The eleventh RPS Christmas Cracker 2025 has landed, a festive mischief package from Rock Paper Shotgun that brings together eight scribes to dispense a year’s worth of jokes, wordplay, and self-aware jollity. In a season of seasonal humor, the piece continues RPS’s tradition of a tongue-in-cheek confection that rolls out after twelve months of graft and tends to become a talking point among readers. The text leans into familiar shorthands—from meta-quips about the site’s supporters posts to a playful nod to the site’s editorial cadence—and is designed as much for re-reading as for one-off laughs.
The core of the cracker is a compact, jokey verse that frames the project as a communal effort. The line-up is described as eight scribes from RPS who bear jokes and, in effect, a confession of fatigue—we wrote in the past, Christmas crackers, god we’re knackered, after twelve months of graft. The piece teases readers with a cheeky invitation to subscribe to Supporters posts, a common prompt across the site's seasonal humor.
The piece’s standout moment arrives in a succinct Q&A that sitcoms rarely approach with this economy:
Q: How do you indicate to the Ancient Greek cops which pair of underworld royals have cheekily ruined your plan for well-timed revenge? A: Hey, deez two. The joke’s blunt setup and punchline mirror the cracker’s broader embrace of quick, pun-driven gags that sit alongside longer riffs. It sits among a chain of comparable gags and self-referential bits that riff on the year’s events and on the act of delivering a Christmas cracker in a digital age.
The poem’s register is intentionally garrulous and self-mocking, underscoring the collective nature of the project. The note included with the piece—O, reader of wonder, loved the most, Why not subscribe to Supporters posts? January leading, still proceeding, See you once we’ve munched our roasts—reads as both confession and invitation. It marks the crackers as a by-product of a busy year and a sign that the team’s holiday salvos are a shared ritual with the audience.
In terms of craft, the piece blends shorthand riffs with longer comic flourishes, leaning into the evergreen humor of the PC-gaming press while letting the year’s events and the community’s in-jokes drive the cadence. It remains accessible to fans while maintaining the slightly insular charm that long-running outlets develop when they share a seasonal tradition with readers.
The eleventh cracker situates itself squarely in the middle ground of entertainment journalism: it’s not a breaking-news scoop but a curated, collaborative humor piece that testifies to the vitality of a dedicated readership. It also reflects the collective approach of RPS, where eight distinct voices converge to produce something that feels cohesive yet likes to wander into pun-laden detours. For readers, the message is clear: this is a festive bookmark—a reminder of the site’s personality and its ongoing rapport with its audience.
As a cultural artifact within gaming media, the Christmas Cracker underscores how entertainment outlets extend their brand beyond reviews and features into seasonal meta-content. The joke about Ancient Greek cops and underworld royalty may be a throwaway gag, but its inclusion signals that the crackers reward readers who follow the site’s ongoing humor and in-jokes. The piece remains a light but pointed reminder of how gaming journalism can blend tradition, humor, and community in a single holiday moment.
The published package is accessible through Rock Paper Shotgun’s All: The eleventh RPS Christmas Cracker 2025 feature, and it sits alongside the site’s broader annual tradition. The note about supporting posts reflects the site’s model for sustaining long-form humor and editorial coverage, while the jokey tone remains faithful to the season’s spirit. In looking ahead, fans can expect more of the same playful collaboration as the year turns.
Embedded images, such as the Horace Christmas Frankenstein illustration, add atmosphere to the cracker’s text and help convey its playful mood. The result is a compact, reader-friendly artifact that marks the end of 2025 with levity and community. For fans of Rock Paper Shotgun and of comic-strategy humor intertwined with gaming discourse, the eleventh Christmas Cracker serves as a concise capsule of the site’s approach to entertainment writing at year’s end.
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun - All: The eleventh RPS Christmas Cracker 2025