Achievements and Ethical Quandaries (Blog Post)

First: A backstory
    For some time my gamerscore has loomed unchallenged over the scores of my friends, but recently one particular friend has taken to overthrowing my rightful place atop my friends list. In the past I have had issues with unlocking achievements, most notably in Mercenaries 2 where i was cheaped out of some 75 points, and Dead Space which I'll go into in a second.

    Now for those ethical quandaries I mentioned in the title. I played Mass Effect and scored some 930 points in the game, including the Completionist achievement. In all my eight or so playthroughs the game never allowed me to unlock ally achievements which you receive for playing the game through with each ally respectively. My friend played through Mass Effect and received all of those achievements now allowing him to hit 1010 in the game, despite my pleading that he leave the game as is, and not go over my 930 points.

    More recently I played through Dead Space at the suggestion of my friends and I asked my combatant if the Hard difficulty unlocked the 150 point achievement that came with "beating the game on it's hardest difficulty". He said yes. After 5 days of dismembering the Ishimura's infected staff I was rewarded with, upon completion, the achievement for beating the game, and another difficulty setting. The next day I received a half-hearted apology from my friend, and the information that he was about to start Dead Space again after he played it on Normal with the Military Suit glitch, and that he was going to play through on the highest difficulty, noting that it would be "mad easy with the military suit".

   The next week he went and rented Afro Samurai, receiving a whopping 980 points which I can only assume was no real challenge in "achieving". In retaliation I went out and did the unthinkable. I bought Fallout 3 for the PC, along with a cheap copy of Armored Core 4. My achievement score has leapt some 2000 points now. Despite that blemish on my record I'd like to add that I have never used a walkthrough to achieve collectable achievements for games, something my friend is a repeat offender at.

    Right now my gamerscore sits at about 25,450. My friend is at about 22,800.
I just need to know who is in the wrong. What do I have to become to stop men like him.

I am not a points junkie so I dont chase them. But as far as I am concerned knowing how to exploit a game for points is another legitimate avenue to acquiring a better gamerscore, its all a part of the game. Destroy your friend by any means necessary.

Oh my god. Well, geez take a step back for a sec. I am sort of an achievement whore myself, but that is serious what you are doing. Mass Effect, 8 times? That is a lot. However, not everything you said is that beyond the ordinary. Fallout 3 is now the new Avatar on PC and Dead Space is good for achievements too. Still, don't worry about it that much. I do but don't lose sleep over it.

Okay, so basically you wasted money because you want some random unimportant number to be higher then your friends random unimportant number?

well, yes. i have only one copy of fallout 3 dont worry. was either xbox version or pc and i chose pc based on achievementness