Gamers! Stop it!
Eight things gamers should all stop doing, now
Stop buying games and not finishing them
We're all pressed for time, but there's no excuse for spending good money on a game and not finishing it. Unless it's freaking awful. Okay, so there is an excuse, but then we shouldn't really be buying awful games - as we've covered before. It's forgivable as an occasional mistake, but when theseunfinishedgamesstart forming largestacks in your basement, it's time to stop.
Think ofa poor developer, bleary-eyed at 6am in the morning, creating a wonderful ending movie. A real work of class. Only for the time-poor, cash-rich crowd to ignore the result of all his hard work, just because something newer and shinier has popped up. We're all guilty of this. Let's just learn some commitment, right?
Above: Far too many of us - GamesRadar staff included - have far too many unfinished games lying around
Stop laying waste to the planet
As a gamer, we're probably among the most wasteful and waste-producingfools on the planet. All those discs, covermounted or bought, that are eventually discarded or lost. Pages and pages of magazines read and then chucked, along with broken plastic peripherals or out-of-date consoles consigned to the dump. We're the super villains of the environmental soap opera. And that's not something to be proud of.
We can change, though. Obviously recycling CDs, magazines and other bits andparts is a good start - but it's also time to rid ourselves of the belief that the standby mode is just as good as turning anything off at the wall. Every time we leave our HDTVs on standby for more than an afternoon, an innocent little palm leaf on some beach in the pacific cries itself to death. And rainforests are drowning in rivers of their own tears because we're downloading stuff on our PCs overnight. Let's flick that switch off, eh?
Stop lending a hand to Jack Thompson
The more we talk about him in news stories, forums and blogs, the more publicity he gets for his liberty-inhibiting right-wing political activism. Just remember, without the endless media attention (mostly fueled by gamers and games websites) he wouldn't be anything more than just another Florida attorney. Check out his bio on Wikipedia if you must - it documents his history of relentless media attention seeking - and then never utter his name again. We won't if you won't.
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Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.