I think you missed some of it...
I sure hope not, I read it a few times...
We enjoyed the story, it was a good read, but Yahtzee falls at a few common hurdles. For a start, the ghost - however realistic - was a weak character. The ghost was like Yahtzee desperately wanting to cause those stereotypical nerds some harm, for being stereotypical nerds.
I've known guys like Greg, professional victims who are happiest when the world is out to get them. He was a weak character, yes, but he was supposed to be: and he was perfectly believable for what he was. He wasn't weak "because" he was a nerd, he was weak because he was addicted to his own unhappiness and would take no steps whatsoever to improve his own life, prefering just to whine and mope and make other people feel sorry for him. It was
that willful helplessness that was his damning trait, not his identification with nerd culture.
We didn't want "more funny" we wanted his style to be more clear cut. He tends to try and make it a comedy and a drama, which doesn't work well, so he should either go all out humour, or be more subtle about it.
I don't know what you mean. Subtle how?
String jokes together and call that a story? It wouldn't be. And the thing that makes Trilby (and by extension Yahtzee's) voice worth reading is it's dry wit.
Abbreviations are bad! MoO? No, write Ministry of Occultism in full, or invent some kind of nickname to put in for it. We didn't like "MSN" at all either, it made it too real. We were snapped out of the story and into reality, which interrupts the story and some of the magic of being lost in the story's world is lost.
If I know what MoO stands for, I don't see why I should read it more times then I have to, and likewise, if a character WAS on MSN then say so and lets move on. A story world can contain real things, even instant messaging programs and Ministries with awkward abriviations. Google "moo" sometime and you'll see it's actually a pretty common anagram.
His writing's a little too predictable too. Then we started talking about how Zero Punctuation won't last forever, we will eventually tire of it, so hopefully Yahtzee will get another job and stop at the end of its peak. Don't keep milking the cow after its dry!
I hope Yahtzee keeps doing Zero Punctuation for as long as they keep paying him for it. I was a bit worried that all the reviewing all the time would wither his other talents, but he's clearly guarding against that by doing things like writing this short story.
When journalists switch from covering games to creating them it doesn't tend to end well (see DMC2 for evidence) but Yahtzee was making games himself long before he was reviewing them, plus he seems to actually give a crap about his work being good. I think he'll be alright. He's one hell of a smart guy.