Evaluating Your Mad Gamer Skills
On the site the TrueAchievement score is displayed on each user page, along with their Gamer Score, the number of achievements they have unlocked, the number of unique games that they have played, and their most recent achievements and played games. There is also other customizable information, but the basic value of the common stats are what is important as they help in the evaluation process by comparison.
This is accomplished through features like the Trophy Case, a designated spot on the right side of each user's page where they can select accomplishments like specific Achievements or games that they have attained 100% unlocks in, and share them with anyone who visits their page by virtue of having them showcased in their Trophy Case.
A natural side-effect of the function of the site is the showcasing of Achievements a gamer has yet to unlock in each game -- which provides them with an easy to see set of goals -- though that may not be a good thing after all when you consider that it may contribute to the process of turning an otherwise sane and well-adjusted gamer into one affected by OCD and the need to unlock everything in each game that the play: in terms of gaming slang that would be a Completionist.
The inclusion of Badges on the site follows an emerging trend on the web that is not unique to gaming sites -- you will find it on a wide variety of websites from Facebook to cooking sites -- though its use on game statistics sites tends to be a more appropriate and useful one.
In addition to all of the personal and stat-oriented information you can also find an objective assessment of what your personal Best Game currently is (Fallout: New Vegas), and the Best Achievement is (Treasure Hunt in the game Band Hero with a rated score of 685).The tabs across the top include selections for Achievements, Games, Best Days, Forum, and Graphs, and distinctively on the page you can choose from different months, the stats for just Retail games or just XBLA games, and as a matter of course you are presented with a listing in two columns of the Best TrueAchievement Scores and the Best TrueAchievement Ratios that you have personally unlocked -- with the Top 20 of each being presented there. We should emphasize that this is not the Top 20 in each overall, but the Top 20 that you have unlocked, the distinction being pretty obvious -- but the experience of reviewing them is a rather heady and ego-boosting one to be sure!
When you look up a particular Achievement on the site in addition to the valuation information for the Achievement in both Gamer Score and TrueAchievement Score, you are automatically presented with a link and summary of any Achievement Guide that may exist on the site (guides are created by users) that would be useful to you if you are looking up an Achievement you have yet to unlock for sure, and when you click on the summary line that tells you how many tracked gamers there are for that Achievement, you get a listing of all of the member gamers who have unlocked that Achievement, complete with their pseudonym, the flag of the country they live in, the date that they unlocked it, and their current online status as well as a link to send them a private message (PM) and their status comment.
If the Achievement in question was a particularly difficult one for you, you may find it interesting or even entertaining to click on their Gamer Tag and review the other Achievements that they unlocked in that -- or other -- games. In short, it extends the social aspect of statistical information allowing you to make it as personal or impersonal as you choose it to be...
According to The Book, 25 year-old Annie Leung from California, achieved the highest score on Guitar Hero 3 by a female gamer when she racked up 789,349 points playing "Through the Fire and Flames" on the expert setting -- clearly she kicks our ass, we are just saying...
According to the magazine Business Week, Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, was at one point the Uber God of the GBA, and if you ask Grant Meredith (aka. The Living Cheat code) he will say "I am viewed as the best gamer that the world has ever seen. I have conquered consoles and arcades since the dawn of electronic gaming" which, really, is bullshit, but hey, you can say anything you want on the web, it does not have to be true... But it is largely blokes like Grant here that explain why services like TrueAchievement are so valuable... And of course there is the fact that the World's Greatest Gamer thinks using cheat codes is an honorable tactic, but still...
When you are in the room with gamers like Fatal1ty, BoxeR, YellOw, Vo0, Grubby, Fnatic, AgaiN, Moon, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, or Alex Valle, you are looking at gamers who literally pay their bills by playing video games. Some of them own houses worth half-a-million dollars that contain dedicated Video Game Training Gyms which they paid for in cash that they won doing what? Gaming!
Yeah, it is OK to be intimidated by them. But when you are in a room with the likes of Grant (aka. The Living Cheat code) Meredith, it sure is nice to be able to define their skills.
** Normally we do not rely upon Wikipedia or use it as a source because of the transient nature of the information that appears there and the fact that anyone can add information to the site. However in this case the formula and the examples are accurate and useful to the process of illustrating the concept here, so we made an exception.
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