I have thought about this for a few years now and finally wanted to start putting plans together to make this happen.

Concept:
360voice members will assemble at eBash here in Terre Haute, IN for a weekend of unlocking achievements. Our goal will be to set the Guinness World Record for most achievements (or Gamerscore) unlocked in a 24 hour period.

Background:
A few years ago I hosted a team of 4 that were attempting to break the record for the longest FPS gaming session. The current record was 32 hours at the time. They totally jacked up the attempt, they drove through the night to get to our store and then 2 of them started the attempt after already being awake for 20 hours. They made it about 18 hours and then got in a big fight with each other and quit.

So the only good that came out of it is that I totally watched and made notes on what it took to set-up, register, record and submit an attempt. I would love to make an attempt at the FPS record sometime, but I thought with our group at 360voice we could not only create a few records but also put the bar out of reach for them all.

Timing/Days:
My idea would be to have everyone travel on a Friday to our store. We can set-up shuttle service from the IND airport to Terre Haute (less than an hour drive) for anyone flying in for the weekend.

Friday night I will have a block of hotel rooms set-up. For those within a 4-5 hour drive, they could travel Saturday morning. The event would begin at noon, so everyone would need to arrive to begin setting up around 10 or 11 AM.

The event would run from noon on Saturday until noon on Sunday. That would give everyone time to travel home Sunday afternoon/evening.

Record Ideas/Attempts:
Here is the fun part. In almost all of these cases we would be creating the records as we go.. so we can use the time we are all together to set multiple records. There are guidelines from the GWW folks on the details for making a record, here are some of my suggestions:

Individual
– Most Achievements unlocked in 24 hours
– Most Gamerscore gained in 24 hours
– Longest consecutive gamerscore session

Group
– Most achievements unlocked in 24 hours by a group
– Most Gamerscore gained in 24 hours by a group
– Most gamers in one gamerscore session
– Longest consecutive gamerscore session for a group

Logistics:
My goal would be to have 100 folks pull this off. My store has 50 seats for Xbox already set-up, but a total of 95 stations set-up counting PC, PS3 and Wii. We can add room for up to around 110 or 120 stations. My idea would be to have anyone flying in be able to use our existing stations so they don’t have to bring any big equipment with them. While those traveling from the midwest by car could bring their set-ups and use the PC, PS3 and Wii stations.

I have cameras throughout the store which we can use for recording and submitting the attempt, this is a HUGE barrier for most folks attempting records. You have to submit video of the entire attempt and everyone participating.

We will also need to submit screen capture footage of a few of the contestants. The 4 guys that tried the FPS record just recorded one of their stations, but in our case with 100+ members I think we should attempt to record 5-10 depending on who has equipment to handle this. We can do a few stations at the store, but all of this will be a ton to manage.

I will take care of the witness requirements. I can get all of the local press to cover the story and submit their footage. Also I can have my local gaming community (we have around 15,000 users in our store DB) to stop by and sign witness reports.

Food:
For those folks helping for the continuous gaming session records you are allowed to have a 5 min break every hour. You can store those up in 3 hour period for a 15 min break for example. This keeps it from being a medical problem with gaming and not eating or going to the bathroom.

With that many people in one spot I plan on getting us some local food sponsors who will benefit from the press coverage. I don’t want to feed everyone pizza and soda for example, we need food that will keep everyone going. However I know through the night I can get Energy Drink folks to provide free product.

Cost:
As much as I would love to say that I am a millionaire and will pay for the entire operation that just isn’t the case. That being said I don’t want to make anything on the project. I plan on participating in the attempt with everyone else, so I will have to staff up the store for the day and have them take care of all of the details.

Depending on how much of the food I can get donated I think I can make all of this happen for around $25/person. I don’t want this to be a barrier for anyone to participate, but I know most of us 360voice folks are capable of helping cover the costs. This will allow me to coordinate the food, close the store to the public for the day and would include food/drinks.

Feedback/Volunteers/Date:
I am looking for feedback from everyone here at 360voice for this project along with volunteers to help me coordinate everything and help with set-up.

I also want everyone to help me figure out a good weekend to make this happen. We need a few months for planning and for everyone to make travel plans, but I would like to make this happen before the summer if possible. I was thinking of a weekend in May. It just can’t be a holiday weekend like Memorial Day because the store is packed during those weekends and I can’t afford to close to the public during a busy weekend. 🙂

My favorite Xbox site, 360voice.com, is holding a $10,000 challenge in conjunction with the release of Gears of War 3.  In fact, my last blog post was about a month ago announcing this very contest.   The rules were laid down early, 40 players per team (called a brotherhood) in a race to unlock as many achievements as possible.  The team which unlocks the most achievements in Gears of War 3 from the release date through the next 30 days would be crowned the champions.  A side event was a small amount of the prize for the top 3 players who got the most referrals to the competition.

Before I go into too many more details, let me make this very clear.  I love 360voice.com and the staff that runs it (which is two guys basically who work their tails off handling events, support, maintenance and technical issues).  I love that someone secured sponsorship from Microsoft/Epic and that they were willing to try an out-of-the-box marketing/PR idea like this.  I love the community around 360voice.com (200,000+ registered members) that is very active, cooperative and fun.  I run events on the site myself and eBash has sponsored over $1k in prizes for these events.

When this was created they realized that 40 player teams are pretty big and it would be difficult to recruit solid players, so they decided to add the option for the captains of the teams to be able to add/remove players during the competition.  I mean what happens when 1 guy on your team doesn’t show up at all during the competition?  You would need the ability to remove that player and add a new player that would participate.  Also, to try and encourage people to keep recruiting through the entire 30 days, a captain could still add people to the brotherhood.  Whatever these new players unlock in Gears 3, even before being on the team, would count toward the team’s total.

About a week ago, we started seeing comments in the forums on the site and the “trash talk” section of the challenge.  The trash talk section is basically a forum thread that runs down the side of the challenge with the ability to quick post and not edit/delete.  Players were being unwillingly kicked from their teams and replaced with players who had more achievements unlocked.  At the same time players with the maximum score of 830 (2 achievements for 170 were ruled ineligible due to a launch day glitch by Epic) were dumping their own teams and moving into the highest ranked teams.

Meanwhile, my eBash team that I had created fluctuated between 15th and 12th place as we casually completed the campaign and played multiplayer.  I just made a public team and invited anyone to join, and the squad filled up quickly with players from my store, players I know online and just other players from 360voice.com.  We knew pretty quickly when we saw these people jumping ship from other teams to join the top 2-3 teams that we wouldn’t win, so we just had fun with it.

On the referral side, I was sitting around 10th place with I believe around 60 referral points.  A referral point is gained by bringing an Xbox LIVE Silver (free) account to the site that joins the challenge and unlocks 50 achievement points.  Additionally you can earn 3 referral points by recruiting an Xbox LIVE Gold account ($59.99/year membership) that unlocks an achievement and joins the challenge.  I posted it here on my blog, on my store’s facebook page and a few other sites that I frequent.

Now, before I continue I want to take a quick trip down memory lane and give everyone some of my background with my business and specifically the Gears of War franchise:

Begin sweet memory trip……

I started a video game center (LAN center) store 7 years ago called eBash.  With my background playing high school and collegiate basketball my biggest desire was to run tournaments for the newest generation of games on consoles.  We had 42 stations when we first started, 22 computers and 20 original xboxes and Halo 2 was our big competitive title.  A fun fact was that in 2007 we hosted local and regional events for the World Cyber Games (WCG) which brought the 2v2 Halo 2 team with the Ogre Twins to our store in Terre Haute, IN.

Moving ahead a few years as we moved into our newly designed 4000 sq ft facility that I set-up specifically for tournaments.  9 private rooms throughout the building designed with 4 man teams in mind.  We were all over the 360 and when Gears of War released we really pushed it on our tournament circuit.  We started with a free tournament with $500 in prizes, followed by $1000, $1500 and $2000 tournaments.  100% funded and ran by us with no sponsors.  By the time our biggest tournament rolled around we had 40 Xbox 360 stations and 40 copies of Gears so we could run 5 simultaneous matches.  We had 35 teams of 4 players at our $2k tournament.

Through these tournaments in 2007 I got to know a guy named Kendall (KL) Smith who was one of the head guys of a team called vBi.  His team was very successful at our events and he and his guys went to most of the MLG events at the time.  He did some journalistic writing for the game industry and he was asked if he knew someone to run the console side of the WSVG in 2007.  He gave them my name and the next thing I was hired as the head console admin and I brought any of my staff with me to run their events.  More on KL later…

In the WSVG event that year in Dallas, TX we not only ran the Guitar Hero 2 stage and Fight Night Round 3 ring (yes, it was an actual boxing ring) but we also did all of the gaming set-up for the entire event and set-up and ran the only Gears of War event for the season.  They paid out $10k for the one tournament and I saw some teams represented that attended eBash events such as the NSAN3Z, N3 and vVv.

Jumping ahead to 2008 and the release of Gears 2.  I started a circuit with multiple game centers around the US and called it ggCircuit.  We held a $2500 tournament for Gears 2 in December of 2008 featuring 16 game centers around the US with LAN events on Saturday and a Sunday online championship.  Heading into 2009 we ran another 2 events for Gears of War 2 paying out $2k at each event.  We had 48 copies of Gears of War 2 at both eBash locations and all of the other centers involved were required to have a minimum of 16 copies of Gears of War 2.

During 2008 I also brought KL, his brother Kerrington and their good friend Colin (Skyllus) to work for our Bloomington, IN location.  They had branched out of vBi, started a new team called AmazYn, and needed a place to practice for MLG for Gears 2 and this seemed like a perfect fit while they worked at eBash.  That summer they even brought out their 4th player, Alex (Calinorth) to live with them and train for the Dallas MLG event.  How did they do? Not bad, they took first.  These guys are some of my good friends here in this world.  When we shut down our Bloomington store we moved them to Terre Haute and the three of them lived in our house for a few months.  I miss having them around for laughs and brainstorming.

Which brings us to good old 2011 and now Gears of War 3.  I have already dropped over $3k in Gears of War 3 games at our stores and our first $500 tournament is scheduled for October 22nd which we hope is the first building up to $2500 tournaments once again.

End of the sweet memory trip and back to the present with the 360voice.com Gears of War 3 challenge…..

So last week I started a new team for the Xbox LIVE gold accounts in our store.  We have a ton of players that do not own their own Xbox LIVE accounts and were excited to have the achievements count towards the event.  I don’t give any of them access to the login data for these accounts but they all have their favorite spots in the store and claim certain eBash accounts as their own.  If you take a look at any of them you can see which stations obviously have serious Gears 3 players and which ones do not (some of our accounts have 0 achievements unlocked).  Either way as I added these accounts to the competition I put myself as the referrer, heck yeah I was going to get credit for adding all of these new players and accounts!

Four days ago the 360voice.com site got a bit stuck updating the referral leaderboard and I knew that when it updated I would jump ahead to first place with the eBash accounts being added.  Some of them still don’t have any achievements, which do not give me any points, but most of them have quite a few, with players beating the campaign already in the store in groups.  Sure enough, on Tuesday of this week it updated and low and behold I was now in 1st place.  Who was the guy I jumped ahead of you might ask?  Stallion83.

Stallion83 is the guy with the highest legit gamerscore in the world.  He is somewhere around 650,000 at this point.  He runs a little blog over at www.1milliongamerscore.com and constantly gets people harassing him because they all think he cheats.  He loves posting the hate messages on his blog where people who don’t even know him attack his integrity and call him all sorts of colorful names.  I don’t think he cheats at all, he was really the first guy to really go after gamerscore seriously and has kept it up the longest.

So Tuesday I check the leaderboard for referrals and I am excited.  Woohoo I am in first!  Then as I scroll down the page I find this “friendly” banter taking place in the trash talk section:

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 9:56:48 AM PST
Please tell me the assclown using a million second accounts to refer himself doesn’t count.

futiles Says..
10/4/2011 10:50:01 AM PST
@stallion83: To whom are you referring?

BoZack runs a group of gaming centers, so there is a lot of foot traffic, and I would not be surprised if he was working hard to get everyone through to signup with their gamertag.

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 11:00:07 AM PST
http://360voice.gamerdna.com/group/2157
http://360voice.gamerdna.com/group/2176

Bunch of second accounts no matter how you slice it.

Dog of Thunder Says…
10/4/2011 11:30:31 AM PST
Those referral counts as it is still within the rules, just as how swapping Brotherhoods is within the rules. Again, there were some miscalculations, and nothing will be done to change things at this point.

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 11:36:06 AM PST
What he is doing is worse than the gamesaving pricks ive dealt with in the past.

Dog of Thunder Says…
10/4/2011 11:41:56 AM PST
I don’t agree with it, I don’t even like it. It is underhanded, it is dirty and it is against the spirit of the rules. I can not do anything to stop it, as that would mean making sure everyone else’s referrals are actually real as well.

I’m just disappointed. That’s all.

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 11:50:02 AM PST
Yoru logic is off then.

My teammates were on my ass to delete people, ask them about that. So it was either upset the group and have them leave or axe some people.

So no, it’s not even in the same league.

Bond OO7 Says…
10/4/2011 11:56:11 AM PST
Two can play at that game…… right DoT? Don’t worry stal we’ll get your crown back

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 12:02:35 PM PST
Hey dog, man up. You sound like a clown as well. Open your eyes.

Bond OO7 Says…
10/4/2011 12:06:55 PM PST
Stal calm down, The rules were put up and you cant change them mid way through. There were a lot of rules that were exploited like being able to kick etc which we used to our advantage. That guys using that loophole to his advantage. But everyone can use that loophole

stallion83 Says…
10/4/2011 12:11:36 PM PST
Yes bond, because you guys bugged the crap out of me everyday to kick people.

I personally never searched for a loophole.

Bond OO7 Says…
10/4/2011 12:15:59 PM PST
Yes but at the end of the day it was your group and your decision. I dont see why you are attacking everyone else about this

There was quite a bit after all of this and most was deleted by the moderators later.  I was shocked, then kind of mad, then pretty much dumbfounded.  I have never met this guy in my life, I have read his blog a few times but he wouldn’t know me if I was sitting next to him on the bus.  I was on my way out of the office to spend some time with my family on the pontoon boat and so I decided I would just take a look at it later.

Later that night I had all kinds of messages from people.  Nice ones that told me not to worry about what Stallion83 was accusing me of because he didn’t know my background.  Other messages that asked if I could sign up a few eBash accounts under their names so they could get the referral credits.  But I was dumbfounded that a few notes here and there from some who were mad at me for causing all of this “trouble”??  The argument that many people took against me was that what I was doing was not helping to “promote Gears of War 3 for Epic/Microsoft”, that I was “making us look back to sponsors”,  that “I wasn’t helping the community of 360voice.com” and of course Stallion83’s accusation that I was using “secondary accounts”.  Let’s look at these accusations:

Not promoting Gears of War 3 for Epic/Microsoft?  Really?
By my counts in the history of the Gears franchise I have:
– Paid out directly over $11,000 in cash tournament prizes for Gears 1, 2 and 3 tournaments and indirectly an additional $10k through the WSVG event we ran
– Purchased over 100 Xbox 360 systems (actually we own over 200, they break so often I need 2:1 systems for the stores) = over $40k
– Actively run over 60 Xbox LIVE Gold accounts in our stores for more than 30,000 UNIQUE gamers that have played in our facility over 7 years = ~$15k over 7 years
– Our game library in our stores consist of over 100 copies of Gears 1, 100 copies of Gears 2 and so far over 40 copies of Gears 3. = ~$12k

Total spent with Microsoft/Epic to run our store and Gears Events ~  $78k directly and $10k indirectly

Making us look bad to sponsors?  Really?
The main reason I am writing this blog article is to show the sponsors just exactly what it means when there are 60 Xbox LIVE accounts in the competition with the name eBash01, eBash02, eBash03, etc.  I have thought about shooting some video this weekend during our lock-in Friday night of the actual players using the Xbox systems, Gears of War 3 copies and eBash LIVE accounts to play because they don’t own one or more of those items at home.

Maybe some footage of all of those assets also being used during our tournament on the 22nd of this month?  Maybe the giant Gears of War banners that we custom printed on our $2k large format printer?  Maybe the Gears of War 3 stand-up in the lobby right by the front doors where over 2500 unique customers a month walk by?  Maybe a link to our home page where it has been themed for Gears of War 3 for the last month? (http://terrehaute.ebash.com)

Wasn’t helping the community of 360voice.com?
This one probably hurt the most because the regulars on the site should know how much I do for the community there already.  The mean and hurtful emails and private messages WAY outweighed any messages of encouragement.  I was super bummed to see no one jump in to defend me besides one of my guys at the store who played through the campaign with me for our brotherhood.  Just looking back over the last year on the site I have:

– Built and updated the mini-site for Lausdomini‘s Skyline competition DAILY for over 100 days.  Oh.. and sponsored the event from eBash with $100 in MS Points.
– Built and updated the team portion of the Mega Challenge for 30 days DAILY.  Oh… and sponsored the team portion from eBash with $280 in MS Points.
– Provide the hosting space for Lausdomini to load and update his Buffet competition
– Currently running an 8 week competition called the eBash Gamers Group (EGG) featuring over $400 in prizes provide by eBash.
– Gave away codes for the full version of Blacklight Tango Down all summer sponsored by eBash.

Using Secondary Accounts for the Gears 3 Challenge referral program?  (aka: using a “loophole” in the rules)?
My favorite part of the dialogue I copied above between Stallion83, Dog of Thunder and BondOO7 was the portion where Bond who was on Stallion’s team called him out for exploiting a feature of the competition for his own team’s gain.  Stallion’s response was so amazing to me, basically, don’t blame me, you guys made me do it.

I guess the other problem people can’t seem to look past is that the names of these accounts are all generic because multiple people use them.  I am bringing more eyeballs to the contest through these accounts than any other player.  I was in the process of posting the Gears 3 Challenge as the homepage on all 34 of our computer stations in the store so that guys could track their progress on the eBash accounts.  Our store is like the show Cheers, where everyone knows your name and everyone has their “spot” they like to sit and play.  So when a kid like Jordan plays through the Gears 3 campaign and he wants to see how many points he has added for the eBash Store Accounts brotherhood he knows which eBash account is “his” for the event.

An account named eBash172 is not a secondary account.  Each of our accounts are installed and belong to a single Xbox station in our stores.  Those stations have frequent customers who basically “adopt” those tags as their own.  On the weekends we have players line up at the door to get their favorite spot, or to make sure and get on the account they have leveled up with their save game.  Just because the account is not named “BobSmithsPersonalXboxAccount” doesn’t mean that these are all “secondary accounts”.

So what does all of this mean? Why did I take the time to write all of this out?
Honestly the only reason I wanted to get this posted was because I couldn’t believe that more people didn’t stick up for me and I thought perhaps not that many know the entire story.  I thought it was wrong for the guy who has everyone call him a cheater for having such a high gamerscore to immediately assume I was a cheater.  It seemed wrong that the admin of the tournament was called names also and did not reprimand Stallion83 and instead made some insulting comments towards me about ruining all future tournaments and being “underhanded, dirty and against the spirit of the rules”.

The bottom line here is that honestly do not care about the money at all.  I am super competitive and I want to win, but I told the admins on 360voice they could delete my store accounts from the competition.  If I can win without those accounts it will be much sweeter anyway and I don’t have to put up with listening to people make their own ASSumptions on why they think I am cheating.

So if you want to help me out and show your support it is very simple to sign-up for the challenge.   It is free to make a 360voice.com account and free to join the challenge.  All you need to do is use my gamertag as your referral (BoZack) and unlock at least one achievement in Gears of War 3 in a brotherhood.  Here are the easy links for you:

Step 1:  Make a free 360voice.com account with your Xbox LIVE gold account here:  www.360voice.com
Step 2:  Use this link once you have registered and verified your email with your new account:  http://360voice.com/gears/join/BoZack
Step 3: Make your own brotherhood or join another public one,  it doesn’t matter
Step 4: Unlock at least 1 achievement in Gears of War 3.  Boom!  You just gave me 3 referral points.

You can track my progress on the leaderboard for referrals on the right side of the page here:

http://360voice.gamerdna.com/gears

 

Maybe after reading this I will get a few more people to understand where I am coming from?

EDIT: 10/6/2011 @ 10 PM EST
The admins finished my request to remove the eBash store groups from the challenge so as of right now I have dropped back to 19th place.  Enjoy the journey over the next few days as I bring “REAL” eBash customers with me to the top of the leaderboard.

I am going to give my $250 winnings evenly to the first two 360voice.com watchers of my blog that are below Stallion83.

The great folks over at 360voice.com opened up registration today for their $10,000 Gears of War 3 challenge.  I started up a group for eBash today, please feel free to join our group or create your own.  Feel free to also use my link posted below so that I can get credit for all of the referrals to the site.  I have been a member for years now and 360voice is a great community of players (over 200,000 strong now).

All it takes is an Xbox LIVE silver or gold membership to join, no purchase necessary.  Which GoW 3 Brotherhood will prevail???

http://360voice.com/gears/groupjoin/BoZack

After 7 years in the business there are many things that I have mastered when it comes to running a LAN center.  However there are still ongoing problems that we fight on a daily basis.  One of the biggest ones on our plates right now is the constant fight to keep our game discs in working condition and how to handle games with online passes and/or download content (DLC).

Over the years I have now built 5 game centers from the ground up, consulted on hundreds of other facilities and also assembled and disassembled huge venues with the now extinct World Series of Video Games (WSVG).  By my estimations I have ran over 100 miles of ethernet cable, set-up over 50 gaming networks and operated over 1000 console stations.

The challenge I have decided to tackle this fall is the problem with the degradation of physical discs over time along with the problem of online passes (EA sports we hate you) and DLC (Activision just charge a monthly fee already, releasing DLC each month is the same thing).  Let me present some of the direct problems and some of our past attempts at solving them.

1.  Physical discs just wear out – I am sure there are some of you who have your game library at home in immaculate condition and the lifespan of your discs is almost infinite.  However in the real world of a game center a physical disc for Modern Warfare 2 gets checked out an average of 10 times per day during the 2 years it is popular.  That is 300 times per month or over 7,000 times in the lifespan of the disc.  That is 14,000 times the disc is handled, once pulling them out of the sleeve and putting them in the console and then again putting them back into the sleeve.  The fact is that the physical discs won’t last the entire lifetime of the game itself, and we end up buying about 5 more discs to replace just 1 original disc.

Attempted Solutions:  When we built our Evansville store the cost of HDMI had finally lowered enough for us to place the Xbox consoles behind the front counter so that the employees are the only ones touching the discs.  This doesn’t cut down on the amount of time the games are handled, but they are handled with much more care than when the customers load the games like they do at our Terre Haute store.  They have less of a problem with broken games but the problem is still there nonetheless.

We also have found the JFJ Disc Repair machine which is by far the best solution for repairing scratched games.  This doesn’t solve cracked games (the center of the disc gets cracked because it is weaker and kids love putting their fingers in the center thinking they are helping by not touching the back of the disc) but it REALLY helps with recovering scratched games.  We wore out our first machine and recently ordered another from eBay brand new for only $125 shipped.  If you have any desire to repair your own games I would highly recommend getting one of these machines.

2.  Sharing Downloaded Games – We spend the money on our 60+ Xbox stations at the store and purchase Xbox LIVE gold for almost all of them.   That gives the players access to play online with their favorite games as a team or against other players in the center.  Also many games now have co-op options that are only online, not over system link anymore.   We have not had much problem with people messing with the LIVE accounts, sometimes they delete them and we recover.  In a few cases they have taken them home on a memory card and we just recover them.

I have thought about downloading the games through Microsofts Games on Demand.  The problem we face is HD space.  Most of our boxes are the arcade versions that only have 4 GB of flash memory.  I would need to buy hard drives for all of them, but would gladly spend the money now on a capital expense that will save us the monthly cost of replacing games that are broken.

Possible Solution:  One brainstorm is to take a room of 8 Xbox systems and download Black Ops for example.  That room would become exclusive to Black Ops.  No discs would ever need to be replaced, but also we wouldn’t be able to share those games with other stations like we can with a disc.  Obviously we wouldn’t be able to do that with very many games.  MX vs. ATV Reflex is popular but it only gets checked out 1 or 2 copies at a time and by many different people.  It wouldn’t make sense to download that game on a station as it many times is not used at all.

3.  DLC Content and Online Passes – This just plan sucks for a game center.  Of course all of the customers want to play Madden 11 online against other real players.  Why wouldn’t they?  Just the same everyone wants all of the map packs for Black Ops to play the new multiplayer maps and the new zombie maps.

At the Terre Haute store we have 8 copies of Madden 11 and about 25 copies of Black Ops.  Those are about the limit of the number of players who all want to play those games at the exact same time.   Players can sit down anywhere in the store and check out those games.  If we assign an online pass to a single eBash Xbox gold account then that spot is the ONLY place a player can play Madden 11 online.  What if someone is sitting there playing Black Ops?  Too bad, either wait or play offline.

Solution:  Again, I am thinking that giving a room a “theme” would work for the most popular games.  There will be no problem making 8 seats in a room Black Ops stations as we almost always have 8 people playing Black Ops.  The problem is with games like all of the sports games.  We don’t usually have many of those checked out simultaneously, and just 1 or 2 people are playing them at a time.

These are all nice, small, temporary solutions to the problem but more like a band-aid on a big cut that needs to be stitched up and heal.  That was the best I could come up with until yesterday when I had a what I believe is a solve-all solutions, once I think through some of the logistics.

I was thinking yesterday of the problem that we can’t move LIVE accounts around very easy that “own” a downloaded game, have an online pass or own the DLC for a game.  We have thought about using USB memory sticks to hold the LIVE accounts and move those around, but those are REAL small and hard to keep track of and I am sure many would “walk out the door”.  Then I remembered that in our Evansville store where we have the consoles at the front counter we run USB over CAT5 to all of the stations.

What if we ran an extra CAT5 cable out to each station and had them all marked and labeled at the front counter?  We could have memory sticks holding Xbox LIVE accounts that own Black Ops and all of the DLC content and we could plug those into whichever console the customer was sitting at in the store.  The big question I need to figure out is if we can download a full game onto a memory stick and if a different Xbox will recognize it.  On a typical memory stick we could hold 2 or 3 full games and all related DLC.

So I am off to do some testing to see if this theory will work….

Alright, time to start getting in the Fall Exploding Game Releases mode here at the store. We are working on getting our Facebook group growing again, we have been stagnant in the low 2000 “likes” for awhile now and we are pushing to add 100 new likes per month.

As part of the “incentive” for our fans to promote us and help drive up our numbers we are starting our weekly giveaway contests again. This week we are giving away Medal of Honor Limited Edition brand new with the Battlefield 3 Beta access. All you need to do is head over and “like” the Medal of Honor picture we uploaded to enter yourself in the drawing. Here is a quick link for you lazy watchers:

www.facebook.com/eBashTerreHaute

The Fall season of the EGG (eBash Gaming Group) will be starting on Labor Day (September 5th). I am excited to announce the theme’s for the first three weeks.

Fall Season Themes

Week 1: Football – To celebrate the start of the NFL season this week any game remotely dealing with football will count towards your rankings this week, examples: Madden, Rookie Rush, BCFX, NFL Tour, NFL Head Coach, NCAA Football, etc.
Week 2: Clean-up – This is inspired by lausdomini’s HERBIE clean-up challenge but with a bit of a twist. Games that will count this week must have at least one achievement unlocked and cannot have an achievement unlocked after 7/1/2011.
Week 3: Genre week – Every competition we will have a genre week during Week 3 and Week 6 of the 8 week competition. The genre will be voted on by participants in the two weeks prior to the week. So During Week 1 and Week 2 voting will take place for which genre will be featured in Week 3.
Week 4: Will be announced during week 1
Week 5: Will be announced during week 2
Week 6: Genre Week
Week 7: Will be announced during week 4
Week 8: Will be announced during week 5

Rules
1. Players must be a registered member of 360voice.com and join the weekly EGG challenge (first week will be created as soon as my current challenge is over).
2. Points are “unlocked” by achievement points matching the weekly theme
3. Scores will be distributed each week to players starting with 20 points for 1st, 19 points for 2nd, 18 points for 3rd and so forth until 5 points. All participants scoring more than 0 will receive 5 points minimum.
4. One (1) 1600 MS Points code (or equivalent Paypal value for contestants outside of the US) will be given away to one random player each week. Drawings for the random winner will take place each Thursday.
5. Scores during the 8 week Fall season will be accumulative towards the overall standings. The overall winners will be determined by the highest scores after 8 weeks.

Prizes
1st Place – Choice of Tritton AX-720 (Retail $129.99) or 5600 MS Points (Retail $69.98)
2nd Place – Choice of Tritton AX-180 (Retail $69.99) or 4000 MS Points (Retail $49.99)
3rd Place – Choice of Retail Game of Choice (Retail $59.99) or 3200 MS Points (Retail $39.98)

I should have sign-ups ready in the next couple of weeks.

It seems like already this week I am behind in just about everything. Baby Julez is just not grasping the concept of sleeping at night and being awake during the day. Last night we stayed up together until about 2:30 before she finally closed her eyes. I call those late nights my 30/30 time. If I walk with her for 30 minutes she will lay down for 30 minutes. I just have just been grinding away at X-men and a few other older games in my played list.

I have been trying to really catch back up in the Mega Challenge the past 2 days. I slacked this past weekend and it is NOT like me to be this far down in the field. I *know* it is 458 people and top 20 is great but I want top 3. I want all of those amazing challenge points. And today in the mail my knight on a white horse rode into my door. 10 new Japanese games from the <5 and 5-10 hour list over at x360a.org.

Personally I have a few goals with the challenges going and my own personal scoring this year. They are lofty, but here you go:

Overall GS – 200k by the end of 2011
360voice Completion Percentage – 75% Jedi badge
Skyline Challenge – Team Win, Overall Top Tower
Mega Challenge – Team Win, Top 3 Individual
Buffet Challenge – Top 5
H.E.R.B.I.E. – Team Top 3

Stuff Heard Around eBash:
Last week during Spring Break kids would come early every single day and try to get into the store before we open at 2 PM. One day a mother slammed on the door until I went to let them know we opened at 2 and she instructed me that she HAD to be back at work and I was just going to have to let her kid wait in our store. Ugh.

So one of the days I felt bad when 15 people were standing outside the store waiting an hour early to get in. I let them in and told them they could play but they had to pick one game and then at 2 PM when my regular employee got there they could change games. They all agreed and started picking out games like Black Ops and others they knew would last them. However one small kid, maybe 11 years old, decided he wanted to play Dance Central on the Kinect.

Me: “You know this is a dancing game on the Kinect right?”
Kid: “Yes, that is what I want to play.”
Me: “You know you can’t change games for an hour until 2 PM right?”
Kid: “Yes, that is what I want to play.”

****Kid goes back to play and I go back to sit near ee Speirs and ProtipsLoL while we continued working on our Mega Challenge games.****

1:05 PM
****Kid comes walking back to the lobby and around to where we are playing. ee Speirs and ProtipsLoL start laughing because they know what is coming.****

Kid: “Is it 2 o’clock yet?”
Me: “Nope. There is a clock over there on the wall above the Incredible Hulk if you want to know what time it is, at 2 PM you can change games.”

The kid then goes and sits at a table in the lobby for the next 55 minutes watching the other kids playing Black Ops and waiting for 2 PM. My wife gave me a hard time and said I was too mean to him, but for those of you who know me that is how I would do it again if given the chance.

You can’t double blog a triple blog?

I haven’t posted much here on WordPress the past month or so as I have been pretty active blogging over at 360voice.com recently.  I noticed that one guy who I enjoy following, MarvzMitts, posts his blog both at 360voice.com and at trueachievements.com.  I am not sure why I didn’t think of that first, but why not post it all of the places at once?  Then people who enjoy reading in any of the formats will be able to access my content.   I have found that I am a much more regular blogging about my gaming lifestyle coupled together with my work at eBash so let’s see how this goes.

From my blog today at 360voice:

Wowzers.

SpidermanMTL mentioned that his back-to-back days in the eBash Skyline Challenge were pretty rough last weekend. He build 18 and then 19 in consecutive days and said he missed his grandmother’s 88th birthday party. I can’t ever tell if he was serious or not especially about the birthday party, but now I know he was serious about how difficult it was to build those days.

Yesterday I needed 17 and today I needed 18. I am trying to work on the rockstar genre badge so I continued today with GH 5. However this morning at home I was watching my daughter after another long night of no sleep for my wife and she and I grabbed some some Lego Indiana Jones achievements that have been haunting me while mommy slept.

(Side note: In Lego Indiana Jones the stupid achievement that says 50 times shatter glass or take out enemies but you can’t actually do it with enemies… yeah, maybe 200 kills later I read someone’s note on the achievement over at TA… I am a huge IJ fan and the Temple of Doom is my least favorite movie now for YET another reason)

At work it was Facebook Tuesday, which basically gets players into the store for a huge discount if they show up in groups and tag each other on our Facebook wall. Luckily with the Fan/Mic trick on Guitar Hero 5 I could let the career run while I was busy with customers. That got me enough so that when I got home my son and I could finish off with a couple more in Lego Star Wars 3. I know that one problem is I am holding games for the Mega Challenge an the Buffet but it is still pretty difficult to feel the pressure of letting your team down and seeing your building collapse!

I can’t wait for this weekend. Finally we can start dropping some crazy points on a daily basis as part of the Mega Challenge.  Lausdomini dug up the scoring from past Mega Challenges and it looks like 33k was the most put up by the winner in the past for the 30 day challenge. I wonder if someone will break that this time? I put up almost 7k in a 5 day challenge early this year to be one of the first winners of the 2011 Virus Badge but over 30 days it would be crazy.

I just hit 100k recently and noticed the other day in my 360voice challenge statistics that I have unlocked 67,000 gamerscore during challenges. I guess that makes it obvious I am a pretty competitive guy.

I have been a bit slacking here on my blog for a couple of reasons the past few weeks.  The main reason is that my wife Janean and I are waiting on the birth of our 2nd child.  Our first child, Zander, was born over 10 years ago so we kind of feel like new parents.  Zander was 10 days early so we anticipated meeting our new baby girl anytime the past few weeks.

But! (there is always a but) we are sitting today on the actual due date and baby girl is still content to hang out with mom it seems!  For a few different reasons the doctor didn’t want Janean to go past her due date so we are scheduled to head to the hospital Saturday morning to help things along.   Waiting everyday to see if we need to head to the hospital on top of quite a bit of extra consulting work has left me with not too much extra time.

So my blog has suffered here,  but I haven’t neglected my gamerscore!  I have been plugging away towards 100k with some great challenges over at 360voice.com.  If you love competitions and Xbox 360 achievements this site is everything you need.

Currently I am participating in the Skyline event which put participants on random teams and requires each member to “build” on their buildings by increasing the number of achievements earned each day.  If one of your team members does not earn enough achievements to increase their building size on their designated build day their building collapses and they are out of the challenge.  The team with the last building standing wins.

One big part of their site is the challenge system which allows ANYONE to create their own event to compete against other Xbox LIVE gamers.  To celebrate their 5 year anniversary they are putting together a Mega Challenge hoping to attract 500 competitors in one single event for the month of April.

So  far there is already almost 30,000 MS Points, Xbox LIVE subscription cards and brand new retail games put up as prizes.  I am guessing the pool of prizes will continue to grow over the next 3 weeks leading up to the launch of the tournament on April 1st.  The event will run 30 days through the month of April and the premise for the competition is the GAIN of achievement points during that time frame.  It has nothing to do with a gamer’s current gamerscore, but instead just the points unlocked during the event.  The minimum base score to enter is 20,000.

I am in the process of putting together an eBash team for this event (you join as an individual, but there is also a side competition that is team-based).  I thought about playing with other 360voice users, but in the spirit of the celebration I want to get more active users for their site.  They are very close to breaking 200,000 users and hopefully this will push them over the top.

I invite anyone out there who enjoys competition and unlocking achievements to join the challenge.  Even if you don’t have enough time to play there are weekly prizes given out randomly to any participant.  You can walk away with 1600 MS Points without doing anything at all.

Worried that you can’t participate because your gamerscore isn’t 20,000 or higher?  Check out this list of games to get you to 20,000 gamerscore in just a couple of weeks: Quick 1000 Gamerscore Games