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[TRENCHES] Thursday, April 17, 2014 - The Last Laugh

GethGeth LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
edited April 2014 in The Penny Arcade Hub
The Last Laugh


The Last Laugh
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/the-last-laugh

Short But Sweet.

Anonymous

I started testing on the 360, but after some time was given a PS3 to test on with no cords to hook it up. I asked my lead where to find PS3 cords, but he told me to stay on the 360 for the rest of the week, and he would get them for me.

That Friday I was fired for not testing on PS3. I told them I was waiting on cords from my lead who told me to stay 360 until he found them for me. They told me there was an entire cabinet full of cords in the other room, and I should have gotten them myself, but now it was too late.

I heard later from a friend still there that the lead got drunk at a party and admitted it was his fault I was fired, but wouldn’t help me get my job back.


Geth on

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    michaelkdawmichaelkdaw Registered User regular
    She must have worked her ass off to get that other game to market. And now it's all coming to fruition. She's a veritable Frank Underwood.

    When did Isaac get a home?

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    StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Maybe that is his home.

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    MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Or he's taking the train back to the other parking lot.

    Mixed feelings on that story. Probably should have pursued it a little harder, but maybe they did. Hopefully learned a lesson from that experience.

    MichaelLC on
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    abotkinabotkin Registered User regular
    This plot doesn't really make any sense to me, assuming it's going the way it seems to clearly be going. If Gwen is responsible for the clone game, wouldn't she be making more money just focusing on that than she would continuing to work on Rhymeblade? It seems silly for her to be doing this just to force Rhymeblade to innovate because she didn't want to be bored at work if she had the resources to release a clone that's capable of generating its own "buzz".

    I do have to say that I appreciate the strip getting back to the main story though.

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    3DS: 0963-0539-4405
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    michaelkdawmichaelkdaw Registered User regular
    I think she just wants an opportunity to exercise her game development chops.

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    jcrspringjcrspring Registered User new member
    Serious question. is "The Trenches" supposed to be funny? I've been reading PA since the beginning and am just now checking out The Trenches. I've read all of them, and while its an interesting take on the game industry I am left wondering if the entire thing is intentionally not funny.

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    MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    The popular belief is that it gives us the experience of working in QA. Tedious, inconsistent schedule, random changes in leadership, etc. We'll look back on it with fond memories though, thinking of the good people we 'worked'with.

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    TubeTube Registered User admin
    If you don't like it, go ahead and read something else. The world doesn't need to hear about how this thing isn't like the things you like.

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    marsiliesmarsilies Registered User regular
    No new comic yesterday, but a new tale:
    “Good for your career”
    04/22/2014 - Anonymous

    The head of the department liked weed. He knew I knew a guy (don’t smoke myself, friend of former roommate), and asked me one day to leave in the middle of the afternoon (during crunch) to go and hook him up. I didn’t want to, but he said it would “be good for my career”.

    When I hesitated, he threatened to fire me (temps could be fired for any reason), and then offered to pay me a finder’s fee. I didn’t feel I had much of a choice, and caved.

    The next week I was brought into HR, and was asked to explain my unapproved absence from the week before. I looked at the department head who was glaring at me. I told them I went home because I needed some medicine for my stomach and came back when I felt better. That’s when they told me people believed I went out and got drunk, then they told me I was being fired for misconduct, with no evidence.

    That night I was sitting at home still going WTF and the department head texted me asking for more weed. I blocked his number. This was a few years ago. Today I have a good design job at a nice company and look back at that time and can’t believe what I put up with.

    I found out recently the department head was later fired for coming to work while seriously stoned.

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    Finnish_LineFinnish_Line Registered User regular
    Time to take off the "Every Tuesday and Thursday" banner, like PVP took down the "Mon-Fri."

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    fortyforty Registered User regular
    I wonder if this is another one of those unannounced, out-of-nowhere ends of a season.

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    AgentflitAgentflit Registered User regular
    forty wrote: »
    I wonder if this is another one of those unannounced, out-of-nowhere ends of a season.

    Yeah the seasons page on the site says "Nov 2013 - Apr 2014". It's very silly goose of them to not announce that anywhere.

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    GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Oh good lord, it does. After six months and just 41 sporadically-uploaded comics...wonder if that number is 10% Snuffler and Jeff?

    I officially give up on this. I have been enthusiastic about Trenches from the beginning, if somebody was pathetically bored enough to go through my post history they'd see I've probably spent more time on this forum defending it than anyone. But after close to three years the people running/creating Trenches still don't act like they care about it...and I can't bring myself to care about it anymore either.

    Gaslight on
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    SamperSamper Registered User new member
    Sadly I have to agree with Gaslight. I loved Trenches but with all the changes and the fact they not only can't keep a schedule but don't even keep us informed when they can't keep a schedule.

    This is free content. I totally get that. But I feel like its a total lack of respect for the readers when we're not even kept in the loop at all.

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    AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    So there hasn't been an update for a week, is the comic dead?

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
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    Urban AchieverUrban Achiever Registered User regular
    Gaslight wrote: »
    But after close to three years the people running/creating Trenches still don't act like they care about it...and I can't bring myself to care about it anymore either.
    I'm with you - I've been a rather staunch defender as well (not so much on the forums, but in other ways), but the damn thing is so inconsistent that it truly does feel like it's a rudderless side project at this point.

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    YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    The season's thing has always seemed dumb to me, especially after the original creators gave up on it. I think the problem is, The Trenches doesn't make insane money, so they can't pay the for-hire team amazing money. So whoever that is has no incentive to stay. They get exposure from being on it, then can easily get better work elsewhere, or sell their own work for more.

    It is a good premise, but it has only ever come together to be great briefly.

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    michaelkdawmichaelkdaw Registered User regular
    Trenches is the first web comic I've followed steadily. I've been doing so since it started and I really enjoy it. Can anyone recommend some other serial web comics that they feel are good? I like the format, so I want to see what else is out there.

    PS: This isn't meant to be some kind of fatalism re: this strip being essentially dead. I'm just wondering what else I could read.

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    Chris FOMChris FOM Registered User regular
    No new comic today (thus far, but updates have rarely been in the morning anyway) but now there's not even a new tale (which has always been updates first thing in the morning). We used to get new tales even between seasons. Does this thing even exist anymore?

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    GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Edit: You're right, there are usually at least new Tales between seasons. Maybe they've finally exhausted their backlog. I have a hard time imagining there are that many people still paying attention to this to send in stories who didn't already send them in a while ago.

    Gaslight on
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    Finnish_LineFinnish_Line Registered User regular
    Trenches is the first web comic I've followed steadily. I've been doing so since it started and I really enjoy it. Can anyone recommend some other serial web comics that they feel are good? I like the format, so I want to see what else is out there.

    PS: This isn't meant to be some kind of fatalism re: this strip being essentially dead. I'm just wondering what else I could read.

    I really like Cube Watermelon's (formerly of The Trenches!) Let's Speak English.

    http://cubewatermelon.tumblr.com/tagged/Let's+Speak+English/page/2

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    samh5621samh5621 Registered User regular
    Tube wrote: »
    If you don't like it, go ahead and read something else. The world doesn't need to hear about how this thing isn't like the things you like.

    Yeah guys. If you don't like it just go somewhere else. Wait, why isn't anyone here anymore?

    This thing started great years ago. Sucks to see it decline and sputter along. Sucks more to see admins telling people to piss off when no one in this thread is being super-negative or just a jerk.

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    GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited April 2014
    Trenches is the first web comic I've followed steadily. I've been doing so since it started and I really enjoy it. Can anyone recommend some other serial web comics that they feel are good? I like the format, so I want to see what else is out there.

    PS: This isn't meant to be some kind of fatalism re: this strip being essentially dead. I'm just wondering what else I could read.

    @michaelkdaw Well most of us would say you should read the main Penny Arcade comic if you weren't reading it already. ;)

    I would recommend any of John Allison's work. He doesn't get nearly enough recognition for being the creator (and sole creator, handling both writing and art, I might add) of one of the webcomic universe's longest runs, starting in 1998 with Bobbins, then Scary Go Round, and now his current project, Bad Machinery. All three comics (and most of his various side-projects) are generally set in the same fictional English town and there is a good amount of character overlap; unfortunately he is quirky about how he handles archiving his old stuff so finding all of it and understanding how it fits together can be a bit frustrating. But you can just start at the beginning of Bad Machinery and have a blast. It's about a small group of kids (junior high/high school age) who investigate (generally pretty light-hearted) paranormal mysteries around their town and face the struggles and confusions of adolescence.

    Camp Weedonwantcha is the new comic by Katie Rice, winner of the Penny Arcade "strip search" reality web series competition. It's only been going a few months but I think it's off to a really strong start. It's about a summer camp where kids get basically abandoned by their parents forever...which sounds dark and it kind of is. It's a really quirky, surreal kind of humor. Ms. Rice also has an earlier comic called Skadi, about a female fantasy-setting barbarian, which she still updates, although only once a week. I personally haven't read it but I'm sure it's worth checking out.

    Three Panel Soul is a (sort of) weekly comic about varied topics, many of them gaming related or using games as a commentary for other subjects. It doesn't have an ongoing plot but it returns to the same sets of characters off and on quite a bit. It has an interesting (mostly, usually) black and white art style. The creators previously did Mac Hall, which was a gaming and college slice-of-life comic that remains one of my personal all-time favorites. The Mac Hall website is still up but is missing a lot of functionality. You would be well-served to work through the OhNoRobot-hosted archive instead if you want to read Mac Hall.

    Schlock Mercenary is a long-running, daily-updating (reliably) comedy space opera comic about an interstellar mercenary unit in the far future. Getting through the archive on this one will keep you busy for a long time. The art starts out quite rough but improves a lot over the years. Has a lot of cynical military-type humor, and some of the plotlines actually get quite well-developed and involved. The best way I can think of to describe it is Star Trek, crossed with the A-Team or Kelly's Heroes.

    Starslip (formerly Starslip Crisis, formerly...you know what, don't ask) is another sci-fi comedy/drama epic, created by Kris Straub, a close associate of the Penny Arcade guys. You may know him as one of the guys (with Scott Kurtz) behind the Blamimations PA TV series. It's set aboard a semi-retired military starship which has been converted into a traveling art and cultural museum. It concluded in 2012 after a seven-year run. Straub's other projects are Chainsawsuit, a joke-a-day comic about various topics with a simple art style, and Broodhollow, which is about a stressed-out 1930's encyclopedia salesman who travels to a sinister small town.

    The Order of the Stick is a fantasy comic set in a Dungeons & Dragons-esque universe. It uses stick-figure based art (which has become more and more elaborate, the stick figure characters are a deliberate artistic choice and not at all a reflection of a lack of ability on the part of the creator) and over the course of 11 years has gone from largely just making jokes about silly stuff in the D&D rules to having a complex and pretty heavy ongoing plot (though the characters are still aware they live in a world governed by "rules" and make reference to their stats, etc). The comic ran in the now-defunct Dragon magazine and now runs in Gygax magazine. Updates have become a little irregular in the past couple of years due to some health problems the creator, Rich Burlew, has had, but there are currently almost 1000 archived comics to get through (many of them huge multi-page installments), and updates have been pretty steady since the recent start of a new "chapter" of the story.

    I could probably come up with a few more suggestions but these are the ones I check regularly or have enjoyed the most, and hopefully there is something in there to strike your interest. Don't want to derail the thread away from Trenches too much more, even if there's nothing much Trenches-related to talk about.


    Gaslight on
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    nyzernyzer Registered User regular
    Tube wrote: »
    If you don't like it, go ahead and read something else. The world doesn't need to hear about how this thing isn't like the things you like.

    I really don't want to be a dick about this, but this is kind of weird to say all of a sudden in this topic after silence for the talk about the Snuffler strips. It's also a semi-valid question... the comic seems to have trouble making up its mind on whether it wants to be gag-a-day, pop culture based, or story driven.
    ... Or completely random, i.e. Snuffler strips.

    And it's not like the guy was being extraordinarily abrasive about it. He doesn't find it funny. He mentioned one other comic, and that might not have even been a comparison so much as "so hey I started checking out this other creation by the PA guys..."

    He criticized the comic. Not as nicely as he could've, perhaps, but still.

    If I had to voice my own opinion, it'd be that I'm really just reading Trenches for the Tales at this point. Maybe it can be turned around but when a season ends without notice (yeah, I know this is normal for this series, not that I consider that a good thing) after being 10% Snuffler strips, which were dropped right in the middle of an ongoing storyline... nooot exactly hopeful.

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    samh5621samh5621 Registered User regular
    I check it because I WANT it to turn around. It started really solidly and then died a crib death. Now we're getting zero communication about the "season" being over so people are legitimately wondering, "is this over?".

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