I utilized to e-mail Brendan frequently attempting to supply him freelance function, and he’d constantly be also busy with other jobs. Small by tiny we got him carrying out a lot more and a lot more for us, although – a weekly free of charge games column known as Totally free Loaders right here, a weekly Premature Evaluation there, a month-to-month Ridealong, and lots a lot more apart from. Ultimately I looked at our list of freelance commissions and took it to Jim. “We’re paying Brendan the equivalent of a yearly salary in freelance commissions,” I mentioned. “Should we just employ him?” And so we did.
That was 3 years ago. Now Brendan is returning to the primordial freelance soup from whence he came. Come say farewell.
Brendan’s function has run the gamut, but I feel you can reasonably split it into two broad categories. On 1 finish you have in-depth, human appears at videogames and their communities, ideal typified by that aforementioned Ridealong series. In each and every entry, he’d climb inside a multiplayer game for a trip alongside 1 of its most seasoned players. The journey would reveal amazing truths about the games and the persons who played them. Inform me that this, from ‘The final king of Wurm Online‘, does not make you want to study the rest of the write-up:
Every single entry is a gem, but attempt these on the underground fight clubs of Dark Souls three, lengthy-distance expeditions in Elite: Harmful, the ruins of Minecraft’s most offensive server, or the really initially, on Arma three roleplaying mod Altis Life. These all rank amongst my favourite articles RPS has ever published. Prestige stuff, all of it.
The other half of Brendan’s function is what we affectionately refer to internally as “shitposts”. Posts, constantly funny, occasionally brief, which create about distinct games with tongue planted firmly in cheek. What’s critical is that the posts themselves are affectionate – constantly born of 1 of Brendan’s genuine loves. They’re poppy morsels and by their nature ephemeral, but they capture the exciting and silliness and joy of Computer games in a way a lot of capital-A Articles do not.
The highs and lows of 30 years of Final Fantasy. An unstoppable urge to make horny lizard lads in Soul Calibur. Rating the outfits of Tekken, attempting to win a fight working with a tuna fish, and going to players as Santa. His quite a few adventures in a variety of skateboarding games, culminating either in this collection of Session GIFs or with him shopping for an actual skateboard and breaking his collarbone by falling off it 3 weeks ago.
RPS aspires to these types of posts as significantly as the prestige stuff. They’re the stuff of blogs – simultaneously irreverent and heartfelt and wise and funny. You can track this function all the way back to the initially write-up of Brendan’s I ever study, on the quite a few tanks of Tankfest.
In the previous year or so, Brendan stepped up at RPS from employees writer to options editor, and I feel you can see his influence in the freelance articles we’ve run in that time. Hopefully now he’s returning to the freelance life, you will nevertheless see him regularly on these pages – right after his bones have mended.
For now, get in the comments, say farewell, and share your favourite examples of Brendan’s function. There’s loads I haven’t described.