42 Ways To Improve Videogames

We all love the games industry. Over the years it has provided us with thousands of hours of joy, excitement, fun and wonder. Unfortunately, it also produces more than its fair share of boredom, rage and frustration too, and we're often all too ready to make our voices heard on the subject.

However, maybe we're being a little harsh. Maybe it isn't as easy as it looks. If you actually had the ability and opportunity to improve the games industry, what exactly would you do? It wasn't until I sat down and started to think about it that I realized it may not be so easy after all. In fact, it'd be an absolute nightmare...

1. Give Jeff Minter £10 million and 2 years to make whatever the hell he wants. I only insist that it has llamas in it. That may, however, be a given.
2. Shoot all motion-control gimmickry into outer space.
3. Lock David Braben in a room until he agrees to make a new Elite.
4. Condemn any game with a 'gangsta' theme to death by fire. Even those made by Rockstar. It has gotten tiresome and I have my flame-thrower at the ready.
5. Mindless gore is really not "mature", and marketing such a game directly at those too young to play it simply panders to all the worst stereotypes about the gaming scene. I'm looking at you, Mortal Kombat...
6. Tattoo 'I must not open my mouth before thinking or making sure that what I've promised is feasible or, indeed, technically possible' on Peter Molyneux's head.
7. Attach a device to Hideo Kojima that mildly electrocutes him every time he even thinks the word 'cutscene'. 
8.  A new R-Type please. The word 'Final' on the last game was almost too much to bear.
9. More games that feature dragons. You can never have too many giant, leathery-winged, napalm-breathing beasties.
10. The return of Psygnosis. A bright light in the homogenous visual murk of modern games, that's what they were. Owls that fire plasma death from their beaks? Oh, go on then...
11. A mature, serious and informative videogames TV show. On a terrestrial channel. At a time when people might actually see it. Think 'Top Gear', but with games. Preferably with presenters that know what they are talking about. And no Dominik Diamond. Never Dominik Diamond.
12. Gaming cafés. Why don't we have them? With the deminse of the arcade, we could really do with somewhere to hang out playing games while drinking overpriced steamed milk. Shopping with the wife would never be dull again. Well, I say never, such cafés may well end up just running World of Warcraft, in which case... Yuck.
13. Speaking of arcades, I'd like them back please. I miss them. And if they could all be linked worldwide so I can play the Tokyo masters at Virtua Fighter (and get unceremoniously hammered), that'd be great too.
14. A proper return to 2D art-styles would be wonderful. Just imagine how glorious games would look in full HD with sumptuous hand-drawn visuals. LIVE Arcade is a step in the right direction and there's certainly more 2D loveliness being released, but I want to see more full-price 2D games. C'mon, developers, get brave.
15. I love orchestral soundtracks, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. From Final Fantasy to Fable and Halo, they only ever improve the atmosphere. So why am I forced to listen to dire 'urban' and 'nu-metal' tunes all the time? WHY?
16. Enough with the war games already. Seriously, they're all just blurring into one now.
17. Comedy. It can be done well - see Grim Fandango, Sam & Max, Psychonauts - and really brings life to a title, yet it's something that still eludes most developers.
18. Get rid of all those adolescent gaming magazines. You know the ones, they usually have the word "official" in the title...
19. Mature, positive and sensibly dressed female leads. The last one I can think of is... er... um... probably Jade from Beyond Good & Evil. That was a long time ago. The rest fall firmly into the "three triangles of cloth stretched across an impossibly proportioned figure and held together with string" category. Which is embarassing, frankly.
20. As games become a more accepted form of adult entertainment, we desperately need a properly enforced rating system. Especially in the USA.
21. Region free gaming for all. Unless there's a whole bucket load of price-fixing going on, I don't see how it matters where I buy my games from, so long as I do buy them.
    
22. Motorbikes. They're perfect gaming fodder - super fast and super dangerous. So why are most motorbike games as dry as a week-old cream cracker lying in the Gobi? I want the exhilaration of screaming around a corner on the ragged edge, an inch from disaster, damn it. The excitement of NFS: Hot Pursuit but with superbikes? I'll take two please.
23. No more post-apocalyptic settings. Seriously, guys, how many times can the world end?
24. Wipeout on the 360. I know it'll never happen, but I want Wipeout's glorious gameplay and visual excellence, married with Microsoft's wonderful LIVE service. Why can't the world be the way I want it?
25. Pet dogs in games. It was the one thing I loved above all others in Fable 2 and 3. Just don't kill them at the end of the game after I've spent the best part of 30 hours plus building a relationship with them. It hurts me in my heart-place. (Yes, yes, I'm a big girl.)
26. Electric shocks to smack-talking morons on LIVE. Failing that, the ability to drop a grand piano on their house.
27. Joysticks. Bring back joysticks.
28. Sensibly priced games and consoles, please. More than £40 and £250 respectively is not sensible in the current economic climate.
29. How about some new IPs, eh? The thought of playing FIFA 2035 fills me with cold, clammy horror.
30. Limit DLC content to no more than £5, and make it so that no game may have more than five DLC packs. Otherwise, at the rate things are going, Microsoft will own my house, my wife and my kidneys.
31. The ability to limit the age range of those I play against online. If I don't want to play against excitable 12 year olds, I shouldn't have to.
32. How about longer, more in-depth single-player modes? We don't all want to spend the majority of our gaming time online, y'know...
33. I hate constantly having to replay the same sections again and again when I fail miserably (granted, this is my own fault, but it still rankles). Why can't the console just remember exactly where I was when I switch it off, hmm?
34. Send all the PR people away in a big rocket. A big rocket aimed at the sun.
35. Beautifully rendered, preferably hand-painted, boxart would be nice. Yes, it would.See Turrican 2's wondrous boxart for a prime example of what we're missing these days.
36. Make Street Fighter 5 playable for those of us that don't have the reactions of a Red Bull fuelled meercat in a cage full of cobras.
37. Virtual Reality that doesn't induce migraine and vomiting. It was always a great idea, if only someone could get it to work.
38. More monkeys in games. There can never be enough monkeys in games. Give them stetsons too and I'll really be over the moon. Possibly over Jupiter.
39. Syndicate. Online. Just imagine storming your competitor's carefully crafted city, shotguns blazing, and eliminating all his top scientists. KLAT-CHAKA-BOOOOM. Gaming bliss. Make it happen, Molyneux.
40. Unbreakable rubber joypads. I dread to think how many I've smashed against the wall, floor or my brother in anger over the years. Curse you Ninja Gaiden!
41. Steel Battalion's stupendous and ridiculously overblown controller led the way, others have not followed (although Nintendo have had a darn good try). I demand more pointlessly epic peripherals with which to clutter my living room!
42. This one will never happen, but I can always hope: a single format please. I'd love there to be a gaming equivalent of the CD – a simple format that will work on any make of console and means I don't have to own multiple consoles. I don't have to have separate stereo systems to listen to Metallica and Riverside (look them up, they're amazing), but I need separate systems to play a Mario and Halo. This annoys.

So what do you think? Are these good suggestions? Are they bad? What glaringly obvious problem have I failed to address? Let me know...