Come say goodbye to RPS guides writer Rebecca Jones

My fellow Zero Escape liker has, well, escaped into a new room called... VG247?

Sad news today, folks. Our excellent guides writer Rebecca is moving on to pastures new. Specifically, pastures that have had the letters and numbers VG247 mown into them, as Rebecca is beginning a new guides journey at our dear sister site starting next week. We wish her all the best in her new adventures, follicking in the fields of Animal Crossing and other console-based delights, although I'll personally be very sad to lose my fellow Zero Escape and Danganronpa liker (the placement of these games in next year's RPS 100 is now in serious trouble, folks, I'm telling ya now). But before we get too deep in the doom and gloom, come and bid her farewell in the comments below.

Rebecca joined the site just as I took over from Graham as RPS' new editor-in-chief two years ago at the start of July 2021, so her departure has struck a particularly poignant chord for me. The site has changed a lot over the last two years, and Rebecca's guides work has allowed us to dive head first into big, complex, always evolving games such as Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Roblox, and The Sims 4 that we'd never really had the expertise or knowledge to do before. Except The Sims, of course, although not so much from a guides perspective. That was all new, and powered by Rebecca's life-long love for Maxis' life-sim series - which she also explored in a features capacity as well by returning to play The Sims 1 in the year of our Horace 2023.

One of the most important pieces of work Rebecca did for RPS was her detailed investigation into how much it costs to play Diablo Immortal - a piece I'm still immensely proud to have published on the site, and which exemplifies how we've tried to approach our guides work ever since, especially when it comes to games built on microtransactions. Our focus has always been on what's best for the player, not for a publisher's pockets, and her diligent build guides have always emphasised what's free and good at no extra cost.

Outside of guides, and as hinted at above, Rebecca was also our visual novel champion, and she brought her expert, in-depth knowledge of the genre to our game of the year lists as well as our Indiescovery podcast at every available opportunity.

She was also one of our big horror likers on the team, and some of my favourite non-guides pieces she's written for the site over the years include her big interview with Supermassive Games about how their Dark Pictures Anthology ties together, her review of The Sims 4's Werewolves pack, and her chats with Bloober Team about Layers Of Fear and publisher DreadXP about their wide and varied slate of indie horror games. Her list of horror-themed dating sims was also one of my highlights from last year's Halloween Week.

But it's not just horror and visual novels where Rebecca made her mark on the site outside of her stellar guides work. If you missed her retrospective on Kentucky Route Zero as part of our GOTY Revisited series, I'd strongly recommend checking that out, as well as her love letter to Bioshock Infinite's Lutece Twins, and her heated op ed on why Hades is still the worst dad ever.

We will miss her greatly, as we're not only losing a key pillar of our guides team, but also one of our most thoughtful and passionate writers. So please join me in bidding Rebecca a fond farewell in the comments below.