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Penny Arcade - Comic - Rejuvenator
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Rejuvenator
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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The H in Aftermath is really annoying me. Also it's barely readable. But especially the H.
If you read it backwards it says "Hail Satan."
Finally, a site aligned to my interests
As an aside, I was surprised to hear that Ben Crowshaw doesn't hold the rights to Zero Punctuation, seeing as how the series predates his involvement with The Escapist
I imagine in the wild west days of early gaming blogs, there wasn't a standard type of contract, and no one knew what they were doing with regards to personal brands and collaborative hosting sites. Miracle of Sound and Jimquisition managed to get out with their brand, though, so who knows. I'm honestly surprised he stuck with it for so long but I'm certainly going to follow him even if nothing else on Aftermath ends up being interesting. I actually think he could do better without having to maintain the ZP schtick.
The Escapist would be a very interesting topic of a retrospective, sort of like has been done for Channel Awesome. That era of the internet is such an interesting mess.
(and as an afterthought, I do wonder why anyone still does these collaboration style endeavors instead of just having a youtube/nebula channel for your show. It makes it hard for people to subscribe if they only like one of the shows you host, and I don't see the benefit of attaching yourself to a collective brand when history has shown how much this can harm good creators who wind up in bad partnerships)
(edit: Crosshaw is on Second Wind, not Aftermath. Not sure who went to Aftermath)
Just look at how Penny Arcade wound up almost not owning Penny Arcade. Unfortunately very easy to exploit content creators before they hold the power (and their own lawyers).
That's what I can't stop seeing.
Still don't like the bird much, but I feel like this is at least twice as good.
And I didn't hear about the other one. What was the other site that fired and/or lost a bunch of writers?
Edit: RE: Ben Croshaw, I used to be a fan of his Zero Punctuation schtick... about 10 years ago. But the schtick has long since grown tired. I actually liked his "Extra Punctuation" videos a lot more. He tackled a lot of really good topics in those vids.
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If your looking for stories about The Escapist and interactions with from the side of its (former) content creators, LoadingReadyRun is currently doing a podcast/VODcast series on their history as part of their 20th Anniversary. They haven't hit their association with The Escapist yet (only two episodes are up : Pre-LRR and the first 2 years respectively), but I imagine they'll have some thoughts to share once they get there.
Perhaps, but "Person with British accent getting angry about things" is its own subgenre of entertainment media. See also: Gordon Ramsey and John Oliver.
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That said, ZP as a character isn't laid on that thick anyway. If he continues making game reviews, I would expect them to be nearly identical to ZP, without the stick figures.
I feel like those two are a good example of a character and a (as close as we'll get with any person) real life. I've seen John Oliver in a lot of places, all the way from Daily Show days. It seems like that's just who he is (again, with the caveat that both celebrities and non-celebrities often have a "public" mode that can be different from private). It doesn't seem so much a shtick as just how he winds up expressing himself. Plus, it's not the crotchety angry guy. He's actually kind of gleeful and laughing at the horror of the world. Which also shows that you can be critical without having to adopt a curmudgeonly persona (if that's not already your base state).
That tiny bit of optimism, of saying there's WORK that ban done, is a huge part of what makes the whole thing work
YongYea's got a pretty good video up about it. Looks like some brainless suit at The Escapist thought they were cutting loose some dead weight, but ended up pulling out the corporate heart plug instead.
Escapist: https://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/flagship-gaming-website-loses-its-video-team-as-star-of-zero-punctuation-resigns/news-story/7627ed808d5ff0675226ede89c7f74d3 this seems mostly a bad decision by an executive of the Escapist looking at a graph with a red line.
Some Kotaku writers left their mothership to form subscription-based Aftermath: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/23949269/aftermath-video-games-kotaku-defector this seems mostly drama-free and just a business endeavor by some journalists.
That both of these happened in the same week is mostly coincidence.
It's also a shame that Yahtzee didn't/wasn't able to put the screws to them in 2019 to make reverting the rights to him part of a multi-year deal for him to stay. Granted, that might have trapped him there when this collapse happened, and he may be fine with moving on from ZP.
I actually didn't know about the Extra Credits stuff. I had thought EC, Sterling, and MovieBob had left over Gamergate. So that's almost three disasters.
Seems like something you get from a repeat trip to the taco bar.
That is better but are they mixing a second wind with the phoenix bird rising analogies?
Like I'm not going to rip on them too hard, but seems like they could have found a sympathetic artist to design not those logos.
I only use it in the original context of a strenuous physical effort like a workout or a hike that packs in a lot of elevation. What I really don't like about the name, here, is it sounds like one of the narrator's and Marla's emotional support groups in Fight Club.
While what is really happening looks more like this:
This is the first time i hear about all this matter, so i saw the logo knowing what it was after reading Tycho's post, yet the bird+ red on black still made me think of RT. Also agree that having both the wings and the the S-bird make it a bit overcharged.
"Badasses don't look at explosions" would have been a catchy name, but maybe not very practical.
At this point I think most people have realized sometimes you just have to be on the nose and drop a cartoon anvil on people if you want them to notice.
But as mentioned earlier, a "second wind" is used as you're struggling but get a boost of energy to keep going. A phoenix literally (in the figurative sense) burns to ash and is reborn.
Those are not the same thing. Starting a new company is closer to a phoenix, where like starting a membership program to continue an existing company would be getting a second wind.
Meanwhile Second Wind's new channel is going very strong, and Yahtzee's new show (with the name of his old, pre-Escapist content) barely bothered to file the serial numbers off of Zero Punctuation, just to show how few shits he gives about them retaining the "brand".