History Part 1:
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Warpgate
Jokes, performance art, and the precursor to the PressCorps.
By Geoffrey Jennings (CaptainInArms)
September 29th, 2014 - The very first broadcast/performance of Radio Free Auraxis, recorded by [TIW] Armstrongg (LeArmstrong on Twitch) in a completely chance encounter. It was an instant hit, validating the concept and giving me the confidence to move forward with it.
The story of the PressCorps begins in one of the most innovative and storied MMOs in the video game medium. A military sandbox where hundreds of players can square off against hundreds of other players in grand, combined arms battles:
2012's Planetside 2.
There, my days as CaptainInArms of the [VCO] Voodoo Shipping Company outfit taught me everything there is to know about the genre.
The drama on the forums, the scheduling across timezones, the TeamSpeak tinkering to set up channel commander, the hours of strategy meetings for a 90-minute alert.
I made a lot of cherished memories flying over the continents of planet Auraxis with people I still think of fondly today. Simultaneously, I was never good at combat in any game, and Planetside was no exception, so I made up for it by using the microphone.
Early broadcasts of Radio Free Auraxis. Performed live at the Emerald warpgates. All recordings are done from other people's POV, and no 1st-person recordings were ever made.
Taking to the New Conglomerate warpgates on the Mattherson (now Emerald) server, Radio Free Auraxis was nothing more than a string of one-liners taking potshots at Planetside's culture, framed as a news broadcast. I enjoyed the cheesy novelty of it, particularly ending every performance with "good night and good fight." It was fun to write and perform. Every now and then it was funny for the people listening.
But I also had people's attention, so what else could I do with that?
An RFA weekly update video, marrying real news on Planetside 2 with an air of parody.
A REALLY bad sketch compilation. The difficulty of providing good visuals would make a case for dedicating to an audio-only radio.
A RFA interview with PlanetsideBattles organizer and community mainstay Lanzer.
An EVEN WORSE parody of the BBC, aired at the warpgates of the European-based Cobalt server.
The project eventually evolved into pre-recorded weekly update videos covering the game's development, culture and community. It established a foundation of providing real news while still maintaining that undercurrent of cheeky to dry parody - a foundation the PressCorps would later build upon.
However as the weekly videos began to catch up with the sparse game updates, the game development news turned into speculation, and many of the scripts (that thankfully never saw production) turned into poorly-informed opinion pieces. The project had become a blog that was at the mercy of the most dramatic Reddit threads and dumbest Command Chat arguments.
This taught me a valuable lesson: There is a responsibility to everything you put out into the world, even if you're doing it as a joke. YouTube news, Reddit posts, Discord messages, even a simple poster made in MS Paint - if it can affect people in any way, there's some kind of power there.
Simultaneously, Planetside 2 was entering its dark years, with the developers being tossed around investors and the future of the game looking stale.
Being so closely tied to the game, the concept of "game news in the game" seemed to run its course.
Then another game appeared on the front page of Steam.
A typical OPs night with the Voodoo Shipping Company with two of its staple features - Galaxy-based rapid redeployment and after-OPs games to decompress. In this case, light vehicle races across the continent.
[VCO]'s guide to Planetside 2 squad leadership, featuring many pieces of advice that still hold up today, and my first-ever voice over. Many of the lessons I learned in PS2 I brought over to Foxhole. In particular, how to lead people in a way that makes sure the people you're leading is always having fun.
The final moments of the infamous "Mergersmash" that decided the naming rights of two servers that were meant to merge, with Mattherson server playing Vanu Sovereignty and Waterson playing Terran Republic. Mattherson's [VCO] dropped off a critical shipment of troops in the final minutes on the remaining tower, joining others in capturing the winning point. Despite this, the victory was still too close to definitively call, and the merged server was named "Emerald", as it is known today.
Focus on [VCO]'s capture, perhaps the ultimate display of the outfit's signature rapid-redploy airborne tactics.
[VCO] doing what it does best as a community: taking a horrible situation that destroyed all your plans and doing shitty meme tactics to entertain ourselves. And somehow still winning.
"Senior Command" - A commissioned art piece by Hokunin, featuring mainstays of the Emerald New Conglomerate's [VCO] outfit.
From top/left to bottom/right: Titanfall, YuriKitsuneAshi, Dicerson, Hatsunemiki, Kyp, Stormpaw, Merrydownjade, cfschris, Infinint, Einzelkmapfer, CaptainInArms.
In Planetside, squads are limited up to 12 players. The 12th person not pictured is representative of the rest of the outfit, piloting the landed Galaxy.
It hangs as a framed picture, gifted to me by Infinit, in my personal office.