Of all of the concepts in video game history, only one seems to have the unique attribute of being both completely irrelevant, and strangely everlasting.

It’s the concept of high scores.

Long ago (I would say even into the Super Nintendo era) the need and use for high scores in video games as a dominate means of measuring achievement feel to the wayside. In its place came the greater ideas of narrative, exploration, and eventually direct competition, creativity and, of course, unique individual game achievements. In other words, pretty much everything but a rolling tally of numbers is used to judge gamers, and games, by skill and merit.

And yet, even as gaming spreads more and more into the public conscious, the idea of a high score and video games still goes hand and hand. To this day, you still hear movies and other mediums throw out the line “I beat my high score!” or something similar when the story calls for a gaming reference. In a way it’s no surprise. The idea of one set of numbers being greater than another is used in so many other fields to declare a winner that its natural for that same feature to be the defining characteristic of victory for gaming as well in the eyes of many.

Of course, with the explosion of mobile gaming, the idea of a high score is becoming slightly less barbaric than it once was. Those simple app games are re-exploring the concept and, thanks to the global communication devices they often run off of, are also bringing back the idea of the classic arcade concept of communal high score competition. Just like an arcade, there are of course those gamers that shine above all others, and whose names remain such fixtures on the tops of leaderboards that you would think they were programmed there. Also, much like an arcade, every now and then a small group of those superior scorers will engage in a back and forth over the top spots that creates one of the competitive concepts that you see in just about every other field with regularity except for gaming. Genuine, individual player vs individual player rivalry.

Right now on the leaderboards of “Super Hexagon,” this rare moment is occurring. Even better, it’s not two civilians that are engaging, but two heavyweight players. In one corner is Terry Cavanagh. Terry has the unique “Super Hexagon” advantage of not only having programmed “Super Hexagon”, but creating the damn thing in the first place. The game’s challenge of moving a small triangle through a pulsating and vibrant tunnel of constant death is his doing. Actually, allow me a quick sidebar here before we move any further. If you’ve never played it, “Super Hexagon” can be sadistic. Think, “Dark Souls” without the thrill of accomplishment, because there rarely is accomplishment to be found within its impossible confines.

Yet this common idea doesn’t hold for Cavanagh who constantly finds himself atop the leaderboard. He isn’t doing it through any programming advantages either. The man is just that good and, even more important, is obsessed with remaining the best player in the world. He constantly checks in to see if anyone is eyeing the throne, and smites all those who would seek to replace him.

It’s a madness that has worked so far and, were it not for Jason Killingsworth, Mr. Cavanagh may be a man without rival.

Have you never heard of Jason Killingsworth? Well along with being an editor for Edge magazine, he’s also something of a gaming daredevil. His accomplishments include beating every challenge in “Super Meat Boy” (a game designed, more or less, not to be beaten), garnering every achievement in “Spelunky” (which you have to look up, to truly appreciate), and he’s also a strong advocate of unpopular ideas like the 100 hour video game. In an interview with Wired, whose interview broke this story, he puts his motivation best:

“I have near-crippling levels of perfectionism,” Killingsworth says, and a penchant for exquisite challenges. “Most games these days feel like cow-tipping — the only requirement to succeed is to possess at least one working arm,” he says. “I want to spend my gaming hours breaking crazy-eyed, bucking stallions.”

The blindingly fast “Super Hexagon” is his latest stallion, and therefore,  so is the high score of Cavanagh. Their competition hasn’t been so much a sweet science, as it is a stick and move affair. Killingsworth takes a jab, Cavanagh posts a new score moving farther out of reach. It’s the same, again and again. Only recently, has a true counter-strike has been landed as Killingsworth has beaten Cavanagh in the games third highest difficulty by 12 seconds. It’s not total victory, but for a creator who has a “Frankenstein” like obsession with his work, it’s enough to make him sweat and feverishly check the leaderboards each day to make sure Killingsworth doesn’t claim even part of the kingdom for long.

Yet, like all great champions, he is still gracious in defeat as he is quick to praise Killingsworth for accomplishing what few, if any more, ever will. He does this for the same reason he is so adamant about maintaining his spot on the leaderboard. Because he just wants to promote the game he is so proud of.

That, is the biggest reason this one of my favorite gaming stories of the year. Someday someone is going to have to invent a better phrase for it, but until then this is simply old school gaming at its purest. It brings back such glorious concepts of arcade spirit and high score competitions, that aren’t marred by things like cheap tactics, glitch exploitation, or the dreaded pre-pubescent bewildering smack talk that plagues so many other competitive games either. No, somehow in an industry that is becoming more and more obsessed with corporate ideas, lies a high profile back and forth between a game creator who just wants everyone to love his game as much as he does, and a hardcore gamer who welcomes challenges that take no prisoners.

In other competitive fields they refer to events such as this as being for “the love of the game”, or representing “the integrity of the sport”. Video games don’t really have a similar phrase, but the beauty of it is they don’t need one. Because in a simpler time, we just called this gaming. In a more complex age, that’s thankfully all this still is.

I was worried this would happen. As the end of Season One drew to a close, I had a goal in mind: I wanted to get gold rating. There wasn’t really a personal reason, either. There was a reward; a reward that I wouldn’t use very much, but still, it was something I could point to and say, “I got that because I did X.”

It was a grind, too. I had to play a lot of games to hit gold. The grind pretty much killed any desire I had to play Lee Sin beyond the finish. I got incredibly close to the 1520 mark and then dropped ELO several times. But still, it was a goal. It was something to shoot for. It was a lot of fun.

Fast forward six weeks or so and I’m having a little trouble enjoying the game like I used to. There aren’t any in-game goals for me to strive for. I could try to rank up my solo queue ELO, but to what end? More ranking up? Not exactly a compelling sales pitch.

I know League can’t always be my number one game, but I do think there’s a lot more to be done to keep veteran players interested in the game. The Jarvan skin was a great idea – why not produce more skins that could be tied to certain achievements. Win 250/500/1000 ranked games, get a cool skin. Play 10 ranked games, get a one-time, one-day IP boost. These kind of things don’t cost a lot of money to put into the game and encourage more players to try more things. My assumption, which I suppose could be totally wrong, is that the more time players spend enjoying games, the more likely they are to spend on content.

Even if that assumption can’t be backed by data, it certainly breeds goodwill with the playerbase. Why not reward players for spending time with the game?

What are your thoughts? Are you still going strong with LoL or are other games starting to steal your attention. Has Dominion been enough to keep you coming back?

As the end of Season One approaches, players have been scrambling to rank up for rewards. I’ve been in the mix myself, finally pushing through and securing gold late last night. It was challenging, but that also made it fun, and as a result I’m going to get some rewards. The funny thing, for me anyway, is that I don’t care much about the rewards. I’m not a Jarvan player. I don’t post on the forums much, if at all, but the simple fact that there is a reward associated with a tangible goal made the journey toward that goal a lot more compelling.

There was also an interesting side effect, which is where the whole “importance of achievements” thing comes in. As my rating edged closer to the 1520 mark for gold status, players were more helpful and level-headed. Granted, this is some circumstantial evidence, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the attitude adjustment is due to the fact that players have a common goal beyond just winning.

It’s rare that I play with people who don’t want to win, but there’s really very little incentive to winning beyond, well, just winning. The ELO grind really didn’t mean anything. Players at every ELO rank complain that the players in that bracket are noobs and trolls. There’s also the fact that ELO is an endless grind. I can hit 1800 but what then? More games? Maybe make it to 1900? Maybe fall back down to 1600? There is no tangible reward other than bragging rights to make the ELO grind interesting.

This Season One reward is nothing more than an achievement system, and for me it worked pretty well. I know there are still a lot of players struggling with ELO hell, but let me reiterate this – getting out of ELO hell won’t make your games that much better. There will still be trolls. There will still be feeders. There will still be games you just can’t carry. I don’t think you’ll see a real shift in player attitude until Riot gives us something more than just a win and a ranking to worry about.

It’s done, folks – I now have wins with 76/76 champions in ranked games, the vast majority of which came in 5v5. In fact, all 11 of the champions I had remaining when I started attempting this achieved victory on Summoner’s Rift. Exciting stuff. You can see my top 10 ranked champions in the image below.

Ryze was the holdout champion, and in all honesty I thought I might be stuck on him for a week. He’s a tough champ to play against tanky teams because after a certain point he just stops scaling all together and you’re stuck with a defensive build against a bunch guys who can soak everything you throw at them. After six attempts, though, I managed to pull a win (went godlike in that game, no less). I think it was really our Eve that pulled us through. She did a great job ganking lanes early and keeping their Vayne down.

This was a really enjoyable challenge. It makes me wish Riot would get serious about getting some achievements into the game. Achievements are a tough thing for a MOBA because it can encourage some unconventional and sloppy play from players who should probably be learning the game, but it could be very cool to tie some kind of IP bonuses to achievements. At the very least it could encourage champion diversity from more players, which I think would be a great thing.

I often find myself short on things to do in League of Legends. I like a ton of champions so I’m constantly switching things up, trying new builds, playing silly comps. Even that gets old eventually, which is why I’d really like to see Riot flesh out its statistics sometime, oh, in the next millenium. In the meantime, I’m working with what I’ve got, which unfortunately means ranked stats.

Even the ranked stat system is pretty slim in terms of its usefulness. I still check up on my different champions here and there, though. For instance, I recently started loving Veigar, so I’ve been pulling him into ranked on occasion. I’m currently at an 80 percent win rate (4/5) with a KDA ratio of 5.8:1.

There is one stat I would really like to round out, for no reason other than I think it would be cool. I currently have ranked wins with 65 of the 75 champions in play. My hope is to get to 75, though that likely won’t happen before next week (especially if my games keep going the way they have been), so it will probably have to be 76/76 at the earliest. The current list of champions I have yet to win with is as follows:

Alistar
Eve (really thought I did this but apparently not)
Jarvan
Karma
Karthus
Lee Sin
Maokai
Rumble
Ryze
Soraka

It’s not a bad mix of champions, though they are mostly my least favorites. I like Ryze, but he doesn’t fit a lot of comps very well. Rumble, Jarvan, Karma, Maokai, Lee Sin, and Soraka are all champions I just flat out don’t enjoy playing, which leaves me Eve, Alistar, and Karthus. I thought I had an Alistar win coming today but my team just fell apart. Our Kassadin was 0-11 and yet blaming the rest of the team.

I know a lot of you guys don’t play ranked. For those that do, how many champs have you won with?