Gamertag Database
Meet JFragment and SassyPants, a coupla 26-year-old Web developers and rock musicians (check out their band, Velocity Engine at www.velocityengine.net) from Whitinsville, Massachusetts. They are the masterminds behindGamertagdatabase.com, a supercool site for XboxLive gamers to meet, give feedback, and hang out. At this writing, GTDB has over 15,700 members—a number that increases by about 100 gamers a day.
That's JFragment on the far left and Sassypants next to him.
The band is Velocity Engine. Photo by Matt Myrdal
Back in the beta testing days, JFragment, who is Jay Johnson offline, noticed a lot of forum threads like "How old is everyone out there?" "Where are you from?" and "All those from Texas give a holler." It seemed to Jay that gamers wanted to be less anonymous. So in an effort to both purge the forums of redundant threads and create a place to build community, he spent an hour creating the first, very basic iteration of gamertagdatabase.com.
From these simple beginnings emerged the Web site that exists today. SassyPants, whose parents named him Chris Bloom, joined Jay's crusade as chief code monkey, and other friends and gamers volunteered to help out. Ram2600 is the SQL master on Staten Island, My Wife is the NYC graphics guru, Red Bandit is a code testing machine in Washington State, and MillMan and JerkyChew work their respective server and tech support magic from Massachusetts.
As for now, the site offers gamers a place to post a profile, find people in their area, and post feedback on other players. "We added feedback because of user requests," Jay says. "We had to take it down because it needed to be moderated." Now feedback is up and running again, but volunteers moderate the feedback to ensure there is no random name-calling or revenge feedback. Another cool feature is the Playing Style and Family Friendly Rating categories in the gamer profiles. This is a great way for people with similar playing styles and cursing tolerance levels to hook up.
What's next for Jay and Chris? Working at Web host hitcatcher.com, playing Xbox Live (Ghost Recon is where you're most likely to meet JFragment; SassyPants is more of aMotoGP man), preparing for the release next month of Velocity Engine's new CD, and putting together a top-secret site update (props to Gamertag andTristanSim) that Jay promises will rock your world. We asked Jay if he could give us a hint about the update. He said no. We said pretty please. So he gave us these cryptic yet tantalizing hints: "Nothing says 'community' like destruction on a massive scale. And if you thought we were stopping with the best feedback system on the planet, boy were you wrong."
So check out gamertagdatabase.com. It's a terrific site and a great example of the dedication and ingenuity of our Xbox Livegamers!
Bios
SassyPants (aka Chris Bloom)
Best Game: Master of Orion
Best Film: House Party 3
Best Album: Kill Switch Engage, Alive or Just Breathing
Cartoon Character He Is Most Like: Dilbert
Alternate Universe Gig: Surfer
Desired Superpower: Telekinesis
Theme Song: Mission Impossible
JFragment (aka Jay Johnson)
Best Game: Bond on N64
Best Film: A Beautiful Life
Best Album: Slayer, Seasons in the Abyss
Cartoon Character He Is Most Like: Ren
Alternate Universe Gig: Chris' bitch
Superpower: Mind reading
Theme Song: The Jetsons
