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Penny Arcade in the New York Times

Posted by Zonk on from the they're-just-doing-it-because-we-interviewed-them dept.

Just a few weeks after our interview with Penny Arcade, the Washingtonians have landed in a feature article on the NYT Technology page (registration required). They even mostly get what the strip is about. From the article: "The strips usually feature the authors' alter egos, Gabriel and Tycho, who exist in a slightly surreal world where obsolete electronic components are drunk, vulgarity and cartoon violence run rampant, vegan damned souls roam and debates about whether the newest video game is awesome or overblown become a matter of life or death."

34 comments

  1. Child's Play... by Schezar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So a major news outlet does a story on the most popular webcomic in the world, and fails to mention that said web comic also runs a massive charity for children?

    I would think it was at least worth mentioning.

    --
    GeekNights!
    Late Night Radio for Geeks!
    1. Re:Child's Play... by Baikala · · Score: 1

      All other mass media is getting to know penny-arcade through "Child's Play". I Don't get how this article overlooks that.

      --
      16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
    2. Re:Child's Play... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Somehow, the term "most popular webcomic" begs about as much respect as "most popular weblog" or "best-tasting airline food."

      Gabe & Tycho should be proud that they're getting recognition in a forum that thousands of 'Net-heads claim is obsolete.

    3. Re:Child's Play... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also mixed up which one writes and which one draws, leaving me wondering if they were still mixed up in all the quotes. Since most of the quotes were attributed to Gabe, the one who rarely speaks in interviews, I suspect they're wrong throughout. Of course, I could only read the first page, so I could be wrong.

    4. Re:Child's Play... by jnik · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is a hole in the article....

      Reading carefully, the second to last paragraph seems to be the lead-in to a list of other community-building activities. Then the last paragraph says they aren't "Samaritans," which wouldn't be anything like the impression one would get from the article as it stands.

      I suspect an editor got chop-happy.

      I'm amused by quotes from Scott McCloud and Infinium labs, though.

    5. Re:Child's Play... by Zonk · · Score: 1

      I know!

      I thought that was a huge oversight as well.
      Good to know I'm not the only one.

  2. First bitches! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah

  3. slashdotted by XO · · Score: 0

    and now, penny-arcade.com is slashdotted :(

    --
    "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
    1. Re:slashdotted by xerxesVII · · Score: 0

      Their site's been acting up for over a week. I higly doubt this is a dotting.

      --
      "We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
    2. Re:slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good, maybe after actually seeing it they will complain to the NYT as to why they had an article on this trash.

      Then again, you can thank the guys a PA for reinforcing the typical gamer stereo type, socially inept people who enjoy sophomoric humor involving sex, bashing homosexuals, and obsessive swearing. Provided people actually view them, their forums provide more then enough evidence to them that what PA makes "fun" of is a disturbing reality.

      Just think of the forums as a hangout for their intended audience, Joe Sixpack Gamer, which is a step up from Joe Sixpack Deer Hunter Gamer.

    3. Re:slashdotted by bigman2003 · · Score: 1

      So how many gamers out there do not enjoy sophomoric humor, do not say things like "that's gay" or "Fag!", and don't cuss up a storm when they get sniped just after a spawn?

      Really...we're gamers, so evidently something stunted our emotional growth..and I am a happier (36 year old) man for it.

      I couldn't imagine life without idiotic humor, homosexual humor or swearing...if I got rid of all that, I'd be a butt-fuckin'-fag.

      (Of course, I need to add the standard Seinfeldian 'but there is nothing wrong with that' disclaimer here...while I have never tasted the savory juices of another man, I'm not really concerned whether you have, or not. On the other hand, just about every boy in America was raised with an over-abundance of gay jokes and innuendo, which for most of us has carried on into adulthood. Just yesterday, the power went out at work...and of course in a room full of guys, we all started to say things like "geez Dave, get your lips off my balls"...as far as I can tell, this type of thing is absolutely normal for every guy I have met (straight, or gay) who doesn't have some severe hangups about sex, homosexuality, or seeing his father in the shower.)

      --
      No reason to lie.
    4. Re:slashdotted by slungsolow · · Score: 1

      PA is always under extreme duress. Their servers, webspace, and bandwidth are donated by the kind folks at Homelan.

      I am also under the impression that they are working on a faster loading (perhaps less graphical) CMS for the new year. Take that with a grain of salt though, I really don't know if its going to happen.

    5. Re:slashdotted by blincoln · · Score: 1

      On the other hand, just about every boy in America was raised with an over-abundance of gay jokes and innuendo, which for most of us has carried on into adulthood.

      I was raised with an over-abundance of racist jokes. Does that mean it's acceptable for me to use that kind of "humour" now? All in good fun, of course.

      There is a very thinly-veiled contempt for gays and lesbians in America right now, whether it be in the form of Southern Baptists' paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of a gay conspiracy or phrases like "that's so gay," that just serve to emphasize the perception of homosexuals as second-class citizens, like they have a disability (ie using "gay" as equivalent to "that's so retarded/lame").

      I mean, unless I'm missing something and gamers have evened the playing field by throwing in an "only a slant-eyed gook could miss that shot" here, and a "what was that, you wife-beating white trash piece of shit" there.

      It's certainly possible to have genuinely funny, non-derogatory gay-related humour (e.g. Kids in the Hall), but slurs are not a part of it.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    6. Re:slashdotted by KevinKnSC · · Score: 1

      What they really need to do is switch to a system that generates static pages. The errors I always get on viewing their site have to do with the database, which they hit on every page view even though the page only changes a handful of times each week. The forums are really the only part of the site that need server side scripting.

    7. Re:slashdotted by XO · · Score: 1

      goddamn, that's so freakin' gay.

      er...

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  4. Don't like Registration? by funny-jack · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try this.

    --
    You probably shouldn't click this.
  5. Remember... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Login: SlashdotNYT
    Password: SlashdotNYT

    to get past the registration...

  6. NYT's confused on their roles by ostermei · · Score: 4, Informative
    The two met in high school, where they collaborated on "really terrible projects," Mr. Krahulik said. He wrote, Mr. Holkins illustrated, and they left their "bad superhero" booklets in comic book shops in the hope that someone would pick up a copy.
    That's a little backwards. Gabe (Krahulik) is the illustrator and Tycho (Holkins) is the writer, although Tycho HAS drawn for them before... with dire consequences. Not only was the art abhorrent (sorry, Tycho... just leave it to Gabe.), but this strip was during Year One, where the characters had not yet been named. This was (as I understand it) a sort of half-assed attempt to stop everyone from asking for names for the characters. The strip didn't go over so well, as it was seen as something of a cop-out, and so as time went on, the guys gradually shifted into the current situation, where the characters are, in fact, the creators' alter egos.
    --
    "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
    1. Re:NYT's confused on their roles by Destoo · · Score: 1

      Weird.. that link gave me, instead of the comic itself, a single text line.

      "jack john that out way fricking time thang up"

      Maybe Tycho and Gabe love bees?

      --
      Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
    2. Re:NYT's confused on their roles by UWC · · Score: 2, Informative

      The archive search functionality on the site uses the alternate text of the embedded strip images for the search keywords. Those are just the keywords they chose for that strip. Recent strips haven't had keywords and are thus currently unsearchable (only accessible by the drop-down menu with ALL strips listed and by navigating through chronologically). I'm not sure why they haven't been keeping up with that.

      Tycho does love tending his bees, though.

      --
      Honor Among Slackers. A veri
  7. Ahh.. wonderful... by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now hundreds of thousands of NYT readers are going to go to the website and see a comic strip of a guy having a fiery car accident and looking all bloody and mangled afterwards...

    And they're not going to look at the previous installments because that's too hard.

    So this will become their opinion of all video game webcomics. "Ah... yes... extreme non-sensical violence... Ahh, much too banal for me, I must return to the comforting prose of Cathy."

    1. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by StocDred · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Yeah, unfortunate timing, since they're into a continuity series that has little to do with video games. Then again, this happens quite a bit - see the line-dancing series, the golf series, etc. PA Wish List: More strips about games, and put the current comic right on the freaking main page.

      Will I be immediately modded down if I suggest that the Cardboard Tube Samarai is an overblown unfunny self-indulgent in-joke that reveals the lads as high on their own celebrity?

    2. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by pezpunk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      well, the ORIGINAL CTS comic was funny, but then they took it too far.

      the

      --
      i could live a little longer in this prison
    3. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What, you think that one "comic strip" alone will make them form that opinion?

      Come on, this is a "comic" that claimed someone had sex with dead dogs! Why the NYT would actually write up an article on this trash is beyond me, if they really wanted to write about real gamer web comics they would have done one about Real Life, PVP, Angst Technology, etc and not PA.

    4. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by Shadarr · · Score: 1

      I always kind of chuckle when Tycho refers to "dreaded continuity" because I really do dread it. Or to put it another way, they suck at it. Any time they do a series of related comics, they go from doing a dialog-driven humour comic to some sort of graphic drama style, which in addition to not being funny also doesn't have much of a plot, or at least not a particularly interesting one. The line dancing thing in particular was a completely uninspired retelling of Karate Kid. Did that really need to be done?

      Then again, I generally don't find the comic that funny even when they're doing their usual thing. I read the comic so that I'll know what Tycho's talking about in the first paragraph of his blog. For a funny gaming comic, I prefer UAC.

      --
      Bite the hand.
    5. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by sahrss · · Score: 1

      Good! We don't want that kind of idiot in our community anyway.

      And I don't care if what idiots think about me is wrong. If they took time to look into it, they'd have an informed and different opinion; anyone who doesn't bother doesn't have an opinion strong enough to matter.

    6. Re:Ahh.. wonderful... by Starsmore · · Score: 1
      Kevin Bachus? Is that you?

      For shame, hiding behind the AC post, when you have all that flimflam to hide behind!!

      --
      "If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
  8. Nooo!!! by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shoo! Shoo! Today's NYT is supposed to be all about Firefox :p

    I kid, I kid.

    --
    ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
  9. Scott McCloud by Tofino · · Score: 1, Interesting
    1. How did Scott McCloud weasel his way into this article? And how sad is it that he's still "best-known" for Zot!, which was around in the late 80s and early 90s?

    2. Zero mention of Child's Play. Well-researched.

    1. Re:Scott McCloud by Pxtl · · Score: 2, Informative

      Scott has managed to weasel his way into being the industry advocate for Webcomics. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but he's now the point-of-contact for the press. Sucks, don'it?

    2. Re:Scott McCloud by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 2, Informative

      Scott has managed to weasel his way into being the industry advocate for Webcomics. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but he's now the point-of-contact for the press. Sucks, don'it?

      I would argue that Scott is by far best known for his book "Understanding Comics." His own comic ventures are obscure and unknown.

      Scott has also turned into the advocate for the independent artist/developer of any kind of media. He wrote a column for Computer Gaming World, which was essentially "Understanding Comics" applied to games. But he came across as naive, I think.

  10. That still made me log in! Try... by antdude · · Score: 2, Informative

    here. ;)

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  11. Missed a bit by Yer+Mom · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...who exist in a slightly surreal world where obsolete electronic components are drunk, vulgarity and cartoon violence run rampant, vegan damned souls roam
    ...and oranges are scared.
    --
    Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?