This one’s been making the rounds lately (I first saw it on Game Girl Advance): a players’ manifesto on how to fix the gaming industry. A seriously entertaining read, here’s one of the less profane snippets:  (2014- Damion notes: updated to a new version of the article from 2007)

[P]romise me that you won’t play the same Madden commentary sound files on every fifth play. “Whoa, he looked like he was hit by a truck! A five-ton truck hauling a trailer!” Yes, you’ll hear that one six motherslapping times in one game of Madden ‘05. YOU HAVE A HARD DRIVE NOW, taking data from a 9 GB DVD. You have NO excuse to keep recycling the same mindless observations over and over and over again until we’re pointing at our television with a shaking finger and screaming “EAT ME, JOHN! JUST EAT MEEEEEEE!” as most of us do now.

Someone on Game Girl Advance pointed out that the same site has another , albeit very similar article here, talking about how the next-generation of video game consoles are going to crash and burn.

[T]here was a video game industry apocalypse once before, in the early 80’s. The market was flushed down the toilet by a putrid swirl of bad Atari games, players realizing that Hot Dog Maze was just Pac-Man with different colors. They didn’t abandon the Atari 2600 in favor of something better. They abandoned it in favor of not playing video games…

Which brings us to today. We’ve now advanced from realistic 3D to slightly prettier 3D and… even slightlier prettier 3D with slightly better reflection effects and slightly better animated water ripples and – oh, look! This game has the most realistic fog yet! See the problem?

Really, usually you have to be part of the games industry to be this bitter. And you don’t even want to know their opinions on Lord of the Rings.