As you can tell, I am an avid gamer, and love my Xbox 360. It is a phenomenal gaming platform. Micro-soft has managed to make a huge community around it as well. The forums are abuzz 24/7 with interesting discussions ranging from the future of video gaming to the latest 360 accessory out in the market. Xbox Live is a phenomenal online gaming service, growing at a very fast rate. In fact, I was recently chosen as an official Xbox Ambassador to help new gamers that speak Hindi, Urdu, and English feel at home while using the service to play online with others from all over the world.
One aspect of the service is voice communication. I rarely use my headset to talk online with other gamers, mostly because I find it somewhat weird to have vocal conversations with strangers I have never met. Now, every Xbox 360 game has a set of locked achievements that give you a set number of points once unlocked. Some of these achievements require a certain level of online multiplayer participation. One of the games I am currently playing requires you to join a virtual club made by someone on your friends list, and then have some inter-club competitions. The problem was that none of the people on my list played that game. So, I went to the official Xbox forums online and saw a few people that were looking to expand their clubs. I sent a friends request to one of them, and within minutes I had the achievement unlocked.
This person was a South Carolina resident. I started talking to them, and in a matter of a few minutes we were talking like we knew each other for a long time. I think the person covered everything from their new home, pet dogs and cats, last few trips/vacations, married life, the HDTV on their Christmas shopping list, and their profession to the current weather. I never knew it could be so interesting to talk to people on Live.
Up until now, I had only used online social networking to research things or to connect with other people in my field of interest, but this “gamer networking” looks promising.
Now, if only people started buying Xboxes in India!