CD Jackets

What the hell is up with those little paper slips that are supposed to protect our CDs? Is there any better proof that the bean counters don't actually play the games their companies make? So you save 5 cents by using those instead of proper CD cases, congratulations. Now imagine how many more people own CD burners because they're tired of having scratched or broken CDs.

There is absolutely no crime in having a CD case shipped with your game. Why, there are actually proper storage options for CD cases. What are you going to do with a paper slip? You can't even stack them, because they tip over far too easily. CD booklets tend to scratch discs, so they're not an optimal solution.

Those publishers who ship manuals thinner than the pile of advertisement and registration junk in the box, why even bother with regular PC game boxes? Just ship in a DVD case. Max Payne 2 proved that this fantastic, outlandish and unproven technology is, indeed, compatible with the PC. If Max Payne 2 hadn't been a boring re-hash of the original game (with funky jumping physics), it also might have sold a few more copies as well.

Speaking of sequels, this is how it's done: read the reviews, read what your community is saying, and then read what people who aren't in the community but played the game are saying. If the general idea is "flawed gem", then just fix the flaws, don't screw with the formula. If everyone liked it, make the game again, just bigger, better and more - a la Baldur's Gate II. If everyone who played it thinks it's a good game but it didn't sell, don't punish the developers by making them work on Tomb Deer Raider Hunter XVI, go kick your marketing department in the ass. It's their job to make sure unconventional designs become familiar and acceptable to the public.

Absolutely nothing bugs me more than saying in a review "by the end of the game, the interface shows its limits as the player spends more time re-organizing himself than playing the game", and then seeing the same interface in a "bigger, better" sequel. This was the exact problem with Shogun: Total War and for some reason Creative Assembly ignored the problems that were so evident in the original and passed them onto the more complicated sequel. I understand that it is human nature to get stubborn and defensive when your flaws are pointed out, or to gloss over minor issues when the feedback is generally positive. However, somewhere along the way there needs to be a "second sober thought" session on all critical aspects of the game - interface, graphics, sound, singleplayer, multiplayer. Because when a lobotomized crack baby on a week-long Vegas bender can tell you that "there's like, too many princesses and buildings and stuff", it's time to suck it up and go into redesign.