I AM a midnight voyeur. But it's not what you are thinking.
Not the type that stares out of the window in the middle of the night, through high-powered goggles, searching for live porn action.
My time is spent flipping through the profiles of my friends on Xbox LIVE – the online part of the Xbox 360 game console, which among other things, lets me connect to my friends and challenge them to virtual death matches.
And this I usually do at the stroke of 12, which is when I get my free time in my daily busy working schedule.
What I am looking for? Xbox Achievement points.
Xbox Achievement points are points that gamers earn when they complete certain parts or tasks in the game they are playing, like finishing a mission in the single-player campaign or finding 50 hidden objects in the game.
Each game can have a maximum of 1,000 points but to get all that requires a lot of hard work and play time.
Playing a game normally and finishing it on a single play through will usually net you about 300-500 of the total points.
But to get it all, you often have to complete the game again in the hard and hardest game modes. Every game requires you to do different things, and some games requires more effort to get the points.
So why am I so hung up about these points? It is all about street cred.
The points you earn from each game are added up and whenever someone looks at your gamer profile, your total "gamerscore" is displayed right next to your name and profile picture.
My score is just over 10,000 points, a decent score but not high enough to be among the stars.
There are many hard-core gamers out there with over 30,000 points and one guy I know has hit a crazy 50,000.
I can also drill down into my friends' individual gamerscore and see exactly which games they played and how many achievement points they accumulated from each game.
It tells me a lot also about the type of games they like to play and the type of person they are.
My friend Ben for instance is a jock. Not only does this ex-rugby captain – who gave it up after his third concussion - have to ice his leg after his Sunday basketball matches with other alpha males, he gets uninterrupted play time while soothing his leg since he cannot move around with an ice pack. He plays all the Fifa soccer, NBA Live and Forza racing games.
My colleague Sherwin is a huge comics fanboy and karaoke crooner. He has very high scores in games like Batman, Spiderman and Wolverine as well as music games like Lips. He obviously is not into sports since I do not see a single racing, soccer or basketball game in his list. Chances are, he doesn't spend much leisure time on sports in real life.
Whenever I add a new friend to my Xbox LIVE community, first thing I do is check out his gamerscore and do a side-by-side comparison of our individual scores in different games.
As for myself, I am at heart an adventure and role-playing game (RPG) fan. Sword and sorcery, games that let you level up and gain new powers and skills, games that lets me explore virtual worlds, are all my cup of tea. I work hard to maximise my points in this genre, so I can be respected by other gamers as a serious RPG man.
But I will play any game, even third-rate shooters and failures with broken storylines – so long as they will net me easy Achievement points.
So that I will look good when other gamers check me out too.
Like I said, it's all about street cred, even in the virtual world.