You’ve probably noticed that there’s been only a sporadic amount of Nic Reuben in your RPS lately, and we’re sad to say that Nic is leaving the treehouse to resume his glittering freelance career. Please join us in saying goodbye and wishing him well before he jets off on his solid rhodium pleasure plane, never to return (unless we ask him very nicely to review a Warhammer game or something).
James: I distinctly remember, when Nic joined RPS, a feeling of not quite believing our luck. We were bruised at the time from several painful team losses and yet in the space of less than a year, managed to nab both Edwin and Nic, two of the best free agents in the gamewords business. Proper pinch-me stuff. Once in the staff writer chair, he immediately established himself as the best kind of crewmate: not just an excellent person with bottomless wells of empathy and humour, but a writer so damned good that he made everyone around him better. Through, like, talent osmosis. And he didn’t even realise he was doing it.
I can’t list all his best stuff because we’d be here for months. But even before he started at RPS full-time, he was exhibiting a profound skill of looking at games in interesting and unusual ways, like his now-famous study of Elden Ring’s pot boy. Or later, an investigation into the medieval soundscape of Manor Lords. Or picking out the class issues in a whole bunch of stuff. Or Object-ive Review, his Supporters-exclusive series on PC gaming’s finest inanimates. A skilled reviewer and newsman both, Nic was also exceptional at digging up the offbeat and the darkly fascinating, usually while deploying turns of phrase that could snap your neck with the G’s.
Nic also knew when to sharpen that wit and point it fearlessly at deserving targets, be it embarrassing pro-AI op-eds or, uh, the deals posts that our bosses sometimes make me do. Still, some of my personal favourite Nic pieces had him doing the opposite, championing cool indie games he’d discovered or telling the stories of marginalised devs. And, of course, there was Booked For The Week, a regular dive into the reading habits of some of the industry’s most accomplished names – a brilliant and deeply RPS-y idea that Warren Spector maybe enjoyed a little too much.
Nic really could do it all, and I’m chuffed to bits that he did it vaguely near the rest of us, from where we could leech at least some of his powers. Goodbye and good luck, Nic – whatever you do next, I’ll be reading.
Ollie: Nic’s work has never failed to bring me joy, even during those horribly busy times when all I could afford to do was glance at the headlines. Just scrolling through his author page, I couldn’t help but laugh – more than once – at his fearsome and fearless wit. And then I felt sad once more that he’s hauling his enormous sack of talent away from the RPS treehouse.
I mean, just look at this intro to one of his Battle Prose diary posts. I picked it at random.
“What do you mean the game didn’t save?!”, Thilmann had not so much asked Slackbladder as stowed the question in a sack of rocks, spat on the sack until no moisture remained in his body, then swung the sack at Slackbladder’s forehead, leaving the thief dazed and more than a little soggy. “What in Odin’s gammy eye flap does that even mean?!”.
No idea, both Slackbladder and the rest of the company were forced to admit. All we knew was that last fight had gone even worse than we’d thought. Dogpollock and Glass Toe Jim Joe Jackon were still dead, but now Terry and Fritz had joined them. “How do you play a battle worse the second time?!” bellowed Thilmann. Again, none of us including Thilmann understood what this meant, although we all agreed it sounded unbelievably stupid. Real “massive idiot who still hasn’t learned the game after four diary entries” hours.
Nic is the most phenomenally entertaining writer. It always seemed to be effortless for him. That’s almost certainly not true, of course. He probably bled from the eyes sometimes, thinking up the perfect nugget of sarcasm to turn a simple news post into a Nic Reuben News Post. Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say: thank you, Nic, for your offer of eye-blood. We accept it in the spirit with which it is given.
Mark: I’m sad I didn’t get to work with Nic for all that long. He’s an excellent writer and took on the task of being proudly and gloriously RPSy with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for people who’ve just remembered the capital of Liechtenstein on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He also typed ‘oh no’ in quite a reassuring way when, early in my RPS tenure, I managed to forget to save one of my articles before handing it over for edits, leading it to disappear into the purple ether. Best of luck for the future, Nic. Hope you enjoy the many more words you’ll do.
Jeremy: Nic is a magnificent writer, the sort that any gaming site would kill to have. The fact that we possessed a sliver of his soul for a short while meant we were all the better; the sad reality that he is leaving us means that our collective voice has been dampened. His bio here at RPS read that he was secretly “several Skaven in a trenchcoat “ – and if that is truly his real identity, I tip my hat to ‘em, whiskers and all. Said Skaven came down harder than I did on a few games during the last two years (looking at you, Avowed and Hollowbody), but their critiques were always eminently well reasoned and argued. Damn, were they a fine collective of Ratkin. We’ll miss you, Nic.
Edwin: Nic, I can’t think of an adequate compliment, and I suspect you have long since cringed yourself into a ball of wrinkled leather over all the embarrassing gushing above, so I’ll try not to overdo my bit. In brief, I have never worked harder or dreamed bigger as a writer than when working day-to-day with you. Ah nuts, fucked it already.
Anyway, here are some pieces of yours that I especially treasure: your reviews of Grunn (“less lock-and-key, more tearing layers of wrapping paper from a massive non-euclidean pass-the-parcel”), Felvidek (“the best art is buttressed by an irremovable layer of deep, thick grime”), and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth (“enter teenage android side character Chadley, a grotesque Satnav of a pimple of a productivity app, a creature spawned from fear of Not Enough Game, to squeeze the universe into a ball and wrap checklists around it”). I will also include a few of your best from the news section: your Tactical Breach Wizards write-up/stealth pitch for “the legally distinct Little Shop Of Horrors management sim of my dreams (call me)”. Your 40-wordish, barely polysyllabic piece on a minor Total Warhammer update that became one of our top articles that day, despite gobbing in the face of SEO. And your graceful intervention about Clair Obscur’s team size that pivoted the entire critical conversation around it.
These are just a handful of my favourites. You are really very good at this writing trade, Nic! It is most vexing. Please carry on doing it in whatever capacity seems right. But in the shorter term, please treat yourself to an awesome break.
