Gears of War 3 Achievement Challenge

CrispyGamer

Gamerscores have been a staple of an Xbox player's personal identity, serving as a quick gauge for how much a gamer plays. 360Voice's Achievement Challenge has taken that metric and has debuted a unique meta-game around Gamerscores in Gears of War 3. Gamers will accumulate achievement points in GoW3, and the Brotherhood with the most points after one month of play will take home the lion's share of $10,000.

To compete, users simply have to sign up for 360Voice.com and link their Xbox 360 Gamertag to their account. Then the user joins or creates a team, or Brotherhood, with a group limit of 40 Cogs. After that, gamers will race to see which Brotherhood can get the highest Gamerscore over 30 days from GoW3's September 20 release date.

The distinctive nature of this competition is that any player of any skill level can participate. Many gamers, while they may enjoy traditional multiplayer death match battles, are often daunted by the expertise of the other combatants. The 360Voice Achievement Challenge is set up so that even casual players can participate and win, because the success is based on individual achievements and group totals, not by skill. To make an analogy, the Achievement Challenge is more akin to fantasy football than actual football.

Aside from Gamerscores, participants also have a chance to win prizes by recruiting the most Cogs. In other words, users that bring in the most signups earn some extra cash. This will encourage players to leverage social media in order to gain an edge, which in turn will make this contest more viral.

The $10,000 is broken out so that the first place Brotherhood gets $5,500 divided among all the members. $3,000 goes to the second place Brotherhood. In addition, the top five performers in each Brotherhood respectively split an additional $500. The remaining $500 gets split among the top three recruiters, $250 for first, $150 for second and $100 for third.

One interesting layer to this challenge is the potential movement of players and the politics that may occur between Brotherhoods. Players are free to leave a Brotherhood at any time, so if one Brotherhood has a higher Gamerscore per player, some players may move to different Brotherhoods in order to be on a contending team. In addition, the leaders of each Brotherhood, called Head Cogs, can kick out any underperforming players, opening spots for cogs with higher Gamerscores. The interplay here could be a deciding factor in the overall winner of the contest.

Just days before Gears of War 3's release, the competition is already generating buzz, as popular gaming websites such as CheapAssGamer and True Achievements have created their own Brotherhoods. As of this writing, eight Brotherhoods have already reached capacity and signups are growing by the hour. This competition will likely add another layer to competitive gaming, which has garnered a larger following online this year due to streaming matches of popular games such as StarCraft II and League of Legends.

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Video Games: Gears of War 3 Achievement Challenge