“Winning gold in every Forza 2 arcade race took me a considerable amount of time, blood, sweat, and tears,” says Rich Stone, a London-based web developer and dedicated Xbox 360 gamer. “After a measly 35-point Achievement popped up, I remember being distinctly underwhelmed.”

That was the spark, but the ember was encouraged by various podcasts and community discussions about “the Achievement-point distribution in games being unfair,” Stone tells us. “It seemed to be an issue that a lot of people felt strongly about.”

Armed with his technical skills and a desire to offer an alternative, Stone built TrueAchievements.com — arguably a more accurate way of calculating Gamerscore. “I wanted to grade an Achievement based on its diffi culty,” explains Stone, “but I also wanted to avoid subjective user ratings if it all possible and keep everything automated — I have a math degree that I wanted to put to good use. I thought that if I could see how many people had an Achievement and compare that to how many owned the game, then I could make a reasonable assumption about the Achievement’s difficulty.”

The result: the TA Ratio, which is multiplied by the original Gamerscore to determine the TrueAchievement score. “Once I knew that was the way I wanted it to work, it probably took me no more than an hour or two to get to a formula I was happy with,” says Stone. Every eight hours, the site recalculates everyone’s scores — more than “20,000 gamers with over 20 million Achievements between them” — so while your real Gamerscore only goes up, your TA score can actually go down.

Currently, finding all the COG tags in Gears of War nets you 53 points instead of just 30; finishing the Endless Setlist on Expert in the original, offline Rock Band nets you a beefy 107 points instead of a paltry 25. (And Forza 2’s gold finishes earn you 60 TA points, “which I think is a better reflection of the time it took me,” notes Stone.) We thought for sure that infamously easy targets like Avatar: The Burning Earth would be docked, but no game has ever been devalued from its 1K base, in part out of respect. “We felt that the game’s programmers had chosen how to distribute their 1,000 points with good reason,” says Stone. “Harder Achievements are marked up considerably from that base, and easier ones hover around their original Gamerscore. People also enjoy seeing a TA score that’s higher than their Gamerscore. It gives them a boost!”

And don’t misinterpret Stone’s alternative calculations as arrogant finger-pointing. “I wouldn’t say the site is a criticism of the current system — more an embellishment of the great idea that is Achievements,” he explains. “I don’t think anyone quite realized the impact they would have. The simplicity of the concept belies its power. Before Achievements, I would rarely go and replay a game on a harder diffi culty setting, but now I do it quite regularly. But it’s the unusual Achievements that I really love — they give you a reason to play a game in different ways, and add value to your purchase. They’ve done a brilliant job.”