Last night I somehow managed to spend a couple of hours playing Minesweeper under Windows 8! I know, right? But I succumbed to the gamification of gaming! The new Minesweeper has an ‘adventure mode’ that’s kind of fun, but it also has Daily Challenges. Beat the daily challenges to earn points towards monthly medals. OMG I need a Minesweeper medal, right? Of course I do. You can go back and do challenges you missed so I did them all from Nov 1 forward.

And then I noticed there were Xbox Live Achievements you could earn. I’m not usually a fan of all this stuff but I went in and got a quickie achievement for setting off a mine. Talk about padding my gamerscore!!

Now all told you can earn 50 points in Minesweeper but I wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg? Will the Windows 8 store wind up overflowing with casual games that come with Xbox Live Achievements?

And if so, is that going to annoy hardcore Xbox players? I mean when some testosterone poisoned young man in his early teens finds out his mom has a higher game score than he does, and all she plays is casual games while he’s out there on the front lines teabagging noobs in Call of Medal Warfare VIII, how’s that gonna make him feel?

Just to be clear, IF this even becomes a thing, I just find it all very amusing. I’m quite proud of my 5 point “Happens to Everybody” Minesweeper Achievement, though. Particularly since it’s an achievement for failing (setting off a mine by accident).