The first half of 2023 is positively packed to the rafters with some pretty great looking video games at the moment. Heck, when we all returned from our Christmas slumber at the start of January, the list of our most anticipated games for the year stretched all the way to 101 - and even then, I had to bite my own hand from making it even longer. It’s a good feeling knowing there are so many exciting things to write about over the next six months and counting - especially when there was a point last summer when every game and their dog seemed to be getting delayed, leaving us with a veritable hole of neat new games to tell you about. Naturally, we’ll be doing our best to bring you the latest on all those excellent new gaming nuggets over the course of the year, but as hinted at in my note about comment email notifications last week, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about all the other new things I want to do on RPS this year. Things like new regular features, new community projects and, at long last, the inaugural RPS Game Club.
The RPS Game Club! It’s a thing!
Let’s talk about that last one first. The RPS Game Club is very almost here. Essentially a book club for video games, RPS supporters will know this has been a long time in the making. Mostly because we were hoping to be able to offer regular free game keys for it as part of our RPS Premium tier. However, plans to secure a reliable monthly source of said game keys is still ongoing, so rather than wait and potentially never get it off the ground at all, we’re just going to go ahead and do it anyway, focusing on free games primarily, or at least ones that have a very low cost of entry. As such, the RPS Game Club will be open to all, regardless of whether you’re an RPS supporter or not, and I’ll be publishing a schedule of what we’ll be playing every month very soon. Basic gist, though: we pick a game at the start of the month, we spend the next few weeks playing said game, and we’ll then host a series of discussion posts at the end of the month where we can all talk about it. This will include a liveblog session where you can chat to us and other readers about the game in real-time, and other question-style posts where you can chat at a more leisurely pace over in the comments.
Ask RPS anything you like
Speaking of question-style posts, may I introduce Ask RPS - a new series of posts where you ask us a question, and we write a post containing the answer! Simple as that. Questions can be about anything at all, and directed to any team member you like - although I do ask we try and keep them as video game-focused as possible. No asking us what we had for dinner last night, because I promise you, my weekly Cook consumption is not as interesting as you might think. To begin with, I’m going to give RPS supporters (Standard and Premium) first dibs on asking Ask RPS questions, but we’ll open it up to everyone if / when we run out of supporter questions. I’ll also do a separate post calling for these questions, so don’t go jumping the gun in the comments below, you eager beavers. There’s a chance I might miss it.
Have your say in our reader-voted all-time genre lists
The third new thing is something everyone can get involved with, though. Following on from the excellent response we had to last year’s RPS 100: Reader Edition, I’m delighted that we’ll not only be doing another Reader Edition this year, but that each month I’ll also be canvasing your votes for your favourite games by genre - reader versions of our best games lists, essentially, counting down your favourite RPGs, first person shooters, horror games, survival games and more, as voted for by you. Again, look out for a dedicated post about February’s list later this week, where I’ll be asking what your favourite strategy games of all time are, to celebrate the launch of Company Of Heroes 3 on February 23rd.
New features and columns
Those are the three big projects I’ve got lined up for RPS in 2023, but there are lots of other smaller things happening alongside them. We’ll be continuing with all of our regular features and columns, such as The RPS Time Capsule, our GOTY Revisited posts, Alice0’s quest to find the best thing in video games in What’s Better, Sin Vega’s strategy-focused Rally Point column (and her supporter-first indie recs in Scout Report), as well as Rick Lane’s exploration of all things VR in his Reality Bytes column. But our own Alice Bee has also made a New Year’s resolution to play every Nancy Drew game in existence, following on from her November escapades with Nancy Drew: Midnight In Salem, and our guides writer and fellow resident The Sims fanatic Rebecca is going to regale us with monthly observations and anecdotes from her many years of Sims-ing in a new monthly Sims column. The first one of these will be published very soon, so watch out for that.
Goodbye The Nate Files, hello shiny new video show
Alas, there is one thing we have to say goodbye to this year. Our supporter exclusive podcast The Nate Files has now come to an end, but another cool new thing will rise in its place. Vid bud Liam will be putting together a supporter-first indie-focused video show, looking at clumps of new or upcoming games in the same genre. This will be exclusive to RPS Premium supporters for the first month, but then available for everyone after that point. We’re still working out the frequency of it at the moment - together with Inventory Space and another new thing I’ll get to in a minute, we’re probably looking at one show every couple of months or so, but we’ll have more to share on this soon.
Even more podcasts
As for that other new thing Liam’s got under way, you actually already know about it. It’s our new fortnightly Indiescovery podcast, which Liam co-hosts with Rebecca and reviews editor Rachel. I’m very excited that RPS’ podcast empire is expanding in this direction, especially when it will be joining the newly relaunched Electronic Wireless Show, which is returning later this week after its brief hiatus. And the EWS returns with a brand-new co-host as well - our very own hardware editor James Archer. He’ll be joining Alice Bee and Nate (RPS in peace) to talk all things video games, and I’m excited to see what you think of its mildly revamped magazine-style format, too. Look out for that on the usual channels on Thursday. (Alice Bee also has another podcast in the works right now, but it’s still in the early stages of production at the moment and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. We’ll share more about it as soon as we can). Senior staff writer Ed and guides writer Hayden are also revamping their FPS-focused Ultimate Audio Bang podcast slightly this year, introducing a new segment where they look at lesser-known sub-genres of the FPS alongside all the latest FPS happenings. To begin with, they’ve been playing theHunter: Call Of The Wild, and you may spot some additional words about their experiences with Expansive Worlds’ hunting sim on the site in the coming weeks.
News in a letter, you say?
And finally, you may have spotted that we now have daily and weekly newsletters. Currently, these are completely automated, delivering a collection of the most commented posts we’ve published on the site that day / week direct to your inbox. But once our tech team have worked their magic on a couple of extra code-y bits in the back-end of the site, I’d like to start doing a monthly newsletter that’s stuffed with curated hidden indie gems that we’ve been playing, either collecting together stuff we’ve written about them on the site, or fresh newsletter-exclusive words on them if we haven’t been able to fit them round everything else. Can’t say when we’ll be able to kick this off just yet, but as soon as the tech team have done their thing, I’ll let you know. Phew! I think that’s it. So yes, lots of exciting things happening this year, and many of them are all focused around you, our lovely readers. I’ll be going into more detail about the supporter-specific stuff in my next Letter From The Editor, which is available to all Standard and Premium subscribers, but I’d love to hear what you think about all this in the comments below. Anything you’re particularly excited about? Or couldn’t care less about? Maybe there’s some obvious thing you think we should be doing already but currently aren’t. Any and all feedback will be gratefully received. In any case, I hope you agree that, in addition to all the cool new games coming out, there’s also plenty to get excited about right here at RPS as well - and I look forward to posting more about all of these things very soon.
