Hello yet again.  U360 had a chance to track down Gamerscoreblog celebrity and Online Community Manager, Tony Hynes for a quick Unscripted 360 Xbox Team Showcase.   

Your flight begins in 5, 4, 3, ……

For those who may not know, can you share a little bit about who you are and what you do as it pertains to the Xbox 360.

My name is Tony Hynes and I am the Online Community Manager for Xbox and Games for Windows.

How involved are you with maintaining the state of the online community?  Is it easy to manage with the good team of MVPs currently?

I’m involved on a daily basis with the online community.  I communicate with bloggers, fan site owners, forum posters and our Xbox MVPs constantly.  And when I’m not chatting with community via email, IM or phone, I’m playing with community members over Xbox Live. 

You stay quite busy with things including the Gamerscore blog.  How did that come to be?

It’s all about connecting with the community.  Having an active and vocal community for your product is great but there can be things posted that aren’t 100% accurate.  Gamerscoreblog was created to provide us (the Xbox Marketing and PR team) with a way to send out accurate information and official responses to the community on everything Xbox.

Well it’s going really well. Being so vocal and ‘available’ to the online community, what’s the strangest thing you’ve come across as a result of your position?

Well sometimes the ‘available’ part gets misrepresented.  I have been asked out on dates before…sorry ladies, I’m happily married. 

Someone in the GamerchiX program just cried.  I know I’m not the only one who’s had personal trouble with your Gamertag.  How do you pronounce it and how exactly did you come up with it?

It’s pronounced BASS-STEEL-YAWN.  It’s a character I created when I was 8 yrs old when I was introduced to D&D.  I had it since the first day Xbox Live was released…but since so many people in the community are having problems with the pronunciation, I’ve been thinking of holding a contest and letting the community create a new gamertag for me.  What do your readers think?

I’ll have to get something out to help with that then! Which 360 title are you currently logging too many hours on?

The title is called Xbox Live Arcade.  No seriously, it’s way too easy to jump into these arcade games.  Other than arcade, I did spend quite awhile playing Prey.  Beautiful game.

I have to get my hands on Prey. I know there’s an upcoming game that you just can’t wait to play.  Which one is it?

Easy…Gears of War!  This game is going to rock harder than a titanium hip dipped in diamond juice.  This game is Sick with a capital S.

I have no doubt it will kick major bootay. I noticed here recently you were celebrated for going over 10K Gamerscore.  Is there a personal rivalry going on with other Xbox staff?

We’ve got an internal Gamerscore leader board that I take a look at every morning.  Proud Pappa is my current rival.  Although John (my boss) is starting to catch me so I’ll need to pay attention to my rearview mirror a bit more.

The Gamerscore and Achievement system have both had their share of criticism.  What’s your opinion on both?

I think both are great!  The term “next-gen” is mostly used to describe graphics, but having a unified service that provides a way to measure gaming skill and accomplishments is “next gen” to me.  Previously you had to take a photo of your highscore on your TV screen to prove to your friends what you did, now anyone can look up your Gamerscore and Achievements online. 

What was the best Achievement moment for you?

Probably when I got the Researcher achievement in Jewel Quest.  I worked and worked at that game, and finally got it.  Also it was pretty cool to get the “Inner Circle” achievement for attending the Zero Hour launch event.

The Xbox 360 ushered in the next-generation, have you had that one moment in a game when you said to yourself…’wow, now that’s next-gen!’?

Aside from the unified service that I mentioned previously, I think that first time I had that wow factor was when I first played Kameo on my widescreen 61” Samsung DLP at home with 5.1 blaring.  Awesome graphics, awesome sound, awesome experience.  I think the next time was when I watched Ali KO Frazier in Fight Night 3. 

61″?  Nice. Are you planning on using the Vision Camera once it’s released?  

Yes, I’ll definitely be using Vision.  In fact, I’ll be trying it out in the online community before it launches, so if anyone wants to checkout my ugly mug in a game of Uno, they can send me a friends request.

Ok.  One game.  One shot.  You against Peter Moore.  Who wins and what game are you playing?

Depends on the game.  If it’s Madden, I’d win.  If it’s Fifa, he’d dominate.

I hope you post the end result if you two do engage in a dual.  Thanks Tony for stopping in!