If you haven't already realized yet, I'm a bit of a gamerscore whore (GSW). I love to earn achievements and grow my gamerscore. However, whereas most GSW's will obtain gamerscore by any means possible (including playing such games as Avatar, Open Season and Cars), I tend to try and keep a fairly clean gamercard. For exaple, you'll notice there is not a single sports game in my played games list - I'm simply not a fan, and even though there's some with really easy achievements, I haven't bothered with them. Another pet peeve of mine is achievements that do not end in a 0 or a 5 that make my gamerscore "uneven" (or, more precisely - no longer a multiple of 5). also, as far as is legitimately possible, I am a completionist. therefore, achievements such as GRAW's (virtually) impossible world leaderboard achievements really grind my gears. When a game has achievements like this, I'll tend to avoid it - unless it's a really great game.

These symptoms are indicative of an affliction I have termed Gamercard OCD. Other symptoms include "trying out" games on a secondary silver/offline gamertag to make sure you like it before you play it with your main gamertag. This was also necessary before Microsoft's Fall 2007 dashboard update that fixed the problem with XBLA trials showing up as 0/200 on your card. If you ended up with some of these 0/200's - they bother you - and you may have even convinced yourself to buy some of them (mine included Doom, Joust, Feeding Frenzy, TMNT 1989 Arcade, Gauntlet, New Rally-X and Novadrome - all of which I've since purchased save for Novadrome, which I've decided leave as is since it was last played 12/31/2006 and "carbon (silicon?) dates" my 360). Another symptom is striving to land exactly on "Achievement Milestones", such as 20,000 which I attained on March 21, 2008.

If you can't stand having achievements unlocked out of order, then you may have gamercard OCD. For example,  due to joining a co-op game slightly late, I unlocked Halo 3's levels III and IV achievements before level II which will forever annoy me. More recently, I've had to cease playing Rainbow Six Vegas 2 because I am just about to level up to Officer, but I still don't have my Private First Class achievement. You may also hate having achievements "Acquired" with no date attached to them - and thus must always be connected to Xbox Live (the holiday issues really troubled you!). Another symptom is trying to get an "achievement per day" in a game when you first start it, as I've done with many of my games (most recently R6V2). Attempting achievement streaks are another indicator of gamercard OCD, as I unlocked at least 1 achievement per for the 69 day period beginning 12/21/07 and ending 2/27/08, when I went on vacation. Upon my return I figured I wouldn't continue my streak - but ended up doing so anyway - and another streak of 24 days started 3/12/08 thru today for a total streak of 93 days (if you forgive the vacation).

And the most severe forms of Gamercard OCD involve maintaining meticulously organized spreadsheets that may be as simple as a list of games and their gamerscores with a completion percentage to a comprehensive detailed list of every achievement you've earned, sorted by date and summarized by month with a chart showing achievements gains per month and overall progress. This level of GC-OCD is often comorbid with gamercard organization, which I will outline here:

• If you have some of those previously mentioned 0/200's on your gamercard, your first step needs to be playing all of your 1000/1000 games (preferably in order of completion from oldest to most recent)
• Now, play all of your completed arcade titles (again, in order of completion from oldest to most recent)
• Next, play all of your uncompleted games from lowest to highest gamerscore.
• Your gamercard will now have a nice, clean list of fully completed retail titles together, followed by completed XBLA titles and then all your uncompleted games from lowest to highest gamerscore
• This won't work properly if you no longer own some of the games on your gamercard, as such, if you are a renter/borrower, you will need to fully complete the game before returning it
• I haven't quite figured out how to handle games with more than 1000 or 200, but I'll probably just play them after the first clump of completed games
• I typically do my gamercard organization on "magical" dates, first time I did it was 07/07/07 (the luckiest day of the millennium), and I'll be organizing today as it is 04/04/08 (04+04=08)
• Due to my list of games growing, on December 31, 2007, I "retired" my list, and thus created a new section of 1000/200 completed games. This makes it a bit easier on my organization days and allows me to trade in, or lend out the retired games

Well, that's my guilty pleasure. I love to scroll down my games played list and see how it spans from highest non-completed to lowest, followed by all the completed games. It may seem like a waste of time, but it makes me happy. So readers, are any of you "OCD" about your gamercards? Or am alone in my obsession?