What could we possibly hate about gaming? Try this little lot for starters...

Loading times

We may have come a long way from the epic tape spooling loading of the no-bit era, but we still have to wait - even with Blu-ray and internal hard drives. Until a console starts offering us insta-load technology, we're still counting the cumulative days, week and months that we've spent watching a loading bar creeping slowly across the bottom of the screen. We'll still be thinking of that on our deathbed.

People who use dev speak they don't understand

Yeah, but this console's got better floating point calculations. Better? How exactly? Quicker? More? Shinier? Do you even know what they are? And why do you carry a spec sheet around in your wallet?

Being stuck with a WOW fan at a party

"So, I left Org cos the AH was full of WTB/WTS noobs, and went to join a Raid with my Guild - the Trenchcode Mafia - to grind VC. I flipped to my alt to juggle some vendor trash while everyone was buffing their avatars to get DPS up for the first pats.

"The tanks went off with a pally (and his pet) to keep the buff going - we've got a great Carebear for that - and us squishies followed, using AoEs to DD the creeps. The tanks were all "Ding!", but it was us FTW. Until some griefers started ganking the MT, ninja-hitting all the corpses and kiting a Named that was stacked with aggro..."

Online rednecks

Racist, homophobic, misogynistic, narrow-minded bigots. They pollute our ears with their spiteful effluence. Turn them off and kick them out.

Tutorial levels

It's been years since Rockstar showed every developer how to kill off the monotonous tutorial with the learn-as-you-go brilliance of GTA III. And, yet, this scourge of gaming is still kicking - as illustrated by the painful intro to Assassin's Creed, which immediately bombards you with its complex controls before you've even got started. Which, bewildered, you immediately forget! Sort it out.

Knock-off brain training games

We blame Dr Kawashima for the following: Mind Quiz: Your Brain Quiz, Brain Boost: Beta Wave, Left Brain/Right Brain, Brain Buster Puzzle Park, I Did It Mum!, Math Play, The Professors Brain Trainer: Logic, The Professors Brain Trainer: Logic, MindStorm: Train Your Brain and Hot Brain.

Yearly updates

I’ve already bought your game. Did you forget you released it or something? Look, I’ve got a copy of it on my shelf over here.

Go away and come up with something new, and I don’t just mean the number at the end of the title.

Parents who buy adult games for their kids

You people are the reason game ratings aren’t trusted. Videogames have grown up and developed a lot now, and it’s not all about platform-jumping eggs and wakka-wakka-wakka any more. Take an interest and pay attention to what your kids are playing instead of blindly buying them anything they ask for and we’ll all be a lot better off.

Silent game characters getting voices

Silent characters should never be voiced. Speech gives away so much personality, so by making a character talk, there's instantly a possible characteristic someone won't like. Was it Henry Higgins who said whenever an Englishman opens his mouth, he makes some other Englishman despise him? Sonic opened his mouth and look what happened there.