I bought an on Monday from a shop, which was obviously a bit of a surprise considering current shortages.

I went into town on the off chance one might be in stock, baby strapped to my chest in a carry sling, a six month old cute and gurgling staff with which to part the red, dead sea of dull-eyed sales shoppers. There was a scrawled sign in the window of Game whispering that 360s were back in stock. I queued for quarter of an hour behind thirty-odd fidgeting 10 year olds clutching pre-owned GBA games to play on their Christmas Micros.

Waiting in line I got increasingly annoyed thinking they would be all sold out by the time we managed to actually face the spotty assistant at the checkout. I began planning a spit-flecking tirade in which I demanded to see the manager, bitterly chided his disgraceful sales practise of putting a sign like that up on the window just to con people into their shop when he clearly didn’t have any machines in stock anyway and, besides, I’d been standing here for twenty minutes and, anyway, THINK OF THE BABY YOU JOYLESS SCUM. All before storming off never to visit their rubbish shop again.

But they did have them in stock after all so I walked out with a Premium pack and a surplus of saliva.

No games though because, at the checkout, I decided there really weren’t any launch titles that were 1. Good 2. Good enough to warrant the shameful £49.99 price tag and 1. Good. When I got outside I realised that was probably a little silly of me and maybe Project Gotham Racing 3 wouldn’t be too bad after all. So I went to Gamestation, because I clearly wasn’t going to spend any more money at a shop that NEARLY CONNED ME INTO NOT BUYING A 360 WITH THEIR NEARLY FALSE ADVERTISING.

It’s crashed three times on me so far but I’m not going to return it for replacement just yet – not until they start making units that work properly, like, when technology actually catches up. Anyway, comfortably the most interesting part of the experience so far has been Microsoft’s implementation of in-game achievements. Milestones and goals have been written into each and every game which, when completed, earn you status points. Next to your gamertag sits the number of points you’ve earned in your 360 videogame career and you can compare your stats to those of your friends or indeed, the rest of the world.

Now it’s an empty kind of status really, I know. Real kudos is being 12 and playing at the seaside arcade and beating a bigger kid in front of a delighting, cheering, envious crowd.

But, grasping at numbers in virtual space is completely different. It’s farming for your worth; being strong-armed into unlocking largely meaningless achievements in your games. Sure, there is an element of skill attached to gaining these achievements and yes, there is a grain of truth in the assumption that the higher your gamer score the better a player you are – but it’s just as much to do with time investment as any innate ability. Spend more time playing 360 games than doing other things and your score as a 360 gamer increases.

Nevertheless, over the last few days I’ve found it compulsive. I’ve been suckered completely into poring over what needs to be done to unlock the next achievement in this area or that. And, as with anything that grabs my attention and wins my time, it’s got me wondering why.

On the plus side this development in gaming’s evolution compels us to more fully play our games, diligently eking out more value from their mostly overpriced, underdeveloped worlds. But, negatively, it also gets you chasing goals that no-one really cares about for no real, tangible benefit other than a mite of peer respect and a fleeting moment of self-satisfaction followed quickly by the creeping sense of guilt that you spent a few thousand of your heart’s depleting beats chasing nothing for no reason other than to look good in front of faceless people who weren’t looking anyway.

So it’s empty competition for the most part. In fact, it makes playing games more like a job than recreation: you have targets you need to hit and achievements by which you are assessed. How good are you at having fun? Marks out of ten.

It’s subtly transforming our leisure time that bit closer to the framework of the workplace.

Writing about games for money has a lot to do with making your passion your job; earning a living from going that little bit furthur doing something you’d probably be doing anyway. If you’re wired with a critical eye, unbiased mind and lucid tongue, then it’s a combination that can mostly work – providing you don’t want to get rich.

So as someone for whom the distinctions between leisure time and work time are peculiarly blurry, it got me thinking. Is there any way to turn the time required to become a successful gamer with 360 acheivements under belt into any kind of monetary recoupment?

I’m sure Microsoft will be issuing various challenges over 360 to earn prize money through various competitions in the future so that reailty is probably not very far away. The concept of career gamer might be an embryonic one in the West, particularly outside of the PC gaming arena, but elsewhere, it’s far from ficiton. . The segments on career gamers is like a flash-forward to an alien world where the train of thought you’ve been riding the last three minutes has derailed and taken off into a flight of fancy. Expect it’s real and it’s happening today on the other side of the world.

Have a read through his piece and imagine. This is where the acheivement-based template of Microsoft’s 360 online expereince is pointing: an endgame of cameras, stardom, tears, big-baangs, cathode-drenched deaths and the slow, lingering strangulation of the offline videogame market at the hands of online publishers. Perhaps.