Tactical Thursday: Xiant’s Thoughts – Where is he now?
“Long-time” readers may remember that back in July, Top Tier Tactics featured its first (and thus far only) guest article, authored by Xiant. This collaboration was the result of a request by Xiant to share some of his work with T3.
After reading over his blog, Xiant’s Thoughts, I was quickly impressed with everything about it: great article ideas, well-written prose, and (of course) interesting takes on multiplayer gaming strategy. It would be an honor to have Xiant write something for Top Tier Tactics, I thought.
Possibility 1: Carmen Sandiego kidnapped Xiant. Possibility 2: Carmen Sandiego is Xiant.
Xiant’s guest article covered the role of story and lore in multiplayer games, an interesting angle considering most people don’t really play deathmatches as part of a larger quest to learn about character motivation. But Xiant offered some insight into how Valve has successfully integrated atmosphere and storytelling into what would otherwise be classified as a hat simulator, at best.
And while the post itself was probably a tad buried, given the avalanche of Golden Wrench related articles that followed, it certainly held a lot of promise for future work from Xiant, either with T3 or on his own site. Yet shortly after this collaboration, Xiant vanished from the Internet, leaving only a blog post toying with the idea of quitting gaming.
Where did this great strategist and writer go?
While I don’t know what happened to Xiant, and whether or not he actually gave up gaming, his blog is still a treasure trove of interesting articles. Here are some of the highlights:
- Assorted reviews and reactions to each of the Team Fortress 2 class updates
- A series of K/D ratio analyses as it applies to all FPS (including single-player gaming!)
- Strategy and tactics for every single aspect of Battlefield Bad Company 2
- Poignant personal articles and other real-life issues
- Medal of Honor previews, thoughts, and reactions
- Many other unique takes on established gaming franchises
If you know what happened to Xiant, who took him, and how much they want for a ransom, let us know immediately. As long as the terrorists want an amount under $31,000, there might be a way that money could… appear.
Of course if you are Xiant or if you’re another similarly skilled, insightful writer and are interested in contributing to Top Tier Tactics, drop us a line.
Just try not to get kidnapped, okay?
