I’m pleased to say that Rock Paper Shotgun has invited me to do a fortnightly column on interactive fiction. For those who aren’t familiar with RPS, they’re a gaming site focused on PC games. They’ve often given coverage to interactive fiction in the past, listing Comp highlights or tucking some IF releases into larger lists of freeware games. They decided to go bigger, though, so they’ve given me a pretty broad scope to cover whatever IF works, authors, and events might interest RPS readers. This is awesome of them.
In practice, that means that I’ll be writing about the same amount as before, but that some news, reviews, game lists, and analysis will wind up at RPS rather than on this blog — and thus in front of a much larger readership.
But you can still expect to see fresh material appearing here, including link roundups, craft and technique discussions, IF Meetup event reports, reviews of mobile IF that wouldn’t be a good RPS fit, and so on. And I’ll link across from here to my IF Only content, in case you find that an easier way to track what I’m writing.
Congratulations, Emily! It’s a well-deserved opportunity for you, and I look forward to reading your column!
This is a great sign. I’ve long thought of RPS as something of a signifier of IF’s place in gaming culture – despite the wide and deep strides indie gaming has made, and the explosion of interest in a myriad of niche genres, with no better reflection than in the tone, focus, and popularity of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, IF has never been more than a shrug of a presence there, even when Porpentine herself was regularly contributing to the site. It’s a place where gamers go to unearth hidden gems past and present, and having a regular, dedicated feature there by a strong communicator with a firm grasp on the dissonances IF presents to the average gamer (or even the above average gamer) is kind of invaluable.
Fantastic! I think that’s brilliant of them (to hire you for that purpose). I _think_ I can manage to click on a link in order to read the articles there. Maybe.
Awesomesauce! RPS is the only non-specific-to-IF gaming website I follow, and at the very least this justifies my exclusivity. I was bummed when Porpentine’s column ended, since she always had something absolutely killer to point to. But this is great in a different way, and I’m looking forward to your columns.
Great news! Brings me back to the old Homer in Silicon days.
Is there a page/feed I can go to to see all of your RPS articles?
Searching by its tag should give you a list. (There’s still just the one, until later this week.)
I just discovered that there is a feed: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/if-only/feed/
Not sure if it’s new or if I just didn’t find it when I looked before. Either way I’m thankful for it because I had missed a few articles. Happy Thanksgiving!