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[PA "Big Year"] PATV and PAR are sacrificed to summon Lookouts and Automata
Dedwrekka
MetalHell adjacentRegistered User regular
MetalHell adjacentRegistered User regular
A wild apocalypse appears!
http://penny-arcade.com/2013/12/06/changes
Edit: Ben Kuchera's Goodbye
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/it-was-a-great-two-years-but-now-its-time-to-say-goodbye
Alright, so maybe not an apocalypse level event, but definitely a big something that might merit some discussion/reaction/debate/torches.
http://penny-arcade.com/2013/12/06/changes
The 18th of last month was Penny Arcade’s 15th Anniversary.
There was never a lot of time to think about what we wanted Penny Arcade to be like. It’s like us, I guess, by default; sort of a mess. We just tried to make the best decisions we could, any time a decision was called for. It doesn’t always work out. And sometimes, you do things because “that’s what you do.” You “grow your business,” for example. You “extend verticals.” I honestly don’t know about the second one. I’ll ask Robert. But at 15 years, we’re taking a minute to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
Child’s Play and PAX have lives of their own, now. They’re vital, and they need an obsessive level of care. We will do everything in our power to ensure that these things outlast us by a wide margin.
But I don’t think I want to “grow my business” anymore; I sort of want to do the opposite. And I’m tired, sick to death, of saying “Maybe Someday” when it comes to the things we really want to make. So, we’re not going to do that anymore. The next year is going to be a pretty big one, one of the biggest yet; it’s the year the previous fifteen have been leading up to in the literal sense but also in other ways. I think they’re going to be “big years” from now on, frankly. And it hurts pretty bad, but I don’t know where PATV as a “channel” for third party shows and The Penny Arcade Report fit into that. We’ll be shutting those things down at the end of this year.
I think they’re beautiful and useful and important; I use them every day. It’s possible that you do, too. I hired people to run them, or paid them, and I am making their lives worse by doing this. Losing Ben is especially painful - he did everything we asked of him, and more. The only comfort is knowing that everyone affected by this is excellent, as is attested continually by their excellent work, and will certainly land on their feet. We’ve tried to connect the dots for them where we can. Still hurts. But, starting January 1st,
You can find “Shut Up & Sit Down” at:
shutupandsitdown.com.
Loading Ready Run can be easily found at:
http://loadingreadyrun.com/.
You’ll be able to find Extra Credits at:https://www.youtube.com/extracreditz. Yes, with a Z. Talk to them about it.
And for now, but not for long I would imagine, you can keep an eye on Ben Kuchera at:
https://twitter.com/benkuchera.
But it’s time to start making good on some of the promises we’ve made in our work. Recognizing that things like the Pins or The New Kid or Daughters of the Eyrewood or Thornwatch or The Lookouts or Automata deserve every ounce of our resources. Novels and albums, too - all these things that got put off in the interests of Empire. Essentially, we’ve decided to be Penny Arcade.
And I’m looking forward to it.
(CW)TB
Edit: Ben Kuchera's Goodbye
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/it-was-a-great-two-years-but-now-its-time-to-say-goodbye
Alright, so maybe not an apocalypse level event, but definitely a big something that might merit some discussion/reaction/debate/torches.
Dedwrekka on
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What LinkedIn stuff?
As for the news at hand, PATV will be missed. That was pretty unique content. I wonder if they'll at least archive the content.
I'll admit I had to look that up. But I think the guy who currently holds that job actually answered that pretty well on his own.
(Warning, the link leads to Social Entropy)
For the others who missed it:
Penny Arcade Posts The Scariest Job Ad of All Time
On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
Penny Arcade's brutally honest job posting spurs Internet backlash
I think the fact that people can actually enjoy the work experience at Penny Arcade confuses the internet, who seem to think that there's three guys with guns just out of frame in PA:The Series.
hopefully Strip Search 2: Strip Harder is a go at least.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh shit I am not going to touch that with a 100 yard pole.
But on the topic of PATV and PAR, I'm sad they're going but like Jerry mentioned those people are all talented (and connected) enough to land right on their feet.
It also makes me worry about other places that try to do the same. I know Idle Thumbs has been slowly expanding what they do, for example, but I hope they don't over exert themselves.
LoL - Renon DeSaxous
Edit: I just saw Khoo's post in the comic thread about the PATV closing only affects third party programs and that PA:TS will continue, I hope this means strip search will as well as it is also a first party program (despite being produces by LRR).
No, it's that the internet considers a job that requires you to be on call 24/7, to play four different jobs with their own unique skillsets, and where the compensation is expressed as low to be problematic at best, for a number of reasons. If the exact same listing was put up by, say, EA, we would all be openly criticizing it.
Can someone explain this to me please? On second thought, please don't.
And rightly so. If EA put up a posting like that we would be asking why a company with thousands of employees needs one guy to do so much. But PA has only 20ish (or less). Its completely understandable for a small business to want one person to fill multiple roles. That's what small businesses do. Your employees work as a group for the company doing many things and are only exclusive to a single task where it makes sense.
They're not such a small business, though. By all accounts, they're pretty profitable.
I mean, are you counting the forum mods? Those guys are unpaid PA volunteers/employees. They have seasonal unpaid volunteers/employees to work the cons. They're not the smallest of small business, they just don't pay anybody but Mike, Jerry and Khoo.
We're talking about a company that runs three massive trade shows internationally, manages a multimillion dollar charity, and has a sizable multimedia empire that has done work for household names (even if they have announced they are scaling it back to refocus.)
Your definition of "small business" probably does not match mine.
This is incredibly inaccurate. I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head who draw some kind of income from PA, services they pay for to maintain operations, and all the other projects they fund to try and accomplish things.
Strip Search was not made for free, and trade shows don't just magically erect from the ground without paid staff.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Or should I stop putting words in mouths? Yea I should stop.
Trenches isn't done by the PA guys anymore. At this point the only thing they do is link to it and keep the site going.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be difficult, but I've worked more difficult and demanding jobs for less with people that I absolutely hated, and I don't see what's being offered there as being necessarily bad, especially backed by how the person who's actually held the job describes it (from the sounds of it at least some aspects of the job is backed by multiple people in the building). But maybe it's just that bad in terms of what someone could be getting paid somewhere else?
And Erica, Levin, Josh, Kiko, Jeff, Mike, David, Brian, Jeff, and previously Ben and Kenneth.
I'd toss in Jamie and Kristen but they may have their time paid for by Child's Play.
About 16 in total, plus their new PAX person and anyone not on their contact page yet.
Indeed, but the actual point is that PA should be employing more people than they do if they require this of their employees. Multiple tasks is okay, multiple actual jobs seems a bit much for what is ultimately just the pay of one job.
I mean, it's not the worst job ever and I figure you can get exploited way more somewhere else. But they ask a lot for little while making buttloads of money. This ain't no start-up, this is a company running on so one should treat is as such. "You get to hang out with us" shouldn't be a reason to not treat you fairly.
From the guy who has the job and actually does it, it's not the terrible all consuming job that people want it to sound like.
I also don't think it's reasonable to think Penny Arcade is just rolling in the dough, because frankly we have no idea how much they make. We can infer from the kickstarter that they get roughly $700,000 in advertising fees from the whole site ($1mil level - Kickstarter/Amazon fees, Merch, ect), and that at least the vast majority of that goes into actually paying for the entire enterprise. And that on top of that they still have to do their "shill" work with Penny Arcade Presents and other projects.
- Empty all the trash cans
- Clean the bathroom
- Wash the windows
You are a janitor in that case. The job posting was listing jobs / titles as tasks, which have many tasks within them and underestimated (by a long shot) what each of those roles required.
... DAMN IT I slipped into the vortex.
Yes it is not the terrible job that some people say it is. But it is a lot of work and not all that well paid.
And speculation about PA's money based on their kickstarter is silly. Just ask yourself this: If they can't pay the money for the job then how are they making money? A company employs you because you make money for them, they can't be seriously losing money by employing you.
You...you do understand that the Kickstarter was directly related to their revenue stream and not just an excuse to bilke people out of money right? It was also one of the few times we've gotten a look behind the curtain of how much it takes to run the site since Mike and Jerry were forced to beg for money on the site.
They can pay the money for the job, no one is saying that they can't pay the person doing the job. But the assumption seems to be that Robert, Mike, and Jerry are smoking rolled up franklins while sitting on a configuration of the other 13 people in the company, based purely on...well nothing. There's no real evidence that they make a lot of money other than the fact that the company invests heavily in new projects.
Not only is that unsustainable, but it's downright shameful. They wanted one guy to do at least two jobs on the cheap.
"But Deebaser", you say, "the guy who quit said that if there were two people, they'd both have a lot of down time!"
Yeah, and they'd also have some coverage so they aren't expected to drop everything for work at the drop of a hat.
I've seen enough pics and vids to have a decent idea of Mike's house at this point. Dude's not livin' small. But that's not really the point; the point is that, even at a "competative" wage for one of those jobs, the potential hire would be making 1/4th of what they should be expending on that. There are two options here: One, they're proposing to completely underpay and overwork someone in exchange for being in their presence, or Two, they can't actually afford anything more, because despite all their enterprises they're "poor", indicating that Khoo's not the financial genius people continue to call him.
I'm not betting on the later.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Nope
the PATV cut-backs are only for the 3rd-party shows.
Wonderful. I thought as much based on how the loss of PATV as a channel was phrased.
It's their company, if the current direction wasn't what they wanted, more power to them.
In this era, I applaud a company that goes after quality production over endless growth for growth's sake.
I don't really get how cutting third party shows frees up their time, but whatevs. I'll be able to get my fix of LRR and EC elsewhere, I'm sure.
i really think this is just the beginning of the changes we'll be seeing at PA. it seems that they want to focus their time and energy on content creation, to actually go back the roots of what PA is, a creative outlet for Mike and Gerry. hopefully it wont be too long before we start to hear more about their plans for the future.