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Penny Arcade - Comic - Impetus

245

Posts

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Subway is not great, but I don't think it can ever be bad because it's just a shelf of ingredients. Like, of course the Chicken Bacon Ranch is good. It's chicken, and bacon, and ranch. It also helps that Subway is Literally Everywhere in the rural US. And I'd put a lot more confidence in their frozen meat and veggies than those at a random gas station.

  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    cB557 wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Pony wrote: »
    a toy
    Is that really what you think of video games?

    it's what i think of a star wars shooter video game

    I needed anime to post. on
    liEt3nH.png
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    Do you think Star Wars media isn't art or do you think shooters aren't art?

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    cB557 wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Pony wrote: »
    a toy
    Is that really what you think of video games?

    Yeah? I do.

    Don't get me wrong, I love them. But ultimately that's what they are for me. I love them and think they're massively influential but they're still just toys generally meant as a diversion. This doesn't mean they're unimportant.

  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    cB557 wrote: »
    Do you think Star Wars media isn't art or do you think shooters aren't art?

    Oh they're art

    Art doesn't preclude something from being a toy, and something's art-hood doesn't prevent it from being a tacky corporate cash grab

    liEt3nH.png
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

    Good point. Personally, I was more bugged by the whole "dismissing the main target of Tycho's ire, that being the firing of a whole studio as punishment for the mistakes of the parent company that did the firing, instead equating a small part of what bothered Tycho with his entire argument, and somehow drawing a correlation between that and Tycho apparently being a horrible person because he didn't like a certain Polygon review or maybe he's a horrible person for liking Punisher?"

    That was the part that stuck out to me anyway.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

    Good point. Personally, I was more bugged by the whole "dismissing the main target of Tycho's ire, that being the firing of a whole studio as punishment for the mistakes of the parent company that did the firing, instead equating a small part of what bothered Tycho with his entire argument, and somehow drawing a correlation between that and Tycho apparently being a horrible person because he didn't like a certain Polygon review or maybe he's a horrible person for liking Punisher?"

    That was the part that stuck out to me anyway.

    That sure is a... colorful characterization of what I said.

    Let's call it that.

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    Jerry's made more than a couple news posts that decry reviews for treating their subject matter too seriously

    PNk1Ml4.png
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy
    What?

  • FuruFuru Registered User regular
    -Tal wrote: »
    Jerry's made more than a couple news posts that decry reviews for treating their subject matter too seriously

    There is absolutely a nerd culture-wide trend that Penny Arcade is directly complicit in where some people want the things they like to be treated as art but the second anyone tries to critically examine why a show or comic or game is the way it is instead of just going "I like thing/I don't like thing" those same people start getting upset

  • Xshu BastionXshu Bastion Registered User new member
    edited November 2017
    Furu wrote: »
    There is absolutely a nerd culture-wide trend that Penny Arcade is directly complicit in where some people want the things they like to be treated as art but the second anyone tries to critically examine why a show or comic or game is the way it is instead of just going "I like thing/I don't like thing" those same people start getting upset
    If I recall correctly, this directly resulted in Jerry hating Undertale, and he basically admitted as much in the news.

    Xshu Bastion on
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Furu wrote: »
    -Tal wrote: »
    Jerry's made more than a couple news posts that decry reviews for treating their subject matter too seriously

    There is absolutely a nerd culture-wide trend that Penny Arcade is directly complicit in where some people want the things they like to be treated as art but the second anyone tries to critically examine why a show or comic or game is the way it is instead of just going "I like thing/I don't like thing" those same people start getting upset

    It's definitely a "want it both ways" problem. Gamers will get their shit in a knot about someone saying "video games are not art" (see: Mike getting very steamed at Roger Ebert doing that specific thing) and will throw specific examples of specific games at you to suggest otherwise.

    But if you start dissecting such an example game as one would do to a film or a book or a painting or any other media that is typically considered art... suddenly they recoil and hug it to their chest and gently say "...no, don't" like you're cutting apart their favorite toy.

    However, call them toys, and that is offensive.

    lmao

  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    So you really don't think there's anything wrong with dismissing them as toys?

  • FuruFuru Registered User regular
    cB557 wrote: »
    So you really don't think there's anything wrong with dismissing them as toys?

    It honestly says more than you think calling something a toy is dismissive than why Pony chose that word to begin with. Toys can be art. Anything can be art.

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    Toys are art

    PNk1Ml4.png
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    It's not just the word, it's the whole context in which it was used. I'll quote it again.
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Toy is clearly being used in a dismissive manner here, to indicate that it's something inherently unworthy of ever getting angry about.

    cB557 on
  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    -Tal wrote: »
    Toys are art

    7717cd00-03b7-46ed-a627-3bdf55ed5ccc.jpg.w480.jpg
    Indeed.

  • FuruFuru Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    cB557 wrote: »
    It's not just the word, it's the whole context in which it was used. I'll quote it again.
    cB557 wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Toy is clearly being used in a dismissive manner here, to indicate that it's something inherently unworthy of ever getting angry about.

    It's unworthy of getting mad at to that degree. Because there is no art that makes a webcomic where your avatar stares directly at the reader while angrily ranting about a corporation for three panels not ridiculous. Doesn't matter if it was a Star Wars game, an arthouse film, a Reniassance era painting. It still looks like a childish tantrum. It's bad art.

    Furu on
  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    Pony wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

    Good point. Personally, I was more bugged by the whole "dismissing the main target of Tycho's ire, that being the firing of a whole studio as punishment for the mistakes of the parent company that did the firing, instead equating a small part of what bothered Tycho with his entire argument, and somehow drawing a correlation between that and Tycho apparently being a horrible person because he didn't like a certain Polygon review or maybe he's a horrible person for liking Punisher?"

    That was the part that stuck out to me anyway.

    That sure is a... colorful characterization of what I said.

    Let's call it that.

    You sure do like...italics. In all seriousness, if that's not what you said, can you correct me? You don't seem to really be engaging with people who take issue with what you said. Which I sort of understand, but to some extent I feel like you have to expect some pushback when you come on a fan page and seem to have a pretty low opinion of the content we are fans of. That's not to say there's no place to criticize G&T here.

    I personally have no idea what the Polygon article is about. I am all for higher discourse in games and in terms of "should critics of games and movies talk about race or politics in their reviews", I tend to come pretty hard on the side of, "sure". In this particular instance, though, Jerry wasn't saying that sort of thing isn't worth talking about. He was just saying he didn't see any of "that", whatever "that" was, in The Punisher.

    It seems like you are actually wanting to have it both ways, though, because you seem to be saying games are important enough to be worth addressing big issues in them, but you're also saying there's no place for ire regarding the closure of a game studio because its just a game.

    At least, I think that's what you are saying. As I said, to me it looked like you were boiling down the "ire comic" to being a guy mad about a game being cancelled, but of course that wasn't why Tycho was mad. He was made because a team of artists were losing their job after their creative vision was destroyed by shameless monetezation.

    Is that something we can talk about, or get mad about, or is that not allowed since it's just a game? Are you for or against conversations that delve into the medium? Because you seem to be holding to both sides of that in this particular thread.

    RatherDashing89 on
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    Furu wrote: »
    cB557 wrote: »
    It's not just the word, it's the whole context in which it was used. I'll quote it again.
    cB557 wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Toy is clearly being used in a dismissive manner here, to indicate that it's something inherently unworthy of ever getting angry about.

    It's unworthy of getting mad at to that degree. Because there is no art that makes a webcomic where your avatar stares directly at the reader while angrily ranting about a corporation for three panels not ridiculous. Doesn't matter if it was a Star Wars game, an arthouse film, a Reniassance era painting. It still looks like a childish tantrum. It's bad art.
    A skilled developer was slowly mismanaged to death by a publisher that has a history of doing so, and the justification the publisher gave was that linear singleplayer story-based games are not in demand anymore, with the subtext being that what it's really about is that that's not a genre they can particularly effectively exploit for microtransactions. If you're someone who cares about linear singleplayer story-based games or are worried about the influence of microtransactions on game design, I think anger can be a rather reasonable response to that.

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    I'd take some tycho ranting into the camera about the cowardice and greed of video game corporatiins if it was about something a little more important like terrible labor conditions or something

    That that level of vitriol was dedicated to the cancellation of a game looked bad

    PNk1Ml4.png
  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Furu wrote: »
    cB557 wrote: »
    It's not just the word, it's the whole context in which it was used. I'll quote it again.
    cB557 wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    A few weeks ago, you have Tycho (in the comic) petulantly yelling directly at the reader about EA cancelling a toy he was very much looking forward to and how it was writing on the wall about the business and so on.
    Toy is clearly being used in a dismissive manner here, to indicate that it's something inherently unworthy of ever getting angry about.

    It's unworthy of getting mad at to that degree. Because there is no art that makes a webcomic where your avatar stares directly at the reader while angrily ranting about a corporation for three panels not ridiculous. Doesn't matter if it was a Star Wars game, an arthouse film, a Reniassance era painting. It still looks like a childish tantrum. It's bad art.

    So, a creator can't pause the funnies just to rant about something for a single day? Would it be okay for him to get mad about it in conversation? When 90% (guessing) of your viewership just reads your comic, it seems acceptable to me to put something you want to say in your comic. I've seen comics put a Patron plug or even alert their viewership about a petition or charity in their daily comic, and I think that's perfectly fine.

    Now if you're saying it's ridiculous and childish for him to be mad at all, my continued response is, huh? You mentioned a Renaissance painting. Would it not be ok for an art or architecture fan to get mad if they heard of a land developer bulldozing a historic cathedral to build a shopping mall? You guys are acting like Tycho was complaining about the Shamrock Shake being discontinued. So how is it Jerry who is supposedly unwilling to have a conversation about video games as art when you guys seem so against him being bothered by a publisher calling itself a creator when its business trend has clearly been away from producing art in favor of making gambling machines for children?

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    -Tal wrote: »
    I'd take some tycho ranting into the camera about the cowardice and greed of video game corporatiins if it was about something a little more important like terrible labor conditions or something

    That that level of vitriol was dedicated to the cancellation of a game looked bad

    They also kinda fired a bunch of people after forcing them to change their creative vision to support predatory pricing aimed at addictive personalities?

  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    -Tal wrote: »
    I'd take some tycho ranting into the camera about the cowardice and greed of video game corporatiins if it was about something a little more important like terrible labor conditions or something

    That that level of vitriol was dedicated to the cancellation of a game looked bad
    He specifically mentions the closure of the studio in the comic.

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    -Tal wrote: »
    I'd take some tycho ranting into the camera about the cowardice and greed of video game corporatiins if it was about something a little more important like terrible labor conditions or something

    That that level of vitriol was dedicated to the cancellation of a game looked bad

    They also kinda fired a bunch of people after forcing them to change their creative vision to support predatory pricing aimed at addictive personalities?

    Yeah this was not given much focus in the comic or newspost, it came off as being mad that he isn't getting the game

    -Tal on
    PNk1Ml4.png
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

    Good point. Personally, I was more bugged by the whole "dismissing the main target of Tycho's ire, that being the firing of a whole studio as punishment for the mistakes of the parent company that did the firing, instead equating a small part of what bothered Tycho with his entire argument, and somehow drawing a correlation between that and Tycho apparently being a horrible person because he didn't like a certain Polygon review or maybe he's a horrible person for liking Punisher?"

    That was the part that stuck out to me anyway.

    That sure is a... colorful characterization of what I said.

    Let's call it that.

    You sure do like...italics. In all seriousness, if that's not what you said, can you correct me? You don't seem to really be engaging with people who take issue with what you said. Which I sort of understand, but to some extent I feel like you have to expect some pushback when you come on a fan page and seem to have a pretty low opinion of the content we are fans of. That's not to say there's no place to criticize G&T here.

    I personally have no idea what the Polygon article is about. I am all for higher discourse in games and in terms of "should critics of games and movies talk about race or politics in their reviews", I tend to come pretty hard on the side of, "sure". In this particular instance, though, Jerry wasn't saying that sort of thing isn't worth talking about. He was just saying he didn't see any of "that", whatever "that" was, in The Punisher.

    It seems like you are actually wanting to have it both ways, though, because you seem to be saying games are important enough to be worth addressing big issues in them, but you're also saying there's no place for ire regarding the closure of a game studio because its just a game.

    At least, I think that's what you are saying. As I said, to me it looked like you were boiling down the "ire comic" to being a guy mad about a game being cancelled, but of course that wasn't why Tycho was mad. He was made because a team of artists were losing their job after their creative vision was destroyed by shameless monetezation.

    Is that something we can talk about, or get mad about, or is that not allowed since it's just a game? Are you for or against conversations that delve into the medium? Because you seem to be holding to both sides of that in this particular thread.

    Alrighty! Let's keep these clean and without having a go at each other's writing styles, maybe!

    What I was addressing with bringing up that particular comic was two-fold, and I'll break it down for you.

    1.) I think it was hypocritical of Jerry to sneer at Polygon for being seriously critical of a piece of genre fiction and "geeky media" when he himself takes the subject of gaming deathly seriously, to the point of taking his otherwise comedy webcomic by the horns from time to time to stare directly at the reader and holler about some perceived injustice. In this case, about a game he was looking forward to which will now no longer exist. This wasn't him doing a bit, mind, it was Jerry Holkins expressing his own personal opinions using the character of Tycho as a mouthpiece to do so. There was no punchline there. It was just a rant. He's got every right to do so, of course. It's his comic, his platform, but it's an absurd notion to with one side of your mouth say "don't take this shit seriously" and with the other say "take me seriously".

    2.) The other, and this is what I meant by the "toy" comment, is that Jerry's anger wasn't really well-founded and really came down to him being mad because it killed a type of game he liked and was looking forward to for reasons he thought were morally offensive at the time. As it turns out, and to be fair to him personally, the way the internet decided to leap on the narrative wasn't really the case. The story of that particular game being cancelled and that game studio being closed wasn't really about EA being a bunch of heartless, money grubbing bastards who spit on art and were all about monetization in the face of the single-player narrative game experience. That wasn't the whole story. There was severe mismanagement and other very serious issues going on at that studio, information that came out later that Jerry, like most people, didn't know at the time he fired off his angry rant.

    If he did know that information at the time it's unlikely he would have had the same kind of panel-grabbing, fourth-wall staring rant about how EA is bad for the industry and bad for gamers. I dare say if EA hadn't have killed off a Naughty Dog-style single-player adventure game (a type of game Jerry likes) but instead killed off a studio making some Star Wars licensed hidden object game for mobile platforms Jerry probably wouldn't have cared as much. If at all. Certainly not necessarily with the same vigor.

    I mean, where's Jerry's angry, clothes-tearing rants about the fate of Gazillion, the company that produced Marvel Heroes that just shuttered its doors without warning and just fucked over all its employees? That's something video game news sites are covering because holy shit, it's fucking awful. You want to talk about employees being punished because of mismanagement, oh my fucking god. I dunno if there's gonna be any PA strips about that because it wasn't a game Jerry or Mike played or gave a damn about.

    And that's okay! They don't have to give a shit about everything. That's not their job. They're cartoonists, funny men, not fuckin' social justice paladins who are obligated to use their platform to signal boost the latest gaming outrage.

    But then, simultaneously, I neither desire to see them throw shade at actual reviewers doing their actual jobs just because they don't necessarily agree with their reviews (being completely ignorant of the cudgel-like power they wield with their fanbase) and I'm also uninterested in them trying to soapbox at me and expecting to be taken seriously about something that, quite frankly, they aren't even right about.

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    -Tal wrote: »
    -Tal wrote: »
    I'd take some tycho ranting into the camera about the cowardice and greed of video game corporatiins if it was about something a little more important like terrible labor conditions or something

    That that level of vitriol was dedicated to the cancellation of a game looked bad

    They also kinda fired a bunch of people after forcing them to change their creative vision to support predatory pricing aimed at addictive personalities?

    Yeah this was not given much focus in the comic or newspost, it came off as being mad that he isn't getting the game

    I mean, a whole paragraph of the newspost is dedicated to Viseral. He only briefly mentions the cancelled game. And the comic mentions both, shuttering a studio and cancelling a game. And the second panel--jobs are being destroyed along with art. I don't think the fault is on Jerry if you didn't happen to notice it. It seems pretty clear to me from the comic and newspost what he is mad about.

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    Nah he definitely coulda focused more on it

    PNk1Ml4.png
  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    2.) The other, and this is what I meant by the "toy" comment, is that Jerry's anger wasn't really well-founded and really came down to him being mad because it killed a type of game he liked and was looking forward to for reasons he thought were morally offensive at the time. As it turns out, and to be fair to him personally, the way the internet decided to leap on the narrative wasn't really the case. The story of that particular game being cancelled and that game studio being closed wasn't really about EA being a bunch of heartless, money grubbing bastards who spit on art and were all about monetization in the face of the single-player narrative game experience. That wasn't the whole story. There was severe mismanagement and other very serious issues going on at that studio, information that came out later that Jerry, like most people, didn't know at the time he fired off his angry rant.
    Of the poor decisions that lead to the closure of Visceral, some of them are still EA's fault, and with their history with this sort of thing I'm not inclined to give them a lot of leeway. As for EA's official statement on the closure of Visceral and the cancellation of the game, it was the official statement from the publisher, and it didn't even make them look good. It turned out not the be the whole story in the end but I don't think it was wrong to take it at face value at the time. Given the state of the other Star Wars game EA is publishing it seems there was some truth to it.

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    If the part about my statement that got your dander up was "DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAMES ARE TOYS?" then uh

    buddy

    Good point. Personally, I was more bugged by the whole "dismissing the main target of Tycho's ire, that being the firing of a whole studio as punishment for the mistakes of the parent company that did the firing, instead equating a small part of what bothered Tycho with his entire argument, and somehow drawing a correlation between that and Tycho apparently being a horrible person because he didn't like a certain Polygon review or maybe he's a horrible person for liking Punisher?"

    That was the part that stuck out to me anyway.

    That sure is a... colorful characterization of what I said.

    Let's call it that.

    You sure do like...italics. In all seriousness, if that's not what you said, can you correct me? You don't seem to really be engaging with people who take issue with what you said. Which I sort of understand, but to some extent I feel like you have to expect some pushback when you come on a fan page and seem to have a pretty low opinion of the content we are fans of. That's not to say there's no place to criticize G&T here.

    I personally have no idea what the Polygon article is about. I am all for higher discourse in games and in terms of "should critics of games and movies talk about race or politics in their reviews", I tend to come pretty hard on the side of, "sure". In this particular instance, though, Jerry wasn't saying that sort of thing isn't worth talking about. He was just saying he didn't see any of "that", whatever "that" was, in The Punisher.

    It seems like you are actually wanting to have it both ways, though, because you seem to be saying games are important enough to be worth addressing big issues in them, but you're also saying there's no place for ire regarding the closure of a game studio because its just a game.

    At least, I think that's what you are saying. As I said, to me it looked like you were boiling down the "ire comic" to being a guy mad about a game being cancelled, but of course that wasn't why Tycho was mad. He was made because a team of artists were losing their job after their creative vision was destroyed by shameless monetezation.

    Is that something we can talk about, or get mad about, or is that not allowed since it's just a game? Are you for or against conversations that delve into the medium? Because you seem to be holding to both sides of that in this particular thread.

    Alrighty! Let's keep these clean and without having a go at each other's writing styles, maybe!

    What I was addressing with bringing up that particular comic was two-fold, and I'll break it down for you.

    1.) I think it was hypocritical of Jerry to sneer at Polygon for being seriously critical of a piece of genre fiction and "geeky media" when he himself takes the subject of gaming deathly seriously, to the point of taking his otherwise comedy webcomic by the horns from time to time to stare directly at the reader and holler about some perceived injustice. In this case, about a game he was looking forward to which will now no longer exist. This wasn't him doing a bit, mind, it was Jerry Holkins expressing his own personal opinions using the character of Tycho as a mouthpiece to do so. There was no punchline there. It was just a rant. He's got every right to do so, of course. It's his comic, his platform, but it's an absurd notion to with one side of your mouth say "don't take this shit seriously" and with the other say "take me seriously".

    2.) The other, and this is what I meant by the "toy" comment, is that Jerry's anger wasn't really well-founded and really came down to him being mad because it killed a type of game he liked and was looking forward to for reasons he thought were morally offensive at the time. As it turns out, and to be fair to him personally, the way the internet decided to leap on the narrative wasn't really the case. The story of that particular game being cancelled and that game studio being closed wasn't really about EA being a bunch of heartless, money grubbing bastards who spit on art and were all about monetization in the face of the single-player narrative game experience. That wasn't the whole story. There was severe mismanagement and other very serious issues going on at that studio, information that came out later that Jerry, like most people, didn't know at the time he fired off his angry rant.

    If he did know that information at the time it's unlikely he would have had the same kind of panel-grabbing, fourth-wall staring rant about how EA is bad for the industry and bad for gamers. I dare say if EA hadn't have killed off a Naughty Dog-style single-player adventure game (a type of game Jerry likes) but instead killed off a studio making some Star Wars licensed hidden object game for mobile platforms Jerry probably wouldn't have cared as much. If at all. Certainly not necessarily with the same vigor.

    I mean, where's Jerry's angry, clothes-tearing rants about the fate of Gazillion, the company that produced Marvel Heroes that just shuttered its doors without warning and just fucked over all its employees? That's something video game news sites are covering because holy shit, it's fucking awful. You want to talk about employees being punished because of mismanagement, oh my fucking god. I dunno if there's gonna be any PA strips about that because it wasn't a game Jerry or Mike played or gave a damn about.

    And that's okay! They don't have to give a shit about everything. That's not their job. They're cartoonists, funny men, not fuckin' social justice paladins who are obligated to use their platform to signal boost the latest gaming outrage.

    But then, simultaneously, I neither desire to see them throw shade at actual reviewers doing their actual jobs just because they don't necessarily agree with their reviews (being completely ignorant of the cudgel-like power they wield with their fanbase) and I'm also uninterested in them trying to soapbox at me and expecting to be taken seriously about something that, quite frankly, they aren't even right about.

    Sincerely not trying to be nasty. It just seemed like your italics were unfairly dismissive of the people you were responding to, myself included. Got my hairs up a little and I got snarky. I do apologize, it was uncalled for.

    Anyhoo. As I said, Jerry's post does not read to me like he's saying there's no place to bring serious criticism at The Punisher. He just says it doesn't sound like the show he was watching. As in, the topics the reviewer brings up didn't seem like they were relevant to that particular show. I don't really care to watch The Punisher to find out whether he's right or not, since it seems like a show I would probably hate.

    To be fair, I do think PA as an...institution I guess? could stand to be more responsible with how it "directs" its often rabid fanbase, though I would say that the ultimate responsibility lies in readers not to be dicks about it and take any criticism as a call to harrass or DDOS other sites (I don't know if that happens with PA or not, I just know it tends to be a side effect of public figures online saying they don't like something). Being realistic, I know "don't be dicks" is never something we can expect large groups on the internet to follow, though, so I do wish the newsposts would either rein it in a little or throw in the occasional caveat that just because Jerry doesn't like a review does not mean the site is trash or worthy of torches and pitchforks.

    It's tricky because Jerry is a public figure and people will read him saying "I didn't agree with this review" as "This whole review site is trash and symptomatic of greater problems and needs to be burned and the stake, go forth, my minions." But he's also a person, who sometimes doesn't agree with reviews, and likes to make jokes or comments about it because he likes talking about stuff he likes and stuff he doesn't like.

    Should Jerry take gaming so seriously? I dunno. When he or, say, Jim Sterling, goes off on a topic, I see their point of view and tend to agree, but I certainly don't get mad about it and I forget about it when I leave my computer and go to work. But these guys do talk about games for a living. So I can't fault them for getting worked up over messed up stuff in an industry that is a hobby to me, but a livelihood and expertise for them.

    But again, I'm not seeing Jerry sneering at Polygon for taking The Punisher seriously. All he said was he didn't see what they were talking about in the review, in the actual show. Maybe he's wrong and maybe he's right. But as much as many people in the "don't talk about deep issues in my video games" crowd seem to see Jerry as their Prophet, I don't think he sees himself that way at all.

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    So I drifted over into the Marvel thread of Social Entropy (I lurk exclusively in the Penny Arcade thread in normal circumstances) and read up a bit more on what's going on. And I'm going to say, yeah, with a bit more info on the TV show, the Polygon review, and comparing that to the allusion made in panel 3, I was wrong. There's subtext in the comic and newspost that I wasn't really aware of and having all the context makes me come down more on Pony's side. I'll follow and see where this discussion goes because it's interesting but I don't want to come across as saying something I'm not re: the whole politics in games and nerd media thing.

    That said, I will not budge on one thing. The Chicken Bacon Ranch is good. But if you're willing to forgo the bacon, the Oven Roasted Chicken is a nice cheaper compromise.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    So I drifted over into the Marvel thread of Social Entropy (I lurk exclusively in the Penny Arcade thread in normal circumstances) and read up a bit more on what's going on. And I'm going to say, yeah, with a bit more info on the TV show, the Polygon review, and comparing that to the allusion made in panel 3, I was wrong. There's subtext in the comic and newspost that I wasn't really aware of and having all the context makes me come down more on Pony's side. I'll follow and see where this discussion goes because it's interesting but I don't want to come across as saying something I'm not re: the whole politics in games and nerd media thing.

    That said, I will not budge on one thing. The Chicken Bacon Ranch is good. But if you're willing to forgo the bacon, the Oven Roasted Chicken is a nice cheaper compromise.

    On this, my friend, we agree.

  • KetBraKetBra Dressed Ridiculously Registered User regular
    Chicken Bacon Ranch is so bad, jesus christ you guys have no taste buds

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  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    I've never eaten a bad submarine sandwich

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  • cB557cB557 voOOP Registered User regular
    I think I've eaten a grand total of one bad submarine sandwich but then again I've only eaten like, two different types of sub and the one I didn't like was the same type I usually eat but at a different chain than the one I was used to so I'm probably not a super useful data point.

  • wallywestwallywest Registered User regular
    edited November 2017
    zaitcev wrote: »
    What Subway has going the most for them is their working hours. In most locales where I lived no other sub shop worked until 21:00. It was either Subway or McDonalds after seven.

    Man, that sucks. There's like five places within a mile of my house that makes subs later than Subway. A couple that are 24/7. Subway is the Backstreet Boys of fast food joints. Last time I was there, thanks to a friend with no taste buds, they put a total of four olives on the sub. When I asked for more they responded they would be fired if they did that. Just..., wow.
    Pony wrote:
    Gabe and Tycho are intended to be characters. They have specific character traits, quirks, opinions, fetishes, beliefs, values, and habits that are not necessarily reflective of Mike and Jerry as real people.

    Seriously? They admitted like a year into this that most strips were lifted directly from their real conversations.

    They make a strip, and Jerry posts a long, sometimes rambling, explanation of how one or both of them directly inspired the comic.

    wallywest on
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    edited November 2017
    Hey did you check out that Polygon review? It got tore up over at Penny Arcade.
    Oh shit! We should probably go read that right now, then.
    It's like the reverse of the Nintendo Seal of Approval. There's no greater indicator of a quality review than Tycho not liking it.
    What he said about the Subway's Chicken Bacon Ranch was "I don't recognize that as a sub. I don't even think the people who made it were even thinking about a sub."
    And look, that's a great sandwich.

    Cambiata on
    "If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
  • agoajagoaj Top Tier One FearRegistered User regular
    They call it a submarine sandwich but put it on ocean water for just a second and it's hull integrity collapses. Also they use too much mayo.

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  • CokomonCokomon Our butts are worth fighting for! Registered User regular
    In regards to the EA/Star Wars comic from a few weeks back, I think old Penny-Arcade would have handled it better. Instead of Tycho screaming at the camera for three panels, the would have done a comic of evil EA suits burning classical artwork and then lining up the developers to be shot while talking about how they are actually creating art. Or something. It feels like part of the problem with that comic was just lazy exposition, telling and not showing.

    The other problem was how this is what set them off. While the death of a studio at the hands of EA is indeed shitty, it's not entirely a rare occurrence. It's just interesting that there are some other, bigger problems in the industry and gaming culture as a whole that they don't seem to get this mad at.

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