T be surprised if the next generation xbox does not include the existing achievement system. It feels like MS looks down upon those of us that play for achievements. If this happens, then I for one, will be saying good bye to MS forever.
I'm going to have to disagree with the idea the next generation won't include achievements. They made have been added last second but they are probably the biggest innovation of the current generation. Look at the PS3, they added trophies to try and copy the system. PC games, even simple flash games more and more often contain "achievements". Almost everything has their own achievement system. Microsoft would be asking to lose the next console war if they got rid of them, and they know it (WP7 is relatively new and they kept achievements, so I'm sure they don't have plans to get rid of them).
ReplyDeleteI will agree that they are more focused on Kinect and Call of Duty type titles. But what do you expect? Yearly titles like Call of Duty (which it has become) make ridiculous amounts of money for MS, since the average gamer (read: not achievement hunters) will spend $60 every year to get the new title. And the Kinect represents a huge investment by Microsoft that isn't even half a year old. They need to make money off that to justify to their shareholders the amount of time, effort, and money that was put into the technology. But that's not to say they've thrown the regular, controller-oriented games under the bus, they're just still hyped up over a new piece of (expensive) technology that is relatively new.
to think that the next gen system (if whenever or ever even comes about) will NOT have achievements is ridiculous. MS would never be that dumb to get of rid of achievements, its reasons why people spend money on crap DLC that they wouldnt buy in the first place lol
ReplyDeleteYou don't become a multi-billion dollar corporation without knowing what you are doing. Microsoft has people work the statistics and realize that rapid support of gamerscore only exists in niche communities. As such, if you were running a company, would you really burden the entirety of your consumers with what only a small fraction obsess over? The answer is obviously, no- as it logically should be.
ReplyDelete"Microsoft has people work the statistics and realize that rapid support of gamerscore only exists in niche communities."
ReplyDeleteNot if they supported it more from the jump. My Gamercard was hugely successful, so is x360a, and trueachievements is on the rise. People are unaware because Microsoft has not fully supported it in a way that makes sense on the XBOX.The messages I get on a daily bases backs that up. The Gamer spotlight messages I got as well. Thousands and thousands of people want to know more about gamerscore/achievements.
Why did everyone else copy this idea? PlayStation, application games, Steam, and Blizzard.
When I look at someone's gamertag, there should be more detailed stats across the board. Because it makes sense. Not for me, not for other gamerscore whores, but for everyone to understand.
The idea that Microsoft can do no wrong is downright disgusting to me.
Making avatar fatheads is a much better idea......
Even if they had a gamerscore leaderboard against your xbox live friends, it would make them more money. People would want to top each other, therefore, they would have to buy more games. Simple stuff.
my gamercard is for fags. boosting is for fags. achievements is for fags
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