The ninth RPS Christmas Cracker 2025 centers on Home Features, a themed entry in which eight RPS writers trade jokes and reflections after a year of work. The piece treats the domestic space as fertile ground for creative play, turning everyday life into a stage for gaming culture’s humor. In tone, it sits comfortably within the magazine’s year-end tradition: affectionate, quietly knowing, and unapologetically nerdy about its own process.
Eight scribes from Rock Paper Shotgun are presented as a close-knit team whose year-long graft is acknowledged with self-deprecating wit. The cracker notes the effort behind the jokes and the long arc of a holiday project that still finds room for lightness. It also uses the form to acknowledge supporters and community, with a cheeky nod that January can lead, but the writing continues. The centerpiece moment arrives in a short exchange that turns marshland conquest into a pun: "Q: What do you say when conquering marshland politely? A: Is This Peat Taken?" This line embodies the collage of wordplay and domestic humor that defines the piece.
Beyond the pun, the Home Features concept functions as a meta-commentary on how gaming journalism survives and thrives in ordinary spaces. The eight-authored dispatch blends nostalgia for past crackers with a recognition of modern constraints: the time pressures, the community expectations, and the impulse to share something both personal and communal. The poem-like prose throughout mixes corniness with craft, inviting readers to linger over lines that might have felt out of place in a more formal review, but which fit snugly into the cracker’s tradition.
It also nods to a familiar rhythm for RPS readers: a Christmas joke, a call to supporters, and the sense of seasonal camaraderie. Phrases like “O, reader of wonder, loved the most,” and “See you once we’ve munched our roasts” place the piece inside a familiar holiday frame, while still reflecting the site’s appetite for playful invention. The format resembles a series of micro-essays, each a snapshot of a home-grown joke performed by colleagues who spend their days writing about games, then switch to a more intimate, kitchen-table form of storytelling. The result is not a single punchline but a miniature anthology that captures how gaming culture can feel intimate and collective at once.
Placed within the broader culture of Rock Paper Shotgun, the ninth cracker adds texture to a year defined by community, charity, and the ongoing tension between online media’s public-facing voice and its backstage labor. Home Features becomes a lens on how a site builds identity through collaboration, humor, and the shared ritual of a holiday gag. The image used to accompany the piece — a warm, frenzied aura suggested by the Frankenstein motif in the accompanying artwork — reinforces the sense of playful reconstruction that characterizes the cracker: familiar parts reassembled with affection into something new for readers to enjoy. In the end, the piece remains a cultural artifact rather than a traditional news item: a playful, communal breather that marks the year’s end and invites readers to join the ongoing conversation, whether through subscriptions or casual engagement.
The ninth Christmas Cracker closes by extending a simple invitation: engage, laugh, and return in the new year to see how a group of game writers turns their house into a stage for shared humor.
