Hey you! This isn’t a warm, squishy top ten list for you to read between coffee breaks and fun. This is a lifestyle, and it’s better than the one you already have. Print out this list and put it next to your TV. Also, put it in the bathroom, tape it to the back of your girlfriend, hide one where you least suspect it and get a tiny version to tape to the inside of your sunglasses.

If you’re a child of the ‘80s, you may have noticed that gaming isn’t a hardcore hobby for a niche group anymore. Everyone games, and the average game’s difficulty has changed to reflect that. Little kids, your mom and the old people in Wii commercials all play BioShock on normal. So you need to play on hard.

Stand up proudly, punch normalness in its unremarkable balls and proclaim from the rock bottom of your curly-covered chest, “I’m [insert your name here], and I play games on hard because I’m a man (or woman)!” Good job! Now read the rest of the rules.

No computer is going to tell you how to game.

If you’re playing an action game, it plays like an action game:

And if you’re playing an RPG, it uses RPG controls:

We could go on, but we won’t because we know you already know how to play, right?

Recent games have attempted to infringe on your masculinity by cleverly disguising the tutorial as gameplay. Don’t be fooled. If your first mission is “boot camp,” “graduation,” or simply isn’t butt clinchingly difficult, mash the X button, ignore the dialogue and run forward until something explodes.

Splattering blood, body-part specific-damage and pants-tenting explosions are great. But you may not be aware that the current generation of games also has remarkably detailed environments. Or so we’ve been told. Here are some things we’ve never noticed while playing a game:

If you’ve seen any of these, you’re playing the game wrong. The object of any game is to win, and if you want to be a man, your job is to win better and harder than the other guy. That means no dallying around remarking on the architecture’s influences from the Romanic period. Take off the beret and haul ass. You’ve got a boss to kill.

In most cases, an inflated gamerscore is a result of playing too much Avatar: The Last Airbender, TMNT or whatever else it is that casual gamers are into, and frankly, we have no idea what that is. All of our Achievements are from playing Ikaruga on hard.

Above: This guy has 32,560 points

Raise your hand if you think that shooting someone does more damage than hitting them with the butt of your gun. OK, now everyone look around and remember whose hand is in the air. Now point, laugh and refer to their arm strength condescendingly. If this doesn’t shame them enough, try adding the suffix “ette” to the end of their names to make them sound dainty.