A few days ago, I spoke out against gamerscore cheating in all its forms. By resetting the gamerscores of known cheaters to zero, Microsoft has shown that it agrees that illegitimately obtained gamerscore is unacceptable on Xbox Live and has taken the first steps to remedy the situation. However, in order for these actions to also serve as an adequate deterrent against future cheating, these cheaters must not only be branded on their gamercards, but their punishment needs to be reported to the community-at-large.

Enter the Xbox Cheaterwatch ( http://xboxcheaterwatch.wordpress.com ). A loosely organized vigilante group of "Gamerscore Police", Xbox Cheaterwatch is a community watchdog site where visitors can submit possible cheater sightings to the watch list for a closer look by the site administrator, aceattorney. An Xbox MVP since 2006, aceattorney is a valued member of the Xbox Community and seeing as how his Xbox.com profile lists his favorite game as Shadowrun, he's obviously got a taste for quality video games. I recently had the opportunity to chat with ace and discuss his views on gamerscore cheating and his motivations behind developing the Xbox Cheaterwatch.

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xenocidic: when and how did you become an Xbox MVP?
aceattorney: I was first given the MVP award in November of 2006. To this day, I’m still not really sure what made Microsoft choose me to be an award recipient. I didn’t run my own site, do a podcast, or anything like that. I was just a very active participant in the forums over at teamxbox.com. That year incidentally, three Teamxbox forum members became MVPs – Spaceghost2k, Wiseguy, and myself. I suppose we left a good impression on the Microsoft Xbox Marketing guys at E3 that year.

what was your motivation to create the xbox cheaterwatch?
When the news broke out about Microsoft’s shakedown of Gamerscore cheaters, I was a little surprised by the tough stance and harsh punishment of the cheaters. But I can’t say that I wasn’t glad that Microsoft decided to come down on them in this way. After my initial shock/delight, I immediately wondered – ok, so who got busted? No one could possibly have a list, so I figured, I’ll start compiling one.

what do you hope to accomplish with the site?
Thanks to Microsoft, these cheaters now bear the Scarlet Letter, and it may sound politically incorrect to say this, but not only do I want to know who they are, I also want to let everyone else know as well. There’s a sort of satisfaction seeing the bad guys get caught and punished for their wrongdoing – that’s a universal guilty pleasure, I think. Another motivation that I have is to provide an outlet for people to help bring further justice to our gaming Community. I say that tongue-in-cheek, but another carnal pleasure people have is to be a bit of a hunter, to bring down the cheaters who haven’t fessed up themselves.



have you received a lot of criticism for your site?
Just like the reaction to the shakedown itself, I’ve gotten complaints, mainly in the form of immature ranting and raving, but they are by far outnumbered by voices of support, not only for the act and form of punishment of bad behavior, but also for the showcasing of these cheaters on the site.

do you think Microsoft will be targeting all gamesavers or just the worst offenders?
From what I’ve seen and heard (from my site, and from forums around the net), there are still plenty of Gamerscore cheaters out there who have not been punished, but that’s not to say that they won’t eventually be caught. Unfortunately, I’m not privy to the policies regarding which cheaters have been or will be punished. I can say that the cheaters that we’ve found so far were pretty notorious in the Community for cheating with their Gamerscores.

you seemed to have really tightened up who gets posted on the site, was this a result of external pressure, or did you just decide that it's best to err on the side of caution?
Well, since I’ve never run a site before or have seen anything like this type of site, I had to basically make up my own rules as I went along. So yes, I have begun streamlining the comments more as of late. This is partly due to a simple matter of efficiency – a lot of comments come in claiming particular gamers cheated on a single game – my time only allows investigations of the more rampant cheaters. The other part of the slimming down had to do with my learning curve in understanding what types of “evidence” leads to what looks like cheating, and what can be reasonably explained away. Perhaps erring on the side of caution, as you put it. But in no way have there been any pressures placed on me to filter the comments and tips more heavily.

what is your opinion on boosters, account sharers and achievement glitchers?
At the center of this entire debate are the questions of whether there is value to the Gamerscore system, and whether cheating to artificially increase one’s Gamerscore devalues that system. There is no doubt that there is value to the Gamerscore system, as many others have pointed out, it’s been a huge success and draw for the Xbox 360 platform. It’s my opinion that any tactic that challenges the integrity of the system dilutes its value. So whether it’s boosting, hacking, account sharing, or glitching – generally speaking, it’s probably a bad thing for everyone. That said, I understand when someone does use some of these means to get certain Achievements in order to overcome a bug or something along those lines. Heck, I’d love to eventually get that final Call of Duty 2 Achievement for completing the game on Veteran. Even the more recent Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Private First Class Achievement bug might be bad enough to compel an honest gamer to resort to these techniques.

should microsoft 'correct' their gamerscore as well?
That could get a little sticky for Microsoft, considering I don’t know how some of these actions could be detectable, not to mention the fact that some people might not be very prolific in engaging in these types of cheating. To analogize, there’s a difference between telling a white lie, and committing fraud – and gamers who engage in very infrequent types of cheating shouldn’t get punished in the same way the more nefarious gamers have been.

human, elf, dwarf or troll?
Considering I’m a huge forumer at Teamxbox, and it’s my favorite class in Shadowrun, I’ve got to go with troll all the way!

thanks for participating in this interview, and keep up the good work.
Thank you, and I’m looking forward to reading more outstanding pieces from your site.
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So there you have it. with aceattorney as chief prosecutor, Xbox Cheaterwatch promises to keep a watchful eye over our community and is sending a clear message to gamerscore cheaters everywhere: we know you're out there...and we aren't going to put up with the dilution of our sacred institution of gamerscore any longer.