[TRENCHES] Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - Non-Disclosure

Geth

Non-Disclosure
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/non-disclosure

No one cares about the red shirts

Anonymous

In a MMO company I’ve been with for three years, I see the same thing happen over and over. Release a weak product, lay off staff to cut costs. Release a decent product, lay off staff not needed for continuing development. And every time development staff are laid off, you can always find a story about it on Kotaku, and see the lovely outpouring of support from fans.

But below that, there are the wage slaves. The QA staff and the Customer Support staff holding the line. Suffering long hours, angry phone calls, low wages, just to be considered ‘Part of the Industry’.

And inevitably, layoffs will hit us too. We’ll lose good people, people who burned the candle at both ends for the company. You’ll never see the Kotaku story on that one. We’re not trendy enough to care about.

So here’s to the red shirts, the nameless faces who give their all for an industry that doesn’t care about them. You deserve more respect than you’re given.

milski

I've said it before and I think I'll say it again: Trenches is being written like it's a sitcom. A lot of the gags feel like they are relying on the viewer to supply their own voices to the characters and provide energy to them, and have a lot of lines that work with the flow of conversation on a sitcom but don't translate well to text. E.g. when Cora says "We aren't going to get along..." I can definitely see that being said in a sitcom, but in a webcomic it feels like they just weren't confident Cora could look disdainful enough visually.

I might be overthinking it, and that style can work; Penny Arcade does a lot of those "conversation" strips, and while I'm not a huge fan, plenty of people are. But I just don't think it's amazing webcomic writing, and it's certainly less interesting than when The Trenches had a (mostly) coherent plot with jokes worked in.

DJSquiggy

"Prince's his name was a symbol"? i guess it was Marley who said it.