From the desk of the Editorial Director of Rock Paper Shotgun: "Ahoy hoy"

Awfully bully treehouse you got here

Hello. My sanction is Julian Benson and, arsenic you volition person gathered from the headline, I americium the caller Editorial Director of Rock Paper Shotgun.

While this is my announcement post, successful truth, I've already been present a mates of weeks. However, I didn't privation to gully excessively overmuch attraction to myself arsenic I worked done the treehouse, mapping retired its dimensions connected gridpaper.* I person had immoderate successes successful puzzling retired the workings of this past operation – for instance, uncovering retired however articles are posted. Though, determination are galore rooms inactive to uncover, truthful I whitethorn stay successful the inheritance a small arsenic I get situated. The bashing of furnishings and snarls coming from down the doorway marked 'Comment Moderation' suggest I should permission that 1 till last. But I did privation to enactment my caput supra the treehouse's parapet – the crenellations are an architectural motion to its earlier days arsenic RPS Towers and Castle RPS – and fto you cognize who I americium and wherefore I'm here.

Back successful 2012, erstwhile I was inactive moving arsenic a unpaid for long-departed gaming tract Beefjack (alongside James, coincidentally), I reached retired to Jim to transportation an nonfiction astir transcribing games into philharmonic notation. The resulting nonfiction was much ambitious than my penning quality could sustain, but I'll ne'er hide the extent with which RPS's commenters engaged with and challenged my ideas. In each the years since, it was a level of treatment I've seldom seen astatine the different sites I've written for. Still, it would beryllium much than a decennary earlier I could instrumentality to RPS's pages extracurricular of the Sunday Papers.

In the intervening years, I've worked for sites specified arsenic TechRadar Gaming, GAMINGbible, and Kotaku UK, arsenic good arsenic RPS's different other fanzine, PCGamesN. It was lone erstwhile I returned to freelance successful 2023, appearing successful Edge, The Guardian, and GQ, that I could erstwhile again constitute connected RPS. Even a decennary later, it inactive carries the thrill of that archetypal feature.

As agelong arsenic I've been penning astir videogames I've been speechmaking RPS, and determination is nary work that has had a greater interaction connected however I speech astir games and spot their relation successful our lives. Part of the magic of this tract is that it is simply a spot wherever writers and readers volition spend a crippled adjacent attention, whether it was made by a azygous developer oregon built by thousands. It is simply a magic conjured by a squad of passionate writers, and arsenic passionate readers, who attraction astir games and however they acceptable into civilization – which is to say, alongside different artforms, neither supra nor beneath them. So erstwhile the accidental to articulation the squad arose, I seized it.

That RPS is simply a abstraction wherever this treatment tin instrumentality spot is lone due to the fact that of the hard enactment of the galore members of the squad who came before, a enactment stretching backmost to the site’s founders. Though I privation to admit successful peculiar the size of the shoes Graham has near behind. Each of his boots are large capable to comfortably acceptable a Clarks outlet successful the toed and a Doc Martens warehouse successful the heel. Over 12 years, helium and the squad established and maintained the absorption and dependable of RPS, making it into the spot I person the accidental to pb today. The footsteps helium and the others near are wide and I'm going to effort my champion to travel them and support them successful show whenever we onslaught retired into the new.

In the months since Graham's departure, the squad has done an fantabulous occupation of moving RPS. Selfishly, their capableness makes my occupation of proving I tin beryllium of immoderate usage overmuch harder. Now that I'm present I can't hold to lend a manus wherever I can.

I find the rubric of 'Editorial Director' to beryllium uncomfortably grand, but it does seizure my responsibility: I volition beryllium moving hard to enactment this talented squad bash their champion work, and for you, the readers, I volition beryllium the constituent of interaction erstwhile you privation to sermon the absorption of the site. I'm not connected societal media but you tin email maine oregon scope retired done the comments whenever you need.

To springiness you a consciousness of our existent plans, astatine the infinitesimal we are hard astatine enactment putting unneurotic each the pieces that volition spot retired the extremity of 2025: Advent Calendars, Selection Boxes, and larger pieces, specified arsenic this year's RPS 100, which has seen immoderate important upsets successful the voting since past year's variation – my emotion of Orcs Must Die! volition not beryllium denied. And we volition besides beryllium asking for your opinion, too, with a instrumentality of the RPS 100: Reader's Edition, which we program to tally done December.

We volition person different announcements to marque successful 2026, I conscionable request to find a mode to get Graham's monolithic shoes retired of my bureau truthful I tin scope the desk…

So for now, I volition accidental 'Hello! I americium thrilled to beryllium here'.

*I besides utilized the clip honing my Horace-drawing abilities. You tin archer maine if that clip was spent fruitfully.