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" Since 2005, Ray Cox has spent up to 20 hours a day for months at a time playing video games. His goal? Set the Xbox Live record of 1 million Gamerscore points, of which each individual game has up to 1,000. In the early morning hours of March 13, the 31-year-old Knoxville resident finally broke the record playing the first-person shooter Titanfall, with his longtime girlfriend at his side. Now, after catching up on some must needed sleep, Cox spoke with Esquire to talk about gamer stereotypes, why he attempted this challenge, what&amp;#039;s next, and how he still had time to make money, stay in shape, and have a girlfriend.  ESQUIRE.COM: Can you explain what Gamerscore points are and what getting them entails?  RAY COX: It&amp;#039;s pretty much a game within a game. Every game has achievements. Some games have more than others. There are the downloadable ones, Xbox Live Arcade Games, only have up to 200 points. The retail games, those have 1000 Gamerscore, The achievement points would be anything from &amp;quot;complete the game&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;complete the game five times&amp;quot; &amp;quot;500 headshots,&amp;quot; whatever. Some games can literally take thousands of hours, and you&amp;#039;ve got games on the lower end, easy ones you can do in 15 minutes. The standard is probably 20, 30, 40 hours per thousands points. ESQ: How long ago did you start this record attempt? RC: It was actually back in 2005. November 22nd 2005, to be exact, when the Xbox 360 launched. That&amp;#039;s when I got my first Gamerscore points. I wasn&amp;#039;t gunning for a million out the gate. Then I really got into it. I was the first to 100,000 points \u2013 where do I go from there? Then I had the idea, I&amp;#039;m gonna go for a million and that&amp;#039;s where I will end it. ESQ: What was it like when you got that millionth point?  RC: The day I knew I was going to hit the million, I lost it a little bit because all my emotions came out. I had a little moment with my girlfriend before I got on Twitch.tv, which is where I live-streamed it for people to watch. It was such a relief. I was pretty tired at that point because I had been trying for multiple days. I went to Austin, Texas with Microsoft to try to break a million at their launch event for Titanfall and I wasn&amp;#039;t able to. I came back home and that&amp;#039;s when I was able to do it. It was a great feeling. It&amp;#039;s hard to describe. So much was put into that.  ESQ: How did you celebrate? RC: I got some sleep. Actually, I didn&amp;#039;t sleep the first couple nights because I was still kind of full of adrenaline, but, man, the last couple nights, I slept really good. It&amp;#039;s like &amp;quot;holy crap,&amp;quot; when you&amp;#039;re sleeping three and four hours a night and then you get seven hours of sleep. ESQ: Were you alone when it happened? RC: No, my longtime girlfriend was actually in the Twitch.tv chat room moderating things. She stayed up pretty late. She had to get up in like two hours. She was about to kill me. She wanted me to get it done. I think I did it about 2:30 a.m. ET.  ESQ: Did she give you shit about the goal? RC: Oh, hell yeah! All the time. I remember the first time I told her I was going to do it. She gave me that look like, &amp;quot;What? Really?!&amp;quot;  ESQ: How did your family and friends react to what you were doing?  RC: [Laughs] My dad was very understanding with it. He would get up every morning and write down my score on a legal pad for years. He was definitely into it.  ESQ: How do you have time to make a living while you&amp;#039;re doing this?  RC: That&amp;#039;s the weird thing about this. I&amp;#039;ve seen money but I&amp;#039;ve been so focused on doing what I&amp;#039;ve been doing that I really haven&amp;#039;t been able to explore other avenues. I&amp;#039;ve had an endorsement deal and that was fine. It didn&amp;#039;t lead to a ton of money. I don&amp;#039;t know how this leads to money. ESQ: When you&amp;#039;re playing this many hours a day, how much time did you take for a break to walk around or get outside? RC: Well, I&amp;#039;m actually in really, really good shape. I&amp;#039;ll sit here and do Insanity for like an hour. You can do that from the Xbox. Xbox fitness, that&amp;#039;ll actually give you achievements. I couldn&amp;#039;t just sit there for 20 hours. That would probably kill me.  ESQ: Did you think about quitting at any point?  RC: Multiple times. I was just so tired. Going on 600,000, it was getting pretty tough because the more Gamerscore you get, the harder it is to get more because you&amp;#039;ve already played through the easier games. There were times I took some breaks. I went on a trip to Hawaii, I went out to a New York event with Xbox. There were some times when I&amp;#039;d take a week off and do nothing, which was cool, like maybe once a year. That rejuvenated me.  ESQ: Is your girlfriend a gamer too? RC: When we first me she wasn&amp;#039;t playing, but I taught her how to play Halo. She played a little bit here and there when she first started, but recently she&amp;#039;s been so busy with school. She&amp;#039;s in dental hygiene school, so it&amp;#039;s every day, always at school, always doing homework. It&amp;#039;s kind of ridiculous. ESQ: What got you into gaming originally? What made you fall in love with it? RC: My dad had an Atari when I was a little boy, maybe 1, 2, 3, or something. It was always out on the floor, so I guess I just started playing on the joystick. When I played Super Mario Brothers, I was like 4 or 5, and I beat Mario. I saved the Princess \u2013 that was the goal then, not Gamerscore. I told my mom I beat the game and she said, &amp;quot;I beat it yesterday.&amp;quot; It kind of crushed me. So that might have been something that made me think, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t be second.&amp;quot;  ESQ: How much money do you think you spent on games? RC: Quite a bit. [Laughs] There&amp;#039;s no way I can estimate how much because you&amp;#039;re talking Xbox Live Arcade Games and retail games. I did use Gamefly, so I got a through rental, but most of the games that I played for 40, 50 hours, I definitely went out and bought.  ESQ: There are always going to be people who have certain stereotypes about gamers. Have you been subjected to them? RC: Definitely. You&amp;#039;ll get &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re fat.&amp;quot; Well, I&amp;#039;m not. I&amp;#039;m in really good shape. You&amp;#039;ll get, &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re a shut-in,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re weird,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re dorky.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;m any of that stuff. Nobody has ever told me that in my life. I just like games. That&amp;#039;s my hobby. Even some of the Microsoft people were putting a stereotype on me. One guy said he was surprised that I was normal.  ESQ: How did you react?  RC: I thought it was funny. I laughed at him and asked, &amp;quot;Well, what&amp;#039;s normal?&amp;quot; It wasn&amp;#039;t a big deal. I assumed that would probably be something people would say. It was funny, though. To break that stereotype would be awesome.  ESQ: You&amp;#039;ve joked about going for 2 million points, but what really is next for you? RC: I&amp;#039;m still going to keep playing games and probably pursue this as more of a career. Why can&amp;#039;t I do it at the end of the day, if I put all my dedication into trying something like that?  ESQ: Do you have any other career options in mind? RC: I&amp;#039;m going to be doing something in gaming, man. I&amp;#039;ll just burn all the bridges so I can&amp;#039;t do anything else. If you burn all the bridges, you&amp;#039;ve only got one option, so hopefully this works. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/news/a28037/more-xbox-than-anybody-else/>