At pax '05 I asked the question.
"has penny arcade ever thought about getting into game development?"
I remember jerry responding to my question with (please excuse my horrible, terrible paraphrasing)
" I feel it would cross the line since we review games mostly"
I am curious to wonder what changed since pax '05 and my question. Don't get me wrong, I think this will be enjoyable. I would just like some filler as to what motivated this project to begin with.
Posts
Honestly I think we just needed the right opportunity. I don't think we ever expected to be allowed this much control over a game. We'd been approached plenty of times about doing an animated series and it always ends up the same way. That is us essentially giving up creative control and simply licensing the name. The deal hothead presented us was a true collaboration and that was exciting.
When Half Life 2 announced episodic content and we started seeing little mini pay-to-download patches like the horse armor in Oblivion you guys railed away at it, insulting the people who masterminded those moneymaking schemes.
This isn't another hypocritic oath bit, is it?
I would assume that stuff like Sam & Max helped a bit.
1) horse armor was/is a COSMETIC enhancement for oblivion that they felt the need to charge for, most gamers felt this to be a betrayal of their trust. this is because for 2.50 or 250 Microsoft fun bucks, you got nothing other than glitter for your pony.
2) episodic content for half life 2 was welcomed because while every so often you would be charged 19.99 to 29.99 (depending on package/content) you received an ACTUAL game! there was plot, game play and extras to consider (portal/tf2 anyone?)
The reason horse armor pissed the gamer community off? they did nothing to oblivion that merited any monetary transaction. if they had instead created an storyline involving a blacksmith and saving his daughter to receive a "wonderful gift" that just happened to be horse armor with +1 to sparkling in the sun.. well then, perhaps they would have felt that it was worth a petty 2.50
you have a point, but still, you get a good deal of content for your gaming dollar.. the time period issue is going to fix itself soon i hope.
but think of it this way, with episode 2, we are getting 3 games. portal, tf2 and ep2.
thats a lot of content and game play to balance, plan, and code.