When video games started getting popular in the late 1970s, early '80s, the play mechanics were a lot simpler then. Most of the competition and drive to play a game over and over again was to get a high score. From there you try and beat other people's high score, and others do the same. With a high score, people can claim bragging rights, announcing what a "bad ass" gamer they are. By the late 1980s, throughout the '90s, and pass the turn of the century, high scores just stopped mattering. It started being all about the games itself, and how far you can complete one. But nowadays, from the release of the xbox360 and it's use of "achievement points," Microsoft was able to successfully bring back that urge to get that high score and at the same time get gamers to see how far they can go to complete a game.
Each game for the xbox360 comes with a certain amount of achievements you can unlock. The way these achievement points work is that whenever you do something specific in a game, be it completing a level, or doing a particular task, the points of your "gamerscore" goes up. That gamerscore is tied to that gamer's identity for people to compare their scores, and we are once again having people compare their score with the rest of the gaming community.
Since Microsoft announced they were having a gamerscore system, people were skeptical as to how important it would be for gamers in general. I mean, what's the point right? What ended up happening is that it tapped into the competitive nature of gamers and now people are actually getting to the point where they are playing a game they don't even like, just for the purpose of getting a higher score from unlocking achievements. We call them "achievement whores." It also ended up being beneficial to the xbox360 itself, because if there was a multi-console game available for all the consoles (360, PS3, Wii), some gamers would rather get the 360 version because of the achievement points.
Now me personally I don't care much for raising my gamerscore, although I do feel a little bit happier whenever I unlock an achievement. I am fascinated though at the length gamers will go to just to be on the top of leaderboards, or having a high gamerscore, or being a high level character in an online game. I'm guilty of that urge myself at times, but at least I've been very good at keeping it in check (put it this way, my four digit gamerscore as seen below is uncomparable to the six digit scores I've seen out there).
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