It’s a sad day for the gamerscore community. The good folks over at Mygamercard.net have decided to call it quits. As of this morning they have shuttered the site. I feel a little empty with something that has been there from the begining of gamerscore gone. You can read more about the story and my thoughts an memories after the break.
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