How fast can you earn 1 Million Gamerscore? Back in the early days of Xbox achievements, it seemed almost impossible. Now with a stream of easy title updates and fast completion, a TA aims to discover and highlight how easy it is to accomplish a previously unfathomable feat.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know the current state of the Xbox achievement system. There have always been publishers that released easy games and quick completions, but ever since the door was opened for 1000GB worth of easy title updates, we’ve seen an influx of easy Gamerscore and developers cleverly get around Microsoft’s rules to introduce more Gamerscore in their games. The whole controversy around these title updates and other controversies (see Aabs Animals, Cruz Brothers, One Step After Fall, Eastasiasoft, and more recently Ratalaika Games) has resulted in a strong division in the community between those who welcome easy Gs and others who believe that the achievement system is about the gutter and that it doesn’t. Nobody actually “achieves” anything with these updates.
One TA member who is firmly in the latter camp is Martel18, which is currently trying to run a Gamerscore speed of one million, which could be Watch it live on Twitch. In just six days, Martel18 – using the Gamertag BabyGamersSuck – has unlocked 3,766 achievements worth a total of 387,135 Gamerscore (accurate at the time of writing). Why do they do this? According to Martel, desire was born out of curiosity.
“With the floodgates open on easy 1000G games and title updates, I was curious how much points someone could score in a day, week or month and how quickly they could get to a million,” said Martel18. “Having the most recent account to do so in six months set to ‘Do Not Track’ for explicit account sharing solidified my decision to do so, solo of course.”
Earning 1 million Gamerscore was considered a near impossible task by many back in the day. It took the first “Gamerscore Millionaire,” Stallion83, years to achieve such a feat, but thanks to its fast completion stream, 1,000G title updates, and other easy achievement titles, a Million Gamerscore can be earned relatively quickly. Gamerscore is such an easy glut these days that on the first day of trying to get Martel18 to run fast, they earned a quarter of a million Gamerscore.
“I was not initially planning to do 245,000 grams on the first day, but a few days before I started my endeavor, Shadow Kisuragi pointed out that the daily record of just over 213,000 grams was set by LausDomini in September 2021, on account with 1,000 000 gm to his credit,” Martel18 said. I dug into Xitilon/Desert Water/ which now posts whats now for those easy 2k-5k games. I also installed batches of games under 10 minutes to get going quickly and another set of visual novel RB-skip when I needed a little break .
“I have Grounded loaded, waiting for midnight to come and fire up the save file for that moment of 2400G, then I put Aabs Animals to idle while I sign up for TA since you can’t pre-subscribe with 0G.”
Of course, while 245,000g may come faster these days, earning that much Gamerscore in just 24 hours is a real test of endurance and a laudable achievement. Martel18 said they’ve been “up and collected” all day, thanks to already having to upend their sleep schedule due to work commitments and “some ADHD hyperactivity.” Martel18 went so far as to meal prep the first day so they had some decent meals instead of just junk food.
Interestingly just a few days into the race, Martel18 earned so much Gamerscore from completing so quickly in such a short time that Microsoft’s BabyGamersSuck account had them ban, despite all the streams to prove it. Microsoft, unable to quickly understand the potential to earn Gamerscore, concluded that BabyGamersSuck was using unauthorized software to unlock achievements. “If that doesn’t tell you how broken the system is currently, I don’t know what does,” Martel18 said. Fortunately, the account is now unblocked, and the speed can continue.
The rest of Speedrun is mapped out entirely using a spreadsheet of 772 games, divided into publishers with a general timing tab. About 60% of those games were previously owned, and they’ve since bought the rest, using sales and $400 Xbox Gift Cards earned in Microsoft Rewards Points. Martel18 tells us that they avoid games with completion ratings over four hours, but will make an exception for games they enjoy and speed up, such as “Unicorn Princess, Goldeneye, My Little Riding Champion, Metal: Hellsinger, Horse Club Adventures 1 + 2, Microsoft games on my phone, My Horse and Me 2, and Minecraft.” Martel18 has 21 days off in April and aims to get 600,000 of the 1 million Gamerscore goal accomplished this month.
So why does Martel18 put itself through such a daunting task? What message are they trying to send? Well, Martel18 says they’d like to see Microsoft implement a policy change with the Xbox achievement system as things are starting to get out of hand.
“It was fine at first, having some easy games to clear the palate after grinding into longer or harder games for a while,” said Martel18. “Since the infamous Xitilon debacle, it’s been too much. We shouldn’t be adding 1,000 grams every six months to the content we already have. We shouldn’t underestimate sales achievements.
“If your game has ten worlds with ten levels each, there should be achievements for getting to the end and then some miscellaneous achievements in between. Get creative with them – jumping 150 times in play is not an achievement unless there is something special you have to do to jump.” A lot of games give you 100% with a quarter mark in the game.
I hope the policy changes from Microsoft. The 5000G cap and title update score limit are for games to keep adding content, not to add a Gamerscore for something that was already there. I’m not saying no Address updates, but reduce the max. Maybe 250 grams every six months. Big-budget games can always apply for an exception – perhaps a policy that makes it mandatory to have achievements at least to finish the story in the game.”
You can follow Martel18’s progress here on TA (BabyGamersSuck) and beyond twitch.
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