Xbox LIVE Accounts

Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE service is always changing, so it’s possible and even likely that there will be additional features offered in addition to what’s outlined here.

Your Xbox LIVE account is your online persona on that online service, the thing that represents you in whatever virtual worlds you decide to use. Each Xbox LIVE account consists of the following general features:

• Gamertag: This is your identity, or name, on Xbox LIVE, and it will be the same name you previously established for your Microsoft account. If you’re not happy with this name, you can change it at any time, but Microsoft charges $10 each time in order to prevent kids from constantly changing their names while playing games. Yes, really.

• Gamer Zone: This item describes what type of gamer you are and can be set to Recreation, Pro, Family, or Underground.

• Gamer Picture: This is a small, usually simple picture that represents you online. Subscribers to the free Xbox LIVE service have one Gamer Picture, which is shown to all users, while Xbox LIVE Gold gamers can have two: one for friends and one for the general populace. (See? That $50 annual fee does make sense.) If you have a video camera add‑on for the Xbox 360 console, you can use that to take a still photo of yourself as a gamer picture, but only for friends to see.

• Motto: This is a 21‑character textual representation of who you are and what you stand for. I’ve used such bon mots as The end is listless and Pwned .

• Avatar: Based largely on the Nintendo Wii’s similar Mii characters, an avatar can be designed to look (somewhat) like you, albeit a slightly rotund and cartoonish you. A typical avatar is shown in Figure 10‑12.

Figure 10‑12: Cartoonish avatars are now used to represent your Xbox LIVE identity online.

• Name: This can be your real name or a nickname.

• Bio: A text box providing up to 499 characters for describing your history or other relevant information.

Just a common sense bit of advice: Don’t be too specific with your location.

• Location: A text field with up to 40 characters of space for describing your general location.

• Privacy Settings: You have fine‑grained control over various privacy settings, including those related to voice and text, camera, profile, online status, video status, friends list, game history, member content, Xbox marketing, and partner marketing.

• Profile: Your Xbox LIVE profile consists of the Gamertag, Gamer Zone, Gamer Picture, Motto, Avatar, Name, Bio, Location, and privacy settings information described previously.

• Rep: This is your rep, or reputation score, on a scale of one to five. Every Xbox LIVE member starts with a rep of 3, but it can go up or down from there based on your experience (where the more you play, the higher the rep) and whether any other gamers complain about you online (the more you misbehave, the more people complain, and the more your rep declines).

• Gamerscore: Each Xbox LIVE game can assign Gamer Points to individual achievements, as we’ll soon discuss. These points are applied to your Gamerscore, which starts at 0 when you open the account. The higher your Gamescore, the more experienced you are, generally speaking, though many hard‑core gamers only play in multiplayer matches that don’t provide multiplayer achievements and thus might have deceptively low Gamerscores. Likewise, those with higher Gamerscores could be achievement point addicts, or even cheating.

• Gamercard: Your Xbox LIVE Gamercard combines your Gamertag, Gamer Picture, Rep, Gamerscore, and Gamer Zone into a single, easily viewable overview of your Xbox LIVE account, or gamer persona.

• Messages: Using an e‑mail‑like system, Xbox LIVE members can send messages to each other using text, audio, and video. These messages aren’t ever broadcast via normal e‑mail systems (via the e‑mail associated with your Microsoft account), but you can view and respond to received messages, and create new ones, on the Xbox 360 and via the Xbox website, as shown in Figure 10‑13.

• Friends list: As with Facebook and other social networking services, you can “friend” other people online, send and receive friend requests, see what your friends are doing online in real time, send messages to friends, and more. The Xbox LIVE Friends list is sorted by online status, so that online friends are listed first.

Figure 10‑13: You can access the Xbox LIVE Messages functionality via the web.

• Players list: Xbox LIVE tracks the players you’ve most recently played against so you can find them again later and request a rematch, send feedback (positive or negative), or send a friend request.

• Games list: Xbox LIVE also tracks the games you’ve most recently played on the Xbox 360, Windows Phone, and Windows 8, as well as the achievements you’ve most recently earned, including all of the achievements earned in each played game. Friends can examine your account to see which games you’ve played, and which achievements you’ve earned, and compare them to their own results.