Ringing Your Bell -- Taking Credit for your Gaming Prowess

Before the Internet changed the face of gaming it was largely a private pursuit in which only the people you played games with had the means -- or the interest -- to evaluate your prowess, skills, and game accomplishments in that arena. Thanks to the Internet and the evolution of online gaming who you are and what you have accomplished actually means something not just to yourself, but to the community at large.

When a gamer joins the waiting room for an online game, it is common for them to take a quick look at the profile of their potential competition, and most do. It gives them an idea of how serious you are as a gamer -- and how serious your gaming skills are -- because they can often see how much of the game you have completed by examining the Trophies or Achievements you have unlocked -- icons that have become how we as modern gamers keep score.

The information in your profile is not just for others to hunt down and view -- many gamers today are justifiably proud of their gaming accomplishments to the point that they make use of the "Gamer Card" services of their chosen platforms, or one of the countless number of third-party Gamer Card services on the web that allow them to generate code for a Gamer Card that is unique or more colorful than what the official services do, though these contain much the same information as the official ones.

Being a gamer in the world of modern gaming means being a member of one or more game platform communities -- and whether you think it is fair or unfair, the vast majority of the gamers within each of the platform communities tends to judge other members by their gaming accomplishments, which are on public display within those communities as a matter of record.

Specifically your player record -- which for Xbox Live is called the Gamertag, on PSN the ID, and on Steam the Steam Profile -- each of which includes a number of statistical and informational resources, some of which you create yourself, while the rest is generated automatically by the service.

Your records are available both from each platform as part of its interface, and via the world wide web, and all that is required for another gamer to access your profile is for them to know your gamer name (pseudonym) and have access to the service or the web.