What to Expect Being in the Xbox Gamer Spotlight

I was asked by a podcast about my experiences being in the gamer spotlight program. There was a segment on a popular podcast about being in the spotlight and the hundreds of harassing messages you get by being in it.

Me in the Xbox 360 Gamer Spotlight
Me in the Xbox 360 Gamer Spotlight

The Xbox gamer spotlight program is run by some nice folks on the Xbox 360 community team specifically Trixie360 and KP. If I had to do it over again I totally would. They ask you to be in the spotlight and then they email you a questionnaire. That gets turned into an article on Xbox.com and a while later you are on the Xbox dashboard for a week.

I was totally surprised by the amount of attention you get when your gamertag is in the spotlight on the dashboard. Each day I would get about 200 to 400 messages including random chat and friend requests out of the blue. I probably about a third to half of them were just immature insults of “You’re a f—— f–“, “You’re a nerd”, “Your website sucks”, “You suck at Halo” and other un-creative insults. A third would ask how they could get into the gamer spotlight. A third would be unsolicited friend request and a tiny percent would be people who actually have something interesting to say. I responded to all the people that actually had something to say.

98% of people on Xbox Live are cool but those 2% (some would argue that this number is much higher) of Xbox Live emotionally regressive trolls. These trolls are actually in hundreds of thousands since so many people use Xbox Live. They also think that their actions on Xbox Live have no consequences so they can just be nasty. It is the long tail off jerks. I could only imagine how the thousand or so trolls that call me a “F–” out of the blue would harass the female gamers in the gamer spotlight. You have to have a thick skin or just ignore them because it is all going to go away in a week. Besides you asked for it.

There were a bunch of nice messages and I would make sure to write back to those. Funny thing is on Xbox.com there is a limit to the amount of messages you can send to people that are not on your friends list so I used to hit that limit replying to all these messages. I probably spend 2 to 3 hours a day that week dealing with all the messages and I did very little actual game playing.

I got hundreds of messages of people asking me how to get in the gamer spotlight. I kept telling them to participate in the community events and get to know the people running Xbox.com. They are the ones that would invite you to do it. I put this in my profile and the fact that I was not accepting friend requests but I still got hundreds of messages about it. All the friend requests from people with Silver accounts shocked me since I can’t play games with them but I guess they are hard pressed to meet people on Xbox Live because they can’t play games online.

You would not believe the ones where people would ask for MS Points and money out of the blue. I was surprised about all the kids begging for me to sponsor their Halo clan. I would just tell them to go get a job and when I was their age I mowed laws to buy Super Nintendo games.

The ones that would make me laugh are the little kids calling you a “F–“. I would just reply with a voice message of “Wow you have a dirty mouth, You know who else has a dirty mouth? Your mom, you should believe the filthy words that come out of her when I am engaged in intimate activities with her.” Then I’ll just block communication from them and move on. It did make me wish that there was a way to mass delete messages and friend requests from Xbox.com without having to click on all the messages.

My tips for people about to be in the gamer spotlight.

1. Turn off the option to show your friends list. I had people on my friends list get messages and some of the female gamers on there get harassed and I feel sorry about that.

2. Turn off notifications. I would get dozens of friend requests, chat requests, party invites out of the blue and it would get a little annoying when I was trying to play a game.
I just start deleting all friend requests. The first day I added friend requests and then when it got maxed out I got hundreds of messages of people asking me to delete people off my friends list so I could add them. Nope sorry kids. The people that I did add to my friends list I ended up taking them out because they would do things like joining parties with my friends and then trying to dominate the conversation thus screwing up my 1v100 game.

3. Don’t take it personally I believe in the greater internet F—- Theory. Most of the kids on Xbox Live don’t think that there are any consequences for their actions and you just have to ignore them. They are just emotionally immature just ignore them and move on with your life.

There were some times that people threatened physical violence or tried to my login information via a phishing scam but I reported those directly to Stephen Toulouse head of Xbox Live Policy enforcement. I took screen shots of it and posted it to Flickr.

Strangely it really did not contribute to a significant increase in readers to my blog but it was a lot of fun. It was just enough attention and fame to know that I really don’t want constant attention and fame. The 15 minutes of fame was fun but I would not want it to last longer than that. The Gamer Spotlight was a blast and I would do it over again but it does introduce you to a several hundred immature trolls on Xbox Live.

Warning contains strong but stupid language.

Categories: Game News, Rants

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