Meet the Reedz on Xbox Live

It’s always interesting to see how other people see themselves. Or want to be seen. Maybe it’s the latent social scientist training from decades gone by in graduate school. Who knows?

Giving them no specific directions besides “make an avatar for yourself”, I turned the family loose on the Xbox Live avatar creator… with interesting results.

Those of you who’ve met my family know that a couple of those bear little to no resemblance to the creator. Heh. Foex, my oldest son has many years to go before he can even dream of growing a beard… or pointy ears. I didn’t realize that the majority of my family picked camo pants until I tossed all the avatars up together. Interesting.

I have to “coerce” my wife and daughter to “hurry up” after watching them spend way more time trying on hairstyles, clothing and accessories than I was willing to give up on the Xbox 360. When I found them “shopping” among the hairstyles and jewelry, I drew the line… The boys and I were done in five minutes or less each. We’re not sure why the youngest zoomed to dark leisure suit plus sneakers, but he was the one who took the least amount of time “fiddling”. We weren’t able to get him to explain his choices to us.

It’ll be interesting to see how the kids’ avatars evolve over time. Mine? I want Gears of War 2 armor for mine. I want my COG armor!!

In other news, I broke down and bought Dead Space last night on the way home from the Halo 3 charity tournament for the Microsoft Giving Campaign and played all the way through Chapter 1 on normal. I’m likin’ it a lot!! It might replace Bioshock in my list of genre favorites. I tried to hold out for Gears of War 2, but... all the good reviews got the better of me. Definitely have to finish Dead Space before Gears arrives with my ceremonial commemorative Lancer. <insert obligatory chainsaw bayonet sound/>