[TRENCHES] Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - New Joke
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
New Joke
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/new-joke
With great opportunity comes absolutely no privilege
AnonymousAs with a lot of people, my first game industry job after graduating from a game arts college was QA at one of the large development/publishing studios.
When I started, with a few other folks, things were made very clear that we were not on the same level as the actual game developers. We were told we could never enter the development area (which was blocked off by keycard access anyway) and that if we ever leave the QA area with a disc of the game we were testing there would be hell to pay.
I was unceremoniously put on a sports game and platform I had no real interest in, and stuffed in a poorly ventilated room full of 500 sweaty nerds in the middle of a crazy warm summer. Still, it wasn’t too bad. The people I worked directly beside were cool enough.
I must have somehow shown that I had a high skill level, because I was shortly singled out (along with one other) to have the great opportunity to be an “integrated tester” for the development team. This meant I’d be leaving the QA area, and getting a desk right beside the programmers and artists.
This was really an amazing opportunity, but came with a few problems. We were never actually given keycard access to the development side, and we essentially had to smuggle out our QA discs in the morning without being seen. This resulted in us hiding our discs in whatever pocket it could fit, and then hanging out by the entrance of the development area waiting for someone to come by so we could sneak in behind them.
We did this for three months, and we were never questioned or caught.
In comparison to the QA area, the development side was shangri-la. There was tons of space and natural light. Top 40 tracks from the past 10 years wafted through the air. There was plenty of washroom facilities that were regularly maintained. On top of that there was free food and snacks a plenty. It was like the promise land, except we weren’t allowed to talk, touch or eat anything because those were for the “real employees.” We were never allowed to forget that we were second or even third class citizens in paradise.
Still, the experience was great and it has no doubt helped me with my career since then.
I’m still in QA, but now lead a small team in a growing company. My goal is to never let the people in QA ever feel like they are less valuable than any other position in the company. And in that sense, I feel I have succeeded to some degree.
Posts
Does this mean i am the only one who checks daily? (force of habit)
i find i do not enjoy the strip as much as i used to.
You're not alone. I check daily but I too do not enjoy it as much as I had before. I miss that there was more of a continuous storyline. Now it just seems like a lot of one-off jokes.
I get the feeling if I were to continuously comment on every strip with my opinion regarding the quality, I would start to look very bitter and attract Tube's attention.
Regardless, this strip feels like they're trying to pitch a TV show script or something. Not that it's good, but I feel like what humor is here is strongly dependent on character interaction and tone and doesn't translate well to comic format at all.
Also, not that this one was the worst offender, but the jokes have gotten really immature as well. Not that there's a bad thing with immature humor, but "Isaac has a small dick, Isaac lives in an apartment stained with cat semen, let's point out Isaac's name sounds like 'I suck cocks'" is a swerve from the kind of jokes made when the comic had a plot.
Continuing my rambling, several jokes so far rely on a character not having some fairly common knowledge. Isaac having no clue what a typical penis size is or Alexia not knowing what New Coke is are both not necessarily unrealistic, but they do feel very contrived.
When it had a storyline, everybody said they couldn't follow it, and the only thing anybody said about the characters back then was constant complaining about what an asshole Isaac was.
I remember because practically every thread, I was the one trying to hand-hold people to connect the dots of the plot and point out that all of the characters were assholes.
We become the game publishers and the game developers from all the stories. We become the bad guy. The comic hasn't done anything wrong, per se, and yet we hate it.
The alternative is the comic is just well-and-truly bad. But then what does that say about us, the folks that keep coming back to read it?
You'll also remember that I didn't post on the comics then, because I was happily reading them and awaiting the next installment. I can't be held responsible for the actions of others.
Wow... I haven't thought about the old Trenches in awhile, but you're right; it was exactly like that. Come to think of it, people had the same opinion about the recent runs of Eyrewood comics-- I guess this is just how Jerry's writing is perceived by most folks.
Well, I never really had any trouble following Trenches, but I did find the storyline in the most recent Eyrewood comic elliptical at best.
Wow, as a Ranma 1/2 fan, I feel your pain.