If I had to guess what percentage of New Year's resolutions are actually kept, I'd estimate it's somewhere in the neighborhood of nearly absolute zero. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't make them! It's a new year, a fresh start, and a new chance to form some good habits and shatter some bad ones. Just because your resolutions didn't stick last year or the year before doesn't mean you shouldn't try again.
So go ahead and make a plan to exercise more, eat better, keep your desk organized, learn a language, bring that cursed ring to Mordor and drop it into the Crack of Doom, or whatever it is that you've promised yourself you'll do this year.
And maybe that extends to your gaming habits, too. Below we've written some of our New Year's gaming resolutions for 2022. If you've got some yourself, we'd love to see them in the comments.
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Post my first game mod
I love installing mods for games: custom content in The Sims, new companions in Skyrim, huge adventure maps in Minecraft, and oodles more. I've always enjoyed building and level design, and have considered making something of my own so many times. Every time I get three videos deep in Creation Kit tutorials I'm suddenly stricken with choice paralysis. There are just so many building sets. What on earth do I want to make?
This year I want to finally get my hands dirty and finish something I can post. Maybe I'll push through my indecision and create some small new interiors for Skyrim. Or take another stab at designing a new Stardew Valley area. Nothing too big though, because like hell am I falling victim to scope creep.
Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Quit games guilt-free
When a game isn’t doing it for me, I still have trouble quitting or at least not feeling guilty about it. There are so many games out there and a lot of them are bad or have rough spots that aren’t worth pushing through. My goal for 2022 is to stop playing games that don’t give me a strong reason to keep playing. It’s a simple goal, really, but it’s important to respect my time when so much else is going on.
This will probably result in quitting more games this year, but it also means I can get a feel for what's out there and maybe try stuff I wouldn’t otherwise be into. In the past, this approach has led to some of my favorite games. I remember thinking Dark Souls was stupid after a few hours and now I’m annoying about how much I like that game. I hope I can be annoying about something unexpected this year and not just Elden Ring.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Play Elden Ring
I've played precisely one soulslike in my life. I can't remember if it was Demon or Dark, but I can tell you that it was complete bullshit: Armed with a pointy stick and a piece of ratty cloth, I was thrown immediately into a brutal boss fight against some huge monstrosity that immediately pancaked me every time I even looked at it. 15 minutes later I pulled the plug and swore never again, and my thoughts on the subgenre were set in stone: Very pretty, paper thin, pointlessly masochistic.
(I also don't like using controllers, which feel hopelessly clumsy compared to the precision and flexibility of a proper mouse and keyboard setup.)
Anyway, in light of all that I have decided that in 2022 I am going to play Elden Ring, and I'm going to do it with a controller (specifically a Logitech F310). And importantly, I'm going to make a good faith effort of it. I won't deny my biases, of which there are many, but it's possible—possible—that I didn't give that previous game a proper shot. In light of the excitement surrounding the upcoming release of Elden Ring, I figure it's probably time I took a sincere run at understanding what all the fuss is about.
Graeme Meredith, Video Producer: Have a more varied gaming experience
As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I recently got Game Pass. So, I'm going to become one of those Game Pass people who talk about Game Pass as though they're the first person to ever subscribe to Game Pass and experience everything Game Pass has to offer.
So, as for my resolution, the long and short of it is to take in a more diverse range of gaming experiences, using Game Pass as one of my tools to do so. I'm the sort of person who gets sucked into things and will play one game religiously for weeks or months on end before moving on to the next thing - I don't intend to stop doing that, but it doesn't create a very textured gaming life or allow for great conversation. By the end of this year I want to have at least sampled more content so I can become more knowledgeable and enjoy the full spectrum of experiences gaming has to offer.
So far I've had Game Pass for one week and I've played 10 hours of Forza Horizon 4 and... a few minutes of Minecraft in 4K.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Sleep
There's no way I should be able to play as many games as I do, but I have this one weird trick: I don't sleep. I have always sacrificed trips to Dreamland in favour of more tangible forms of entertainment. When I was wee, my parents had to remove every light source from my room so I couldn't sneak in a few more pages of whatever book I was obsessed with. Then it was videogames—me and my Game Boy hidden under the duvet. Nothing has changed in the decades since.
I've been able to get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night for most of my adult life, but I'm definitely starting to feel the toll now. My optician had to get a second opinion after seeing how dry my eyes were. And it might be why I'm perpetually grumpy. So I'm going to try something new, and the next time I start thinking about firing up a dense RPG at 11pm, I will instead get blackout drunk. The healthy alternative.
Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: Write about more indie games
Now I'm being goaded into making a gaming resolution, despite having made none that relate to the real world, I guess I better come up with something sharp-ish. Let's say I'll try to explore and report on more obscure indie titles as I love bringing cute minigames to light, and giving hardworking indie companies the recognition they deserve. I guess that covers both gaming and reality, and is particularly pragmatic since I really didn't get much chance to write about many indies last year. 2022 is the year I sneak over from the dark corners of hardware coverage, and break out some wholesome indie journalism to support the games lot. Shh, don't tell my boss.
Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Start baby-proofing my PC and consoles
Kids are wicked clever and my toddler has an obsession with pushing off buttons on everything, so it's time to baby proof the lot—and I don't just mean by making equipment unreachable. It's time to make sure my credit card and paypal details are removed from all the consoles and my PC, turn off auto sign-in and auto-purchase options and put on child and family settings so that a certain someone doesn't fall down a right-wing YouTube hole accidentally. It's also time to educate my family on the dangers of letting videos run on and make sure my dad keeps the PS4 out of reach—he doesn't need Chonk accidentally-on-purpose installing The Witcher 3 GOTY edition on it… Or does he?
Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: Make time for 'me' games
When I’m not working for PC Gamer, I stream. I spent over 500 hours last year live on Twitch and most of that was playing games from Stardew Valley to Halo Infinite. The worst bit about streaming, however, is that you tie games to content you want an audience to experience too. You can’t play without going live, no matter how much you want to tend to your parsnips.
I legitimately had a nightmare in 2021 where I managed to beat infamous Dark Souls bosses Ornstein and Smough off stream, and was upset that my viewers hadn’t seen the killing blow. That’s just a symptom of how much my brain has entertwined Twitch and my gaming experience. So this year, I hope that I can carve out some time for me games. Games I’m not playing to satisfy an audience or have to talk over all the time. Games I’m playing for my enjoyment and my own enjoyment alone. Hopefully that might just stop the nightmares.
Chris Livingston, Features Producer: Keep notes on the games I'm playing
I'm trying to get more organized in general—keeping a personal journal, leaving myself notes and reminders, setting goals and writing checklists. My short-term memory is terrible and my long-term memory, as far as I can remember, is awful too. So I really need to keep a written record just so I don't forget stuff. Even basic stuff.
It happens in games, too. I'll play something for a while, then leave it to bounce around in a few other games, and then when I finally return to play the original game weeks or months later—I'll have no idea what I was doing when I quit. What missions were I planning to tackle? What goals did I have when I got distracted by something else? What was my character in the middle of? What was I going to do next? I think keeping a little gaming journal might help as a reference. Oh yeah, I was going to add a room onto my base for a new crafting bench and then start researching this particular tech tree which will let me unlock a windmill. Or whatever it was. I'll try to remember to do that.
