Today mark’s the fifth anniversary of the launch of Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming network. As part of the festivities, I was selected to participate in a large “Game with Developers” event, which takes place all day today. Game developers from across the world will be playing random Xbox Live gamers on the game they worked so hard on. While apparently the gamers get a big thrill from playing the devs, from all reports, it’s the devs who get the most satisfaction playing someone from the public.
I was selected weeks ago for this but unfortunately, my name didn’t go out to Microsoft for the initial requests for Gamertags. My name went out in a subsequent request that went unanswered. If you click the link above, you’ll see the second team listed is the skate. dev team. Notice four of my coworkers are there but not my name. It’s the Gamertag that allows any random Xbox Live member to initiate a game with the developers. Without a tag, I’ll be just sitting there.
A marketing dude said I could just share a tag but as cool as Jordan is (and I know because he sits next to me), I don’t want to be known as “SkateDesign”. I want to be “SkateSoftEng”. You cannot even imagine how pouty I am as I type this. LOL.
No, but seriously, can you imagine if some kid wants to ask Jordan some design question, gets me in a game and then I have to break it to him that I’m the dude that actually crammed the ones and zeros into the game? I bet I’ll be able to hear the disappointment over the headset.
Yeah, I am being whiny about this and I realize other real problems exist in the world. I would like to point out that if I could solve all of Darfur’s problems I certainly would. Also, this is my blog and I’ll complain if I want to. You’d complain too if this happened to you…
Ok, lyrics aside, if you’ve got a copy of skate. jump on XBL from 11am – 1pm PST and request a game with those Gamertags, one of them actually might be me!