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Well Steve and Trapper from 360voice officially announced the big thing they were working on so diligently lately, and its looking pretty cool.  You can now create and join gamerscore challenges.  Remember the Old Spice Challenge from Microsoft?  Well its that, but with a twist (and the same sponsor to boot).

Currently in an open beta format in which you simply play to be considered the winner of the challenge - but they have mentioned in future there will be a prize structure in place for some of these user created challenges. 

 Near the tail end of their Alpha phase of this project I was added as a tester - I played a few challenges and for the most part lost - but it was fun in any event.  Keeping with the blogging format, the system generates a blog entry recapping the gaming done by all attendees, and you also have the ability to talk smack to the other members of the challenge while its going on.

Another popular thing on the voice blogs are the badges, which they added some new ones based on challenges as well, so head on over and check what they have brewing.

http://blog.360voice.com/2007/11/old-spice-exper.html

 Also, it hasn’t been officially announced, but Trapper said it was OK to talk about so here goes.  Next weekend (Nov 16th) Trapper and Steve are having another 360voice Code Weekend, and I was invited to attend!  So it will be pretty cool to meet the boys in person, get some gaming, get some drinks, write some code together and discuss the future and ways that we can work together for the future!  Can’t Wait!

Well one of our great members over at 3fs posted that the codes needed for the Xbox rewards prizes are now on your rewards page (this is for Contra, the MP’s, and the gamerpics - if you won Fuzion Frenzy and the shirt, at some point they are going to mail it to you. Thanks Kanone.

I just completed the Old spice Rewards Challenge.

apparently your winning status isnt confirmed until the end of the contest - so I guess I have to wait around until april to get my Contra and MP - and find out if I completed it quick enough to get the more rare (the shirt and fuzion frenzy 2) prizes.

First of all it looks like the original link xbox.com/rewards returns you to an error page. If you want to access the rewards system try This Link, it seems to work for me.

Since there were so many problems with the sign up process, and the site performance Microsoft has decided to extend the time in which you have to obtain the required amount of points by a few days, and apparently have increased the number of prizes they will be giving out - sounds great to me!

They have added a gamercard system that you can use to promote / gloat your rewards status - I am guessing the bottom area is to list the rewards you have obtained or something like that.

I currently need 385 points to obtain the level 3 challenge! I don’t have any games on hand thats going to make getting there extremely easy - but I think I might be able to complete the challenge today. I actually have NBA Live 06, which is known for gaining gamerscore without much (if any) work, but the copy i got from the rental wont even load on my xbox - and with the current weather exchanging it is out of the question.

Also for the record, if you click the finish button and you are not in fact finished it will simply let you know that like so:

Well the sign up process was down right horrible, not that this wasnt somewhat expected but you would hope a company like Microsoft would be prepared for the type of load a contest like this can create. In any event after reading a bunch of different posts on how to get signed into the site I was finally able to do so.

Then I went off gaming, gaining a total of 150 points, and I had made 10 points before finishing registration. Of course I have no clue if any of those points are valid because I found out this morning you actualy had to click a Join button to be in the challenge, but the contest states raise your points 1,500 from 2/12/07 00:00:00, so do i have 160, or 150, or 0 points all ready gained into the contest?

The site doesnt seem to show how many points you have gained, and it actually has a “I am finished” button to click, which I can click - clearly I havent met the required points though - so in fear of screwing up my chances I haven’t clicked it to see what it does.

Finally I have seen a bunch of people talking about others using game saves, I just hope that they actually catch and remove these guys from the contest - rumor has it there are only 2,500 copies of Fuzion Frenzy 2 up for grabs this time around. Even without the game save cheaters I probably won’t be one of the first 2,500 but they really shouldn’t be rewarded for simply downloading a save game.