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Xbox Live Gamertag Switch Causes Nickname Anguish
Thanks to TeamXbox for its story discussing issues requiring some Xbox Live players to switch their GamerTag name IDs, since, according to Microsoft: "There are many names on the Xbox Live service that are extremely similar to other Gamertags (in most cases differentiated by only a single space.)" Some gamers who have had the same nickname for almost 2 years are understandably upset, though Microsoft is offering "a free game... [and] 1 year subscription to Xbox Live" by way of compensation. An official Microsoft spokesperson on the Xbox.com messageboards indicated: "This problem has nothing to do with the way we code...it's what we need to do to normalize data as we connect to other partners that need to work w/ [Xbox] Live... We are very upset that we had to do this" - some commenters claim (though it's not been specifically stated) that EA's upcoming Xbox Live debut has helped precipitate the name switch.
Who has to change names? Gamers that already have the names? Or the newer gamers that have ones similar to the older ones? Some gamers who have had the same nickname for almost 2 years are understandably upset leads me to believe that the gamers who've had their tags for the longer period of time are the ones getting boned.
Or it could mean that MasterChief has had his nickname for almost two years +(20 seconds). Suck it up, m4sterche1f.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
reading the forum postings in the 2nd link, it sounds like both parties with similar name are being forced to change. lots of people complaining about identical names with and without spaces being hit (e.g., fire duck & fireduck); most of the complainers seem to have been beta testers from the beginning of the xbl service. so it's understandable they'd be annoyed.
Actually, you could have users 23098203, 20934865, 94832029, and 12893573 all share the exact same nick. You wouldn't need to differentiate between "FragBastard" and "Frag_Bastard". You wouldn't need to exclude spaces from names, either. Imagine that... you could actually name yourself "Frag Bastard" and not fear the total breakdown of XBox Live's user database when the game puts your name up in lights.
/. geeks) bother with it. It's a "who cares" attitude, and I hate it with a passion.
It's called good design, and far too few programmers (yes, even