I used to e mail Brendan often making an attempt to supply him freelance work, and he’d all the time be too busy with different jobs. Little by little we obtained him doing increasingly more for us, although – a weekly free games column called Free Loaders right here, a weekly Premature Evaluation there, a month-to-month Ridealong, and many more besides. Eventually I checked out our checklist 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 hire him?” And so we did.
That was three years ago. Now Brendan is returning to the primordial freelance soup from whence he got here. Come say farewell.
Brendan’s work has run the gamut, however I feel you’ll be able to moderately cut up it into two broad classes. On one finish you’ve gotten in-depth, human appears to be like at videogames and their communities, finest typified by that aforementioned Ridealong collection. In every entry, he’d climb inside a multiplayer game for a visit alongside one in all its most skilled gamers. The journey would reveal fantastic truths concerning the games and the individuals who performed them. Tell me that this, from ‘The last king of Wurm Online‘, doesn’t make you wish to learn the remainder of the article:
The man arrives, driving a white horse and clad in splendid armour. When I hover my mouse over the person, his username is accompanied by the title “Dragonslayer”. But his uncommon title and treasured armour is deceptive. This shining knight lives on a tiny farm within the countryside. The horse he’s driving is described by the game’s textual content as “fat” and “old”. And it isn’t even his horse. He has “borrowed” it from the village subsequent to his farm, together with one other fats foal and an outdated bull, which observe alongside behind him on a lead. Some would possibly say Wossoo is a sorry sight, for a person who was King.
Every entry is a gem, however strive these on the underground fight clubs of Dark Souls 3, long-distance expeditions in Elite: Dangerous, the ruins of Minecraft’s most offensive server, or the very first, on Arma 3 roleplaying mod Altis Life. These all rank amongst my favorite articles RPS has ever revealed. Prestige stuff, all of it.
The different half of Brendan’s work is what we affectionately discuss with internally as “shitposts”. Posts, all the time humorous, generally quick, which write about explicit games with tongue planted firmly in cheek. What’s vital is that the posts themselves are affectionate – all the time born of one in all Brendan’s real loves. They’re poppy morsels and by their nature ephemeral, however they seize the enjoyable and silliness and pleasure of PC games in a means a whole lot of capital-A Articles don’t.
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, making an attempt to win a fight using a tuna fish, and visiting players as Santa. His many adventures in varied skateboarding games, culminating both in this collection of Session GIFs or with him shopping for an precise skateboard and breaking his collarbone by falling off it three weeks in the past.
RPS aspires to those sorts of posts as a lot because the status stuff. They’re the stuff of blogs – concurrently irreverent and heartfelt and sensible and humorous. You can monitor this work all the way in which again to the primary article of Brendan’s I ever learn, on the many tanks of Tankfest.
In the previous 12 months or so, Brendan stepped up at RPS from workers author to options editor, and I feel you’ll be able to see his affect within the freelance articles we’ve run in that point. Hopefully now he’s returning to the freelance life, you’ll nonetheless see him continuously on these pages – after his bones have mended.
For now, get within the feedback, say farewell, and share your favorite examples of Brendan’s work. There’s masses I haven’t talked about.
