John Zeitler

On February 24th, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 14000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “Mission 3 – Jeep Destruction (10G)” from Raiden IV. My current count for achievements is 777 individual achievements across 94 games, totaling 14005 points. The average value of each achievement is 18.02 points, with an average count of 148.98 points per game (Xbox.com reports 23.45% gamerscore completion and 28.22% achievement completion, with five fully-completed games). It took 32 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 13005 on January 24th, 2010. 57 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 1000 points, with an average value of 17.54 points, and a collection rate of one achievement approximately every 13.5 hours.

A few years back, when I was in between jobs, I would spend my days literally camped out in front of the computer all day, getting up for soda and snacks, and when it became dark out (which was made longer by the fact that I was doing this in the summer), I would look up at the time, realize I’d lost an entire day, and curse myself for not accomplishing anything.

Today, I did stuff. Not a lot of stuff, but stuff nonetheless. Painted some models; brought one project to a pretty good pausing-point until an external event gets lined up; did some number-crunching in advance of some news that’s going to be on here next week; and, since I still have some time here before I want to go to bed, I’m probably going to try marathonning a disc of a TV series (likely a short-runner).

However, I still “feel unproductive” because I also spent about five hours playing an online game, when the stack of unplayed games is still ridiculously high. I suppose I can justify it by saying that I needed to relax, but in all honesty, I don’t even particularly care for the game I was playing… it just is scratching an itch I guess I never really knew I had. Ah well, hopefully tomorrow I can move on to something that gives me the “having done something” feeling I’m missing.

I’ve been keeping myself busy this week with a lot of household projects, but in between mending things and breaking others I’ve had the opportunity to get some primer on my miniature armies. Well, one of them. I ran out of black primer just now, about a tiny way into the first major unit of the secondary army. (They started out as my “primary” army, but I wound up building up the other one pretty quickly as it seemed to be less massive of a numerical investment.) In any event, it’s pretty much assumed that I’m hooked now, and I’m eagerly awaiting the coming of spring so that I can prime up the rest.

Today, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 13000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “Magic: The Puzzling (10G)” from Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers. My current count for achievements is 720 individual achievements across 88 games, totaling 13005 points. The average value of each achievement is 18.06 points, with an average count of 147.78 points per game (Xbox.com reports 23.62% gamerscore completion and 28.31% achievement completion, with five fully-completed games). It took 40 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 12005 on December 17th, 2009. 60 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 1000 points, with an average value of 16.67 points, and a collection rate of one achievement approximately every 16 hours.

This, of course, comes after:

…which was February of 2008, and:

…from this past June.

All this should tell you that either I am very good at getting these things to align properly, or I just happen to make really stupid choices about what milestones to celebrate. Personally, I’m leaning towards the second explanation.

Today, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 11000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “Bearer of 3 Awards (10G)” from Gyromancer. My current count for achievements is 660 individual achievements across 85 games, totaling 12005 points. The average value of each achievement is 18.19 points, with an average count of 141.24 points per game (Xbox.com reports 22.41% gamerscore completion and 26.69% achievement completion, with four fully-completed games). It took 12 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 11070 on December 6th, 2009. 44 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 935 points, with an average value of 21.25 points, and a collection rate of one achievement approximately every 6.5 hours.

This evening, my Xbox/Games for Windows Gamerscore exceeded 11790 points, which is double the amount that I had on January 1, 2009. This is the second year in a row that I have managed to double my Gamerscore over the course of a year. The achievement which put me over this plateau was “Medal of Honor (100G)” from Mass Effect.

It is exceedingly unlikely that I will be able to double up a third time in a row, mostly because at my current rate of Gamerscore completion (approximately 22.25%) I would need to play 54 ‘new’ retail games to my usual level of completion; this would of course be the easiest way to accomplish a third double up, but it is far from the most cost-effective.

Additionally, the Gamerscore number, by and large, is a meaningless statistic. It is subject to any number of variances in difficulty and its purpose is mere bragging rights. As I am not usually given to braggadocio, nor am I particularly attached to the idea of having a larger Gamerscore than anyone else, I instead look to the statistic for numerical curiosity as well as opportunities to challenge myself– hence the double up challenge and the thousand-point milestones.

Today, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 11000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “One With Combat (300G)” from Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth. My current count for achievements is 616 individual achievements across 84 games, totaling 11070 points. The average value of each achievement is 17.97 points, with an average count of 131.79 points per game (Xbox.com reports 20.76% gamerscore completion and 25.06% achievement completion, with four fully-completed games). It took 24 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 10240 on November 13th, 2009. 39 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 830 points, with an average value of 21.28 points, and a collection rate of one achievement approximately every fifteen hours.

I am still 720 points short of the goal of doubling my Gamerscore throughout 2009. If my Gamerscore is greater than or equal to 11790 points before January 1st, 2010, I will have doubled my Gamerscore for the second year running.

Frangible Time Update: Finished Episode 3 tonight, bringing the word total up to 46.1K. I’m giving myself a one-day mulligan due to illness to hit the 50K line, but that means I need to re-work my outline for the next episode to match the great heaving plot twists that have been introduced over the last two episodes. On the one hand I love it when my characters derail my plot like this; on the other hand, it irritates me to rewrite stuff I thought I had planned out.

Like the above says, the illness and trips taken over November made writing… problematic at best. However I’m on track, doing better than I expected to (I honestly didn’t think I was going to get even this close to 50K by the end of the month), and overall I’m very confident I’ll be able to finish the story before the 1st of the year. Well before the first of the year, in fact, because I have two episodes planned out (loosely) already, with just a single episode in the middle to conjure up based on the pre-existing plot. I may have mentioned that FT is a very different story, thematically, than what I’ve done before; what I’ve written tonight pretty much seals that, I think. You guys probably won’t see it until June or so. Just take my word for it.

One other thing. Remember how, years and years ago, I said that writing fan fiction prepares you for being a real writer in that you get to work with themes and concepts applied to characters you know? Yeah. Tonight validated that, too.

Today, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 10000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “Deja-Vu (All Over Again) (30G)” from Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. My current count for achievements is 577 individual achievements across 80 games, totaling 10240 points. The average value of each achievement is 17.75 points, with an average count of 128.00 points per game (Xbox.com reports 20.54% gamerscore completion and 25.37% achievement completion, with two fully-completed games). It took 70 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 9005 on September 5th, 2009. 70 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 1235 points, with an average value of 17.64 points, and a collection rate of one achievement each day.

If my Gamerscore reaches at least 11790 points before January 1st, 2010, I will have doubled my Gamerscore over the course of 2009, the second year running I would accomplish this feat. As it stands, 2009 is still the most productive year in terms of Gamerscore increase (2871 in 2007, 3024 in 2008, so far 4345 for 2009).