[DevBlog] Postbag and Gallery

[Mil]

http://services.runescape.com/m=devblog/view_post.ws?post_id=36

Its a strange thing to say about your job, but a RuneScape editor wants their work to be invisible and unnoticed. You dont want typos to be found in game, and you certainly dont want Knowledge Base errors to be highlighted on the forums. In fact, by just mentioning the editor role, you are probably scouring my text for grammatical inconsistencies (Id do the same, by the way).

 

Thats not to say that were the shadowy word-ninjas that the introduction implies, no matter how much we want to be. We get involved with some enjoyable projects that are visible, and these can be appreciated by a large number of people. For this dev blog, Ill reveal our work in a couple of them: the Postbag from the Hedge and the Players Gallery.

 

Postbag from the Hedge

 

Every month or so, we comb the Postbag inbox for your letters. There are oodles to read - we have 618 waiting right now - and it can take many hours to pick the best.

 

If youve ever sent a letter into the Postbag, youll want to know why some are picked and others are unused. Personally, I prefer succinct letters to interesting NPCs, or letters to NPCs we havent heard from in some time. We also like a varied tone in the Postbag, so we pick a mixture of humorous letters, letters that explore RuneScapes history, and those that allow us to reveal a little about future content. Were suckers for Evil Dave, Party Pete and the penguins, but dont all send your letters to them; theyre lovely to visit occasionally, but can you imagine living with them?

 

I hope were not shattering illusions by revealing that we, the editors, write the replies, and not the characters themselves. We do, however, submit all letters to the characters parents (i.e. the developer who created them or, if that developer has left, the one who curates that content) to guarantee that all text is in the characters voice and suitable. Well also pass the Postbag under the nose of Mod Mark, who makes sure that the quality is strong and the spoilers arent too spoilerific. He has a definite plan for RuneScape over the coming years, and we have to adhere to it in the same way that game content does.

 

We couldnt talk about the Postbag without mentioning the Chaos Elemental. For any fan of the Future Updates forum, the Chaos Elemental is the Postbag, and on a personal note, it is the best part of my job. We see the Chaos Elementals letters as a battle of wits with you, the readers. Each and every time, we will try to use new methods of confounding you - the periodic table and Teeline Shorthand was used this time round - but we get beaten repeatedly. Sometimes it can take a couple of days for all the hints to be found, but the Chaos Elemental is generally decoded on the Future Updates forum within hours. Next time, Future Updates, next time.

 

Players Gallery

 

Like the Postbag from the Hedge, the Players Gallery is collated once a month from its individual email alias. There are fewer submissions for this feature, but that is understandable when you see the quality of what we receive; often we receive artwork that must have taken hours, days even, to create.

 

Unlike the Postbag, however, the Players Gallery is nearly all your work: we just get the enviable job of picking our favourites. The Gallery also causes more arguments than the Postbag, as the definition of a good gallery image is different for each editor. I will lean towards unusual images, a variety of media and more colourful depictions; previous curators have leaned towards cuter artwork or dark and epic images. Still, a stunning image will knock any Gallery curators socks off: just look at this months Bandos Armour image.

 

Once chosen, the images are input into HTML, tested and translated. Well then do a plagiarism check, where every employee of Jagex takes a minute to scan them for anything they recognise as traced or scanned from another source (one Yu-Gi-Oh dragon managed to escape us last year). Unfortunately, there have also been occasions where players have taken anothers artwork and submitted it as their own, but we attempt to catch these as soon as we can.

 

To a RuneScape editor, the Postbag and Gallery are a joy to work on, but the priority is and always will be in-game content. Hundreds of thousands will play the newest piece of content, while a Postbag will see a fraction of that. We do get to edit the dialogue for some hugely interesting characters (imps are Cockney, by the way), so the Postbag and Gallery arent sorely missed.

 

You may also have noted a few months when the Postbag and Gallery went AWOL, and wed like to apologise for that. A huge backlog of edits and Knowledge Base pages meant that they had to be delayed, but weve got a steely determination to make them more regular from now on. You can count on your loyal and shadowy word-ninjas.

[Racheya]

You... you... you mean that... the NPCs don't actually reply? :cry: :cry:

[Ambler]

I know you find it hard to belive, but yes, the replys are faked :'( I knew most of this already from talking to my J-mod friends irl :P (yes I get SOME spoilers!)

[Racheya]

At least I still have Santa... <3:

 

Anyway, quite an interesting read and well written (though I don't think we can expect anything less). I'm no good at the Chaos Elemental clues but I know a lot of people here love them and are right on them when they come out :P

[Danqazmlp]

One thing i do find fairly funny. They mention the bandos picture by Vaporage knocking their socks off, and then go on to say how they try their best to stop plagiarism. But from what i remember, Vaporage didn't send in his picture, it was sent by somebody else. (it has however since been amended with his name)

[Den]

The Shadowy Word-ninjas. :P

 

Dont think id be able to keep my wits if I had to read 615+ letters though.

[Sy_Accursed]

One thing i do find fairly funny. They mention the bandos picture by Vaporage knocking their socks off, and then go on to say how they try their best to stop plagiarism. But from what i remember, Vaporage didn't send in his picture, it was sent by somebody else. (it has however since been amended with his name)

 

Well if they have ammended it to his name would it not be a prime example that they have done their best to stop plagiarism?

[Omali]

I hope were not shattering illusions by revealing that we, the editors, write the replies, and not the characters themselves.

 

Childhood...ruined.

[Romy]

Atleast the creators of the NPCs (usualy) reply :(...

[Big_Stingman]

This dev blog was kind of boring lol. At least something to read though I guess. :mellow:

[Mirror]

Atleast the creators of the NPCs (usualy) reply :(...

That is something I enjoyed. I did not know they go back asking for the creator of the NPC to reply in the spoken word of the character. It may had been obvious but I was surprised by it and appreciate it. Plus I too could not read that many letters before going crazy. I hit like 2 and I am done, and that's a good day. :P

[Youmu]

Aww that sucks. I thought the NPCs really did reply to the player letters. :(

 

Still, they did a good job sounding just like the NPCs. :)