In Which Medic Writes Articles
This article wraps up aabicus week! Hope everybody enjoyed me chewing through my old backlog, I’m certainly happy to finally have gotten a few of these out in the open. I’m wrapping the week up with a long overdue article, a sequel to the two-part series highlighting some of the best submissions from our most prolific writers. And nobody is more prolific than Chief Editor Medic herself, who at this point I suspect has written more content than the rest of us combined not to mention done a ton of website design, server hosting and image creation). While it’s tough to boil down her portfolio into just a handful of articles, here are some that left a particular impact on me over the years.
TF2 Competitive has a lot to steal…
I linked this particular article to my fellow developers back when I worked on Major League Magic. Medic makes some great points on what other esports are doing right compared to TF2, and I’ve kept her points in mind as I watch how the esports world is changing around us. The Overwatch League wasn’t even a thing back when she wrote this, and yet it’s followed her advice perfectly, incorporating League Tokens into Twitch broadcasts (something that has consistently led to hundreds of thousands of viewers and OWL becoming one of the most sustainably-viewed channels on the site.) Heck, Overwatch even incorporated the idea into their Competitive Mode, making it the only place to earn purple points to get gold weapon skins. I can’t help but wonder if TF2’s competitive mode might be more successful if it had a special reward for playing comp games, but I think it’s problems go beyond player retention…
Neverwinter – an MMO Based on D&D
Some of my favorite Medic articles are ones where she covers a new game she’s played for a while (or for the first time) because it’s usually games I’ve been considering or games that translate well into the genres I’m already into. I tried out Neverwinter myself shortly after my World of Warcraft sub expired to see if I could find something that scratches the itch without requiring a subscription cost. Like Medic, I was also attracted to the game’s Dungeons & Dragons background since I’ve been playing the tabletop version since undergrad, and while I enjoyed what little time I spent as a Tiefling warlock, I found most of her criticisms to be pretty accurate. On the other side of the coin, when she recommends a game (like Quiplash) it tends to be everything promised and more.
On WordPress 5.0
Medic experienced WordPress 5 before I did, and I still wasn’t prepared for just how frustrating block editing turned out to be. I get that they were trying to make a simplistic system that anyone could create content with, but it’s so frustrating when you just want to type things into a big text box and your own interface is refusing to cooperate. The new system is so poorly designed, it reminds me of Windows 8 with how inefficiently it uses my screen space. What’s the point of a 1920×1080 monitor when 60% of it is unused white space? Why is the new “Switch to Block” button right where the “Add Featured Image” button used to go that looks exactly the same? And kiss your sanity good-bye if you port any articles forward from the classic editor and want to make any changes in the converted block form. I’m extremely grateful Medic mentioned the Classic Editor plugin, because I’d have probably given up on article-writing altogether if I were forced to write permanently in block.
A Battle of Healers – The TF2 Medic VS The TFC Medic
Medic seems to be the only other writer out there who does articles on Team Fortress Classic, and I don’t even mean just on SPUF. When I gave a lecture on TFC to my fellow students in the UCSC Game Design masters, most of them had never even heard of the game. I’m also the only author on DailyEsports.gg who’s mentioned the game in an article. It doesn’t deserve to be as forgotten as it is, having given birth to two of the biggest concepts in shooters (headshots and class-based multiplayer), so I appreciate Medic doing her part for its exposure. I’ve also gotten so much mileage out of her SFM picture of TFC Medic flying through the air gleefully carrying a conc grenade since it’s the best picture anyone on the internet has made to showcase TFC Medic’s playstyle.
The Property Owner – How I play Saints Row: the Third
Medic and I are both huge fans of the Saints Row series. We’ve played it together, we’ve written a bunch of articles on it, and it’s my personal favorite open-world series of all time, so I didn’t think there was anything left for me to learn about the gameplay. But then I read this article and learned I was completely ignoring a huge part of the game, one that let you hit endgame levels of money really, really fast. Medic’s done a much better job than me delving into the various aspects of the game, from vehicles to mods to comparisons between the games in the series. Personally, I think 2 is the best game in the series but 3 has the most replayability value, kinda like the relationship between Payday the Heist and Payday 2. Speaking of which…
The No Mercy Heist
Video games are all about experiences. Their goal is to create exciting memories of fantastic adventures, and Medic is the best writer on SPUF when it comes to chronicling awesome experiences. Unlike most of our other articles, which cover game mechanics, how-to guides, comparisons, and other more typical journalistic fare, Medic’s recount articles cut straight to the core of what gaming is really about. Whether it’s a good game like Warhammer Vermintide or a bad game like Overkill: The Walking Dead (or both somehow, like Planetside 2) it’s nice to just read anecdotes of someone’s experience within the game’s world.
It was almost six years ago that Medic submitted her first two articles to the Daily SPUF, and since then even I’m amazed at how she’s largely single-handedly transformed this site into the longstanding news site it is today. SPUF as a community isn’t as united as we once were–an expected consequence of our home forums getting shut down–but thanks to Medic, the Daily SPUF has been able to do its part to keep a bit of that flame alive.