Opinion: New Years Resolution For The Gamers- Be Kind

If you're looking for a new years resolution, here's one for the gamers: be kind. Despite some great games coming out this year, it's hard to see 2024 as being anything other than one of its most toxic. Almost every week was highlighted by a persistent theme: a thirst for conflict, usually made up and self-victimizing.

Gamers ate better this year than ever before- yet why are the people who play them constantly so miserable?

Get Out Of The Negativity Spiral

This year has seen a lot of, well, drama. You'd think a year full of absolute bangers would be a cause for celebration. And yet, all I've seen is complaining. No, not complaining, whining.

Stellar Blade is an amazing triumph of gaming: a more anime-aesthetic Sekiro game, as you do sick parries against monsters with your own dress-up darling. Yet, what is its legacy? A bunch of whiny chuds thinking that it's some ideological battleground, showing that a few pixels of underboob have somehow "defeated" an enemy that exists entirely in their heads.

It's not just Stellar Blade- Black Myth Wukong is an absolute marvel of the gaming industry. A brand new IP built on a beloved cultural cornerstone, that went from vertical slice you'd write off for being fake to Game of the Year-worthy action title.

Everyone who took a chance on Black Myth Wukong, be it the developers or even the players who'd never even heard of Journey to the West, should feel proud of what we got. But what is its niche in the internet? Yet another discussion around the culture war, which retains all the valor and glory of that time Napoleon almost froze to death invading Russia.

Is there a solution for this kind of pathetic culture whine? Yeah, it's called going outside and touching grass. I mean it- take in something from the world around you that doesn't come out of a screen and realize just how stupid you look crying about anything in the same medium that gave us Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Connect with people outside of social media- meet the kind of people you'd actually have to make an effort to see, then realize what kind of a doom spiral social media is. Once you do, you'll suddenly start finding the joy in things, I promise.

Learn To Fall In Love With Games Again

Are games starting to feel samey to you? Try something new! From visual novels to Strategy games, learn to look for new ways to enjoy things, rather than listening to the gospel of a man who smells of garbage and dead rat telling you that you should be crying about women being in games.

In fact, here's one more resolution for you: actually look into the people making these games. Not for dunks or agendas, but to learn to love the art of making games itself. Dark Souls' co-op system was born from a desire to see strangers help each other out of the goodness of their own hearts. Mouthwashing, from a desire for people to realize they're just as close to being an asshole as the biggest monsters in their own life stories. If you even learn to make your own games, you might walk away from this as more than someone kicking a vending machine because they think their Pepsi came out woke.

Why did you start gaming in the first place? Because it was a portal to the new and exciting. You could watch pixelated demons explode into gore or collect Wumpa fruits. If you put the claws away for even a second, you might realize how lucky we are to live in a time with this much art around us.

I'm not saying that means we need to completely tune out any kind of bad news: the industry has a whole lot of change it's due for, like protecting the very people who both make your favorite games then have to read your stupid opinions of it when your character doesn't have enough eyeshadow. But if you go into games looking for something to like, I promise you you're more likely to find it.

So that's my ask. In 2025, let's drop the discourse. Let's drop the hot takes, and definitely stop with the harassment campaigns. Act like you actually care about videogames by either focusing on the ones you actually like, or making sure the people behind them are taken care of. Life sucks plenty as is, the last thing you need is to be screaming about the last of the painkillers being woke.