The game industry's New Year resolutions

1: I will give up saying the word "innovation" and its variants in the new year. I recognize that the word has lost all meaning now and that being "innovative" does not automatically get me a blowjob from the gaming press.

2: If I have a brand-new IP that is generating some real cult interest, I will actually market it properly instead of quietly squirting it onto store shelves and then scratching my head in confusion when it doesn't sell and can't get a sequel. 

3: I will stop using the Unreal Engine if I have no idea how to make my games look good with it. 

4: I will stop making the hero of every RPG a 16-year-old boy in a conflicted love triangle who learns the truth about himself and the nature of friendship as he quests to save the world from an ambiguously camp male fashion model.

5: I will stop bitching if I get a review score of less than 9.0 or higher. I will recognize that a score of 8.0 is actually really good and that since reviews never greatly impact sales, I should stop contributing to one of the reasons why people don't feel they can trust them anymore.

6: I will stop putting out inferior Guitar Hero/Rock Band rip-offs with cheaply made plastic instruments that have no hope of going anywhere. I will wake up and realize that I am contributing to the saturation of the market and sending us ever closer to another videogame market crash. 

7: I promise to never send another press release that's formatted all wrong with massive text all over the place. Not only is it really hard to read, it's also a total pain in the ass for the poor blogger who has to reformat my crappy PR into something the readers will actually be able to look at without vomiting. 

8: I'll stop sending those annoying .mov movies too while I'm at it. Nobody cares how trendy I am. 

9: I will realize that I sound like a self-parody if I say my game is "dark and gritty." I promise that if I ever say those words again, I will use them ironically, since that's the only context that doesn't make me look like a prick.

10: I will be confident when promoting my game, but I will not be arrogant. I will not make wild claims about the capabilities of my game, I will not insinuate that people "don't get" it if they hate it, and I most certainly will not enter into bets with online message boards over the game's success.

11: I will stop making lazy DLC with which to milk customers dry. I shall resist the temptation to charge five bucks for a pretend T-shirt. 

12: I will recognize that there are more colors than brown. 

13: I will stop stretching franchise plots out to three installments or more when the actual narrative is slim enough to fit into a single game.

14: I will stop assuming that including motion always results in a superior control scheme over traditional, button-oriented controls.

15: I will remain happy with the market demographic I already have and won't greedily switch my console's gears halfway through a generation because I want what other people have. 

16: I promise that in 2009 I won't spend all my R&D on a meaningless pet project that fails to appeal to anybody when I could have been making videogames the whole time.

17: I will not release a "limited collector's special edition" for a videogame that nobody knows anything about yet. I will save it for when I have a franchise that actually deserves such extravagance.  

18: I will be honest and admit that the character A.I. is about as revolutionary and advanced as in every other game -- not very much.

19: I will stop using High Definition as an excuse to use poorly designed, incredibly tiny text that doesn't even look good on a 50" LCD screen, let alone the millions of SDTVs that are still being used by gamers worldwide.

20: I promise to stop whining about used games as if trade-ins only affect the videogames industry and aren't another cog in the very same capitalist machine that lets me get away with half of the shit I get away with.

21: I will admit that "intuitive control" is not a special gameplay feature and is just a fancy term for a control scheme I've ripped off of another, probably better, game.

22: I promise to stop requiring QTE button mashing just to open a door. I recognize that it adds nothing to the gameplay and is just mindless busywork to make players think they're not bored. 

23: I will make more well-balanced games that are neither pathetically easy to attract so-called "causals" nor mindlessly hard just for the sake of being hard. I will actually employ some designing skill to create a game that is challenging but fair.

24: I pledge to stop relying on patches to complete my rushed videogame. 

25: I will stop patronizing the "casual" demographic as if they're all completely stupid. It might well be true, but LIPS commercials are still incredibly annoying.