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As an ex-panelologist I must say I do enjoy a few comics on the web, but they tend to be the shorter daylies, such as Penny Arcade.

However, balancing a laptop on your lap whilst reading the latest comic on the loo is not such a rewarding experience as flicking through the pulp of printed comics.

Whoops, minor correction. Should have had a dash in that URL... penny-arcade.com.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2004-03- 19

Read up, jackass

It has one of those compelling interfaces, too. I spent half a minute trying to figure out how to read the article.

Any game comes to a point when everything is known about it. It gets boring. How are you going to prevent that? See what I mean?

Harry Knowles is a whore.

Harry Knowles is a whore.

how Blizzard is dealing with the problem of servers and user load?

Uh, they pseudo-officially "returned" the GotY award several weeks ago (see here), and the servers have been stable for months now -- or at least they were stable several months ago when I quit playing.

PA even has several official guilds on the Dark Iron server, specifically to battle the official PvP guild(s).

I like that you tried to post something pithy, and yet merely showed that you know absolutely nothing about either WoW or Penny Arcade. Grats!

how Blizzard is dealing with the problem of servers and user load?

Uh, they pseudo-officially "returned" the GotY award several weeks ago (see here), and the servers have been stable for months now -- or at least they were stable several months ago when I quit playing.

PA even has several official guilds on the Dark Iron server, specifically to battle the official PvP guild(s).

I like that you tried to post something pithy, and yet merely showed that you know absolutely nothing about either WoW or Penny Arcade. Grats!

What are you going to use to back it up?...

A backup drive of course

But seriously now. The USPS is not independent. You wouldn't call me "independent" from my girlfriend if I required her signature to spend money, would you? It's a government-owned, government-regulated corporate entity. The fact that it's "corporate" doesn't make it "independent" at all!

And it's a federal offense in the same way that many kinds of tamperings with federal affairs are. Destruction of currency, for example. Feel free to assume it's not a federal offense, though. A few discarded envelopes, and we won't have to worry about you posting on Slashdot anymore. Or do they have the Internets in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison now?

Somehow, your post just reminds me of this

Mein Thirsten!

Man, that's still funny. Thirsten.

This was _three years ago._ Are we through fighting this spectre, or are we in for the second round? Why didn't EA keep up with this sort of thing? _EA_ of all people/companies.

What? Like this?

There is/was an exchange market designed just for this very purpose:

http://gamingopenmarket.com

They used to support a dozen or so game currencies, until someone scammed them through PayPal.

Now they only support the Second Life currency, since they are they are probably nearly the only MMO which encourages currency exchange (and they have also agreed to work with them if someone pulls another scam).

For a general overview of what happens in British English (aka English English), see the h2g2 style guidelines.
Personally, I would punctuate the above as "Some years ago, there was, in the city of York, a society of Magicians." - and I'm a Brit, and one who tends to be over-zealous when it comes to using commas, colons and periods. Maybe the author was trying to make it difficult to read in the same way that Shakespear is, but he/she should really have read Penny-Arcade if they wanted the likes of me to rate them over Asimov.

hating Micro$oft gives you +2 for credibility rolls.

http://img.penny-arcade.com/2002/20020722l.gif

I'm really lost by your post. The Xbox languished for almost a year before it sold much. Partially this was because of hardware availability, but partially it was because it only had one game. Really Xbox didn't start selling well until MechAssault came out. Just look at Penny Arcade.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2002-11- 22

On November 22, 2002 Tycho says: "It's been a good couple weeks for the Xbox, huh? It went from something I could mostly do without to something I use every day in the space of like eight days." Xbox was launched November 15, 2001. The PA guys finally turned on to a a year later. Does that seem like a great launch to you? Xbox only had one game worth having for a year, it was a good one, but one game isn't enough to make a great launch, let alone sustain a console for a year.

Gamecube did have some bad games, but as was pointed out elsewhere, Super Smash Bros Melee was out very quickly. Also, the Cube had Super Monkey Ball, which was an excellent group-play game.

PS2 had an average launch I would say. Despite what you say, SSX was a great game. SSX Tricky was better, once they got more time in to fix it up a bit. I still play Tricky to this day. If it weren't for Tricky, I'd still play the original SSX to this day (SSX 3 isn't as good in many ways). The rest of the PS2 titles were mediocre, as launch titles usually are.

Anyway, I would say your conclusion is incorrect. You say two consoles with poor launches are beating out one with a great launch. But you say the Xbox launch was great, when it wasn't. Really, it's a console with a decent launch (helped by being a DVD player at a time when not everyone owned one) beating out two with medicore launches.

Honestly, consoles never get good launches. It costs too much to delay launch until the games are good. The closest we get is when consoles come out in Japan first (with truly awful titles) and then come out in the US with 2nd gen titles. Also production usually ramps up slowly (and production costs down slowly) so it's nice to spread out adoption a little bit anyway.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2000-01- 31&res=l

IMO, the set will not be complete without a Greg Kasavin rookie card.

Or will they make fun of it?

• Watch out!
• That's Rubble
• Just Like You Remember, #2
• Fan Favorites, Vol. 2
• The Burrs And Barbs

• Watch out!
• That's Rubble
• Just Like You Remember, #2
• Fan Favorites, Vol. 2
• The Burrs And Barbs

• Watch out!
• That's Rubble
• Just Like You Remember, #2
• Fan Favorites, Vol. 2
• The Burrs And Barbs

• Watch out!
• That's Rubble
• Just Like You Remember, #2
• Fan Favorites, Vol. 2
• The Burrs And Barbs

• Watch out!
• That's Rubble
• Just Like You Remember, #2
• Fan Favorites, Vol. 2
• The Burrs And Barbs

While they haven't posted any hard specs yet, Nintendo has announced that Revolution will be two to three times as powerful as the Gamecube (there are other sources with this info, I just linked to the first one Google gave me). So there is somewhat of a basis for his comments. That being said, comparing it to the current generation gives us a fairly reliable metric for what to expect (none of the unshaded, untextured polygon numbers game bullshit), while we've yet to see any real-world information (Sony and Microsoft's E3 demos are anything but realistic) from the competition. Wait and see is the only option.

I like the idea of giving the old systems to the hospitals... Not only do you make some hurt or sick people a little more comfortable, but you might also get a tax write-off at the same time.

Except for one little thing; hospitals can't use your old consoles. Take a look at your controller. Go on, look at it. Notice the chee-to stains? When you see that, think "bacteria."

The Penny Arcade guys found out as research for their Child's Play campaign that if the console/toy/etc isn't factory sealed, the hospital doesn't want it. It's just more trouble than it's worth to them.

"It sounds like he's suggesting that developers work at home, develop open source, and pay their rent with what? fairy dust? good will?" It's all about micropayments: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2001-06- 22&res=l

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2002-11- 04

and the winner is...

The anonymity can give people delusions of granduer. ...as explained by John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

I gave the Tapwave Zodiac 2 a very top-shelf rating : "Natalie Portman"

This may help you understand him

Oh for crying out loud, I'm trying to get INTO the video game business! Why on earth would I want to witch hunt the industry that will eventually be giving me my annual salary?

And in case you think that it's just me, the old lady, and a bunch of crazy people, then perhaps I should show you what some of the people who ARE in the industry think!

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3142199

Sure they may not all be in favor of the recent decisions, but if even PENNY ARCADE is miffed at this whole thing, then something is definitly up!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-07- 20&res=l

I particularly find Dave Jaffe's exclamation very interesting. I think I'll go read his blog now.

~Otaku-Man

Penny Arcade comic and Tycho's newspost reviewing the game.

Penny Arcade comic and Tycho's newspost reviewing the game.

Curses, you beat me to the VGCats one.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-06- 08&res=l

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-06- 08

I'm pretty sure nobody has gone up in arms over the much-hated "time hack"

Rockstar are using the "time hack" for thier defense.

That reminds me of this a bit: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2002-11- 04&res=l

The problem isn't really that 3D is bad, and 2D is good, but rather that it's a lot more difficult to make a good 3D game than a good 2D game. A 2D game camera only needs to make sure the player is more-or-less centred on the screen, and can see enough of what's in front of them. A 3D camera has to worry about foreground objects that might obscure the camera, as well as get the proper angle so the player can see what they're supposed to do, and line up their attacks/jumps/whatever. The result is that there are a lot of 3D games that would've worked just fine in two dimensions is suddenly seriously flawed when transitioned to three.

You also mentioned the PoP games, which are probably one of the best examples of a well designed platformer in recent times. There are relatively few times where the camera gets in the way during critical moments. The controls are straight forward, and are easy enough to get the hang of. However, Warrior Within has one critical flaw -- they listened to the people who complained about SoT. Combat itself became less monotonous, but also much more common, which made it monotonous. In this case, I'm not sure if the cure is better or worse than the disease. I'm not sure I like the "asshole prince" in WW, either and I'm not sure how "more mature" equals swearing, and bigger breasts (and metal thong bikinis). Doing the platform puzzles while running from the Dahaka was fun, though.

Some games saw little or no change in the 3D transition. RTS, RPG and several sports games, for example, work equally well in 2D or 3D. The only real change is appearance (and perhaps a loss of eye candy features like zoom and rotation). Aside from developers who use 3D models but don't have the budget to create good 3D models, the introduction of 3D has changed these games very little. Other games are pretty much defined by being 3D. Racing games and FPS games are both examples (I know 2D racing games existed, but they're quite different from today's 3D games).

Speaking of "do-gooders", at least that moron Jack Thompson isn't mentioned in the article. That guy is so full of shit that he doesn't even care if anyone really takes him seriously as long as the morons in the media pay attention to him.

Interestingly enough, the most recent VG Cats deals with this topic, as does a recent Penny Arcade. It's nice to see a funny spin on this continuing GTA and "videogames kill!" bullshit.

Specially if you count the controllers: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2002-03- 25&res=l/

"... they or their neighbors with little or no english skills work so hard that they..."

"...that those people are who we collectively teach our children to idol."

Were you saying something about knowledge of English? The word is idolize. By the way, some people like to capitalize the word at the beginning of sentences and use punctuation.

It's the NEXT game, the Big New Thing, that will suck. :)

Will Wright's new game Pee?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2002-06- 14&res=l

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2001-05- 16&res=l/

This law means nothing when junior can get away with this kind of crap. And he does. He does every day.

A bit off-topic, but, Scott McCloud isn't one to be called informative.

And Rockstar shouldn't be at trial for anything as ridiculous as this. Our government has many more pressing matters at hand than getting angry at a publisher whose games were bought by parents who could (hopefully) see the ESRB rating and not care.