Penny Arcade

News: Child's Play And PATV Stuff

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:24:41 GMT

Child's Play is incredibly vast, so vast that - even though Gabriel and I ostensibly created it - it extends far beyond our influence. That's how it had to be: in order for it to endure, it needs its own strength. But it's still surprising for me to realize the extent of its autonomy sometimes. The toy drive used to be the focus, but Child's Play is a banner now for a broad array of charitable impulses. For example.

Gears of War is soliciting feedback on a story point - namely, whether or not this game's Carmine will survive. You vote by purchasing Avatar garments, the proceeds of which go to Child's Play. This is on a completely different scale than we're used to, but here are the shirts:

Save Carmine (Male) (Female)

Carmine Must Die (Male) (Female)

Also, 2 Player told Robert to ask me if I would link to the discussion thread for the Season Finale. I've seen it a few times already, and I think I may watch it again today.

(CW)TB

Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Four

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: Blood And Oil, Part Four

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Blood And Oil. Part Four. One more to go.

I met a guy from DigiPen many years ago - eventually he quit the school, but found his way into the industry regardless. Before meeting him, I thought that Starcraft was a game where you built up your defenses and then teched up to the weird shit and then fought your opponent in the middle of the map somewhere. Watching him play that game - a game I owned, and played, and thought I knew - practically ruined the genre for me.

I wouldn't see shit like that again until the first Blizzcon, watching what YellOw could do on a screen substantially taller than a house. The game they're playing looks the same as the one we have, and the controls are the same, but it is not the same game - it is OCD masquerading as recreation. Knowing that those people are out there, the Others, who don't move units so much as vibrate them, makes me wish this was one of those products where the single player and the multiplayer installed separately. It also makes me wonder to what extent Starcraft's multiplayer can be reviewed. Every game has its complexities, its rituals, and secrets it reveals only to the faithful, but most games aren't founded on a tripartite asymmetry alongside incredibly granular control.

I'm enjoying the Single Player quite well, it was clearly very expensive to make, and stakes out a context independent of the multiplayer by transforming the tech race of an individual round into a series of interesting, often binary choices. I also like that Battle.net is kind enough to store my single player progress between machines, though why I'd want to play that game on an iMac after I've seen it on the thrumming obelisk I have at home is beyond me. Attempting to tick the settings anywhere past the recommended level results in Crashtown Races sing this song/all the doo dah day, or at any rate the better part of the day.

It's a lot of crashing, in any event.

It doesn't entirely matter, though, when Gabe is across the room on this own machine, and we are - the two of us - beating on a single "Easy" A.I. Zerg opponent, just as we did when we still lived in the same apartment. They say you can't go home again, but you can, actually, if your home is an imaginary world infested with xenomorphs. I was under the impression that the genre had moved <i>past</i> this and into squads, cover, and co-op. Maybe it has. But what they've done here - that is, to realize a worthy nostalgia that doesn't merely trade on sentimentality - bears itself with a regal charm.

New episode of PATV is up, the last of this "season." Indeed, it is the Season Finale, and wraps things up about as well as is humanly possible. We start filming the next season almost immediately, but in the interim we've got bonus Blams and a selection of lean cuts from awesome video people you're probably familiar with. The best part? It works with the eyes you already have.

(CW)TB out.

News: Blood And Oil, Part Three

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I've got more blood for you, and also more oil, in the ongoing series we're calling Blood And Oil - here's part three. This is a guest work; we did not draw or write this. I'm not entirely certain we could.

Weird features like Dragon Quest IX's "Canvass Mode" or The World Ends With You's "Truly Crazy Button Selling Thingamajig" are well suited to Japan, where mass transit is a thing that exists, though I'd imagine that you could do pretty well in Europe also. In the United States, the best scenario for passive trades is probably at conventions, during the convention season, a magical time which we currently find ourselves steeped in.

During SDCC, over the course of four days, I was able to secure around a hundred and thirty guests to my Inn. Players will know it as the Quester's Rest, but the rest of you should know that it's essentially a holding tank for other people's fully customized characters, their customizable messages, and the treasure maps they bring along. The Nintendo booth (registered as guest "NOA3") was handing out a map, or wirelessly distributing one at any rate, but I have in my possession twenty such maps from other players - of varying levels and content. Gabriel and I tried to tackle one of these on the way home and were obliterated, which (for my particular psychological construction) is profoundly more exciting than victory. I'm given to understand that these maps (and the cruel demigods that make these dungeons their home) constitute the "endgame," randomly generated, multiplayer capable terror dimensions literally without end.

Sharing could be easier, though, to be sure. It reminds me a little of the Zune originally, a device based on some big ideas but worked best in an alternate dimension where the device had reached critical mass - ultimately, the machine was made to embrace the broader web. I happen to think that associating a value with proximity is interesting and rewarding, somewhere between intimacy and mild voyeurism, but if the end result is that people can't leverage some of your most interesting gameplay ideas depending on where they live maybe that no worky.

I think the 3DS will clean up some of this process. The current hardware needs to be "parked" in a specific mode to harvest content like this, and the new one can manage that kind of stuff on the fly. Plus, with more beef internal to the device, gameplay over the Internet (which happens, but is rare) starts to become a much more reasonable proposition.

(CW)TB out.

it was not your fault but mine

Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Three

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: P To The A To The T And Also V

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:20:36 GMT

The new Episode of PATV went up on Friday, but I forgot to link it, because my mind body connection had been severed. It is good, and funny, and good! Please to enjoy. Also, strip's up as well. It's fucking incredible.

(CW)TB

News: Blood And Oil, Part Two

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

It may be wise if, going forward, you think of the ongoing Blood & Oil series as something which needs to slow roast; the strip will be here, but the RSS feed will be your best friend regarding updates to the site. Once again: Blood & Oil is an Automata story written by Gary Whitta and powerfully realized by Ben Caldwell. It's in five parts, running all this week and into next Monday. Buckle up.

My psyche is always so abraded by the social onslaught of a convention - I'm not entirely certain we're built to see this many faces in that span of time. I feel like someone has been using my skull as a makeshift pipe to smoke cacti hallucinogens. There is a resin baked into its inner surface that is in deep communion with my consciousness, they are synonyms, and I think the timescale is wrong because I'm currently watching reality being birthed and destroyed at once, and it's beautiful whenever it is not a greasily unfolding nightmare bouquet.

It is very strange to be at San Diego Comic Con beneath a banner which says "Webcomics," considering that this word did not exist when we began our .jpeg foundry. There are so many creators whose work occupies this space - enough for there to be space designated! - and the lanes so choked with humanity that I once saw a jedi fall before our booth, instantly pulverized by the crowd.

Only his saber remained.

I'm not familiar enough with Gay fiction or Furry fiction to know that they are often a package deal, and I told the guys at Sofawolf Press that I would be back to buy something, and never got the opportunity. I don't like doing that, and I feel bad. For whatever reason, I think it's my duty to look at things I don't like (or think I will like) and to think about things I wouldn't in the normal course of the day - and gay, bipedal foxes having sex in a castle is about as far away from my own thoughts as it is possible to get. This isn't one of those situations where it's like "oh, gay furry porn, what's this horf horf horf" and then I get strap on the fursuit with the dog balls and I'm scritching away. I literally can't hold an image like that in my head, which is a failure of my imagination. That's why I have this regimen in the first Goddamned place.

I had multiple opportunities to see one R. K. Milholland, because he was a hundred feet away. His strip Something Positive is one of the old guard, which makes us even older guard than that, which is a fucked thing to consider. As I was running away from the convention center to seize a taxi, he thanked me for some ancient kindness I had paid him; I demurred. I don't really go in for that kind of stuff. Where would I keep such a sentiment? There is no room. If he had not been dedicated, and broken, but broken properly, lucky, and above all excellent, linking to him in his formative state would have been irrelevant. A nickel arcing into his guitar case at best. I read his work and felt kinship immediately. If I did anything it was merely to recognize our shared humanity, which is something that everyone should be doing, every day, and at all times.

(CW)TB out.

where was my fault

Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Two

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: Blood And Oil, Part One

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Today marks the debut of a guest Automata "event," drawn by the incomparable Ben Caldwell and "Book of Eli" scribe Gary Whitta. We don't have any right to talent like this, and giving the site over to them for a week or so will probably get you accustomed to work of genuine quality, at which point they will usurp us and we will have to get new jobs.

So, maybe not our best plan ever. I guess we'll see.

Dragon Quest IX and my Nintendo DSi entertainment system are now fused, representing a single, dedicated entertainment apparatus. Anything not absolutely necessary for the playing of this most recent Dragon Quest has become vestigial.

I couldn't even tell you where my stylus is.

I keep thinking that the joy will abate, or that the game will get too comfortable with itself, or some other thing that never ends up being true. It exhibits confidence and class well beyond what should (by rights) fit on a tiny square this size. And its portability assures that it is always there, like a hound gnawing a tennis ball, wagging its tail by the door in a state of eager, perpetual joy. This must be what the true Dragon Quest enthusiast wants: to come in to the series completely fresh. Well, I'm doing that. And it's as great as you hoped.

It makes me feel bad that I want it to look better sometimes, but I do; it makes me feel like I have a prickly heart and that I'm not truly capable of love. Key NPCs are surprisingly great - easy on the eye, legitimately evocative. The menagerie is also a treat, with beasts that visibly delight in their own evil nature. But your characters, being lathed out of chunks in the hero factory, don't always rise to the level. This is the third piece of Nintendo DS hardware I've purchased, and I've had as much fun on this system as I've had on any other, but when I see my character's clubby, pointy non-hands in this game I purse my lips. Those inhuman stumps may be my only complaint. The 3DS really can't come soon enough.

(CW)TB out.

from the day he was one

Comic: Blood And Oil, Part One

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Comic: The S Word

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: The S Word

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The room scenario described in the strip is brutally mega-real. My response was to haul out the big guns. Actually, it's my policy to leverage the big guns exclusively. I had a few little guns for awhile, and I sent them back. "Won't be needing these," I said.

Heading south. A few items:

- Should you be one of those attending the San Diego Comic Con this year (a group which must include a statistically significant portion of the readership) please stop by our boof, which is located conveniently at shanty number "1237" in the strange and temporary society of the Dealer's Room. Our friend Scott Kurtz is situated very near, and so are many, many other fascinatory persons.

- I talked with someone from Playdead at PAX East a few months back - the team behind the ridiculously beautiful XBLA title Limbo. He was so open about the process of developing Limbo and their aspirations for it that the game has set up a tidy room in my thoughts. I can remember looking at that demo reel on YouTube years ago, wondering what (if anything) would ever become of it. I had half a mind to bring a 360 down to the convention with me, purely for Limbo purposes. A tickling frond of my rational mind knows the game will still be here when I get back, that it will not evaporate. It is trying to convince the other lobes, and it is losing.

- Automata fans will have much to celebrate come Friday, when an entirely unorthodox series of guest strips begins its run. I'll just put this link here, and this link here, and let the ramifications of that seize the machinery of your mind.

(CW)TB out.

before i even met you

News: Planting A Flag

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:12:05 GMT

Gabriel specializes in names like "Mantis Eaglehawk," that is to say, names that puncture the carefully calibrated drama of their setting. He has retained Dudefella lo these many years, long enough for me to substitute "Du'defaella" in my mind whenever I see it, with its notes of an elven upbringing grimmed with the dust of prophecy.

He's got plans for Cataclysm, name-wise - big plans. And if those plans fall through, there are plans within plans. I'm waiting for him to take the serious name ironically, because honestly I don't care why.

I'm still playing Transformers, still, which must put me into squarely into some dead-ender, cultist demographic. We move through games so fast typically that I never see the arc, I'm in for the boom and then out before the first ill-conceived DLC. The only time this policy wasn't maintained in toto was with Chromehounds, which somehow managed to skip the boom phase altogether and leap immediately to an impenetrable fraternity.

There are other games, yes, and they're always releasing more, but what's on offer in War for Cybertron still stands out. There are doldrums in the power curve in the early teens, the goodies which the RPG overlay once dispensed so freely become more scarce, but the basic classes and their interplay expresses the "moreish" shape of a shooter you intended to quit playing at eleven but only emerged from at midnight. It horrifies me to imagine that we thought Shogo was good.

During the demo, I wondered aloud if they had gated off certain classes because they didn't function, or if they were trying to reserve some of their powder for release. It's squarely in the latter camp: characters that turn into planes make up the "Scientist" role, which handles the traditional medic tasks alongside some broader support functionality, contained in an intensely fragile package. I would almost certainly be a Scientist now, if it had been available; the fact that they didn't include it in the demo altered my relationship with the game at a fundamental level.

I have said that I am not competitive, and that I mean it in all the ways the word can be defined, but I don't go out of my way to take on aggressor roles. The Scout in Transformers terms is the nimble assassin, another role that I generally avoid. I took the Soldier simply through a process of elimination, creatures of unrelenting steel that transform into tanks, because it edged out the Scout according to some internal rubric the contours of which I'm not entirely aware of. They're brutes, and High Moon has made no attempt to grind off the edges of their role. Two out of the game's four classes can be killed with a single energized shell. My advice to you, freely given, is to avoid my forward firing arc.

It made me realize that I don't even attempt to succeed in the games I play, for better or worse: I operate under the assumption that the best I can aspire to is to be useful. That if I can just die enough, in the same place, maybe my broken husks will form a bridge. It's pretty funny, actually. A decision about what to withhold from a game's demo has revealed that I have been playing videogames - perhaps all videogames - against my will, against my reason, and even against my character.

(CW)TB out.

immaculate keepers of time

Comic: Planting A Flag

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: Here's The Stuff We're Bringing To San Diego

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:02:26 GMT

Seriously, all kinds of shit. We've got the new Mosey shirt, Wolfman/Dracula, some some new Automata stuff as well.

Also: MORE. Here's the banner, if you're curious. It also covers any "comboz."

(CW)TB

News: New PATV For That Ass

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:49:01 GMT

It's a 4th Panel, and it's more or less about what happens when things go wrong.

(CW)TB

Comic: This Would Actually Be Rad

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

News: This Would Actually Be Rad

tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

This holiday's Harry Potter offering forgoes the Grand Theft Hogwarts/campus crawling adventure for something like third-person cover shooter, which I have heard alternately called "Order of the Marcus Fenix" or "Gears of Wand." I am not without affection for Harry Potter, and I like Video Games, but I've only played a couple hours total of products set in the universe which I'm sure must strike them as odd. It's just that they've never given me a game I want to play all the way through.

I think there is something to this new approach. I'm sure that makes me a bad person.

We've been on 1 vs 100 twice. It was fun both times, if a little disembodied and strange, and being in the booth surrounded by so much whirring human machinery - you'd have been shocked to see how busy they were in there - was a radical subversion of an ordinary day. Hearing that it's been cancelled makes me genuinely sad.

The game had some cache with Teh Hardc0rz, but the thing that struck us when we were on the show was how far outside of Kansas we had gone. For the purposes of this metaphor, Kansas describes the metaphorical region where the traditional gaming enthusiast hails from. Looking at the mails that streamed in throughout the show, looking at the pictures that were sent in, and the tweets chirped, these people weren't (in aggregate) our people.

There they were, families on couches, their dogs physically present: the elusive "mainstream gamer." It was like seeing a real yeti. They had these yetis, or people, or whatever, and they were there connected and playing the game. These are the people Microsoft supposedly wants, the ones they're trying at tremendous expense to snare with Kinect, except they are already here.

Xbox Live as a service is essentially a toll bridge, and as more functionality as emerged, additional toll bridges have been set up beyond the first one, creating "pay to pay" scenarios such as the one that governs Netflix. 1 vs 100 was such a sharp segue from that policy: a game, unlike anything you could buy, that expressed in an effortless way the value of a connected community. It personified that realm, which is to say it transformed it into people. Joy Ride, prior to its shift to both retail and Kinect, was another point in this continuum. It was good. They felt like the fruit of a living service.

I've heard all the reasons mentioned in the story on Kantorko for canceling the product - it wasn't paying for itself, the licensor was turning the screws, that kind of stuff. That's all pretty boring, not to mention ridiculous, and it's really starting to look it's someone's job to stomp the tiny flowers that manage to pierce the asphalt over there.

(CW)TB out.

can't you understand

News: PAX PRIME!

gabe@penny-arcade.com (Gabe) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:42:00 GMT

I had a dream the other night that we decided to hold PAX in a huge field this year. It seemed like a good idea for some reason but when we got there it was raining and everyone was all wet. Then I looked down and I had no pants. These sorts of dreams tell me that PAX is coming up pretty quick.

You should know that it looks like we will sell out of our 3 day badges sometime between Thursday and Sunday of this week. If you want to grab a couple of these you should head over and do it now.

If you want to attend PAX but would rather work like a dog all three days then you should consider being an enforcer. You can follow this link for the application to join the volunteer army that keeps PAX running so smoothly.

It’s worth mentioning that PAX is not being held in a field this year. It will be at the Washington State convention center and that place has a very nice roof. Also I will be wearing pants.

-Gabe out

Comic: Duplicity

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT