Which is the true test of gamer devotion; Achievements or Leaderboards? Two of OXM's more competitive editors debate...

"Achievements!" — Corey Cohen, Executive Editor

On a basic level, sure, leaderboards show who performed better in a game. But for measuring a gamer’s overall commitment — the full breadth of their passion — Achievements are a fairer, more accurate benchmark. Here’s why:

In gaming as in life, only a very few people are physically capable of beating everyone else at certain tasks. No matter how much most people train, they’ll never have the reflexes to get the fastest (or even the 10th-fastest) Super Meat Boy level times in the world, just as they’ll never have the speed to win the 100-meter dash in the Olympics. They could sink hundreds of hours into a game — memorizing every aspect of every level — and this dedication would go completely unrecognized if leaderboards were the only gauge of their love.

Gamerscore, on the other hand, measures more than raw ability. It’s what’s so great about the whole system — it offers a complex and intricate means of proving yourself as a gamer. Some Achievements reward coordination; others give points for the amount of time spent with a game, or for experiencing every piece of it (like finding all the bobbleheads in Fallout 3). You don’t have to be the best gamer per se — with hard work, most folks can amass an enormous Gamerscore, independent of skill. Achievements even leave room for weaselly Kobayashi Maru–style tactics like boosting with friends or changing your system clock, letting gamers use their ingenuity to get ahead, just as folks do in the real world.

If topping a leaderboard is the equivalent of winning the 100-meter dash, then having a six-digit Gamerscore is like earning gold in the decathlon. It’s a truer, broader test of how much you love gaming, and a test that anyone can pass if their heart’s set on it.

"Leaderboards!" — Dave Rudden, Senior Editor

Of course, topping leaderboards on their larger scale is kind of impossible. But if you change the parameters to focus on your Friends-list leaderboard (as roughly 99%* of Xbox games allow), you’ve got fuel to fire competition — and as a result, your devotion to a particular game.

For example, I know I’m pretty darn good at Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. I’ve unlocked all of its Achievements, which is a feat less than two percent of players can lay claim to. But there’s no way I’m ever going to stop playing that game. Sure, topping the standard leaderboard (with scores 200 times higher than my 2-million-point bounty) is a near-impossibility, but if I check my score against that of my similarly competitive friend Craig, I’ve got a goal to work toward. And who’s to say that once I pass him and have no friends to beat, I won’t start to set reasonable (but still respectable) general-leaderboard goals, like breaking into the top 1,000 of the million-plus players?

And unlike Achievements, leaderboards are evolving. With games like Need for Speed providing dynamic rankings as you encounter new objectives, and Rock Band Blitz letting you find out where you stand via Facebook, you’ll almost never lack a high score to top.

Shooting for a high Gamerscore can be impressive, if done nobly. But Achievement worth has skewed too far to be a true skill metric. Heck, anyone with plenty of cash and a few weeks of time to devote to (mostly) subpar games can probably top the 25,000 Gamerscore I’ve amassed over seven years. They’re a lot less likely to approach me on any halfway competitive leaderboard, though, and that’s why I love those giant packets of data.

*Completely made-up (but likely true) statistic.

What are your thoughts? Are you more about earning Achievements or climbing leaderboards? Sound off in the comments below!