The Game Room

If you haven’t heard of Penny Arcade I’m going to cut you some slack, but if you’re even remotely interested in anything I’ve written about on this site you should be reading it. One warning though, “four-letter words” are quite common, but I really don’t think the strip would work as well without it.

Seriously, Penny Arcade has some of the best analysis of video games, the industry, and geek culture in general that I’ve ever seen. Gabe’s (Mike Krahulic) artwork has steadily been getting better over the now almost ten year history of the site. He pretty consistently great now.

It’s really quite amazing how far he’s come as an artist from the first strip back in 1998.

Also, Tycho’s (Jerry Holkins) writing is amazing. He is one of my favorite writers, regardless of medium.

A great example was his description of their friend’s obsession with Pokemon:

I mean, there are profundities here. It’s like looking into a twisting hole in reality that has another hole inside it, snaking through the universe, and in this second hole a third hole is visible. In this third hole - should you look long enough - you can see your own death.

Also, this strip is another great example:

I really don’t know of too many other people who write like that.

Also, I love plays on words, and PA delivers.

But back to why they tie into gaming. Despite being just a webcomic that comes out three times a week and a “news” post detailing whatever Tycho (and sometimes Gabe) have been playing lately, they have some of the best commentary around. They don’t give games a score, letter grade, or anything like that. They just say what they think about it, good, bad, or ugly. Even their ads are somewhat personal. In the past they would take ads from just about any game that looked decent, but after there was a bit of an argument between them and Ubisoft over their harsh criticism of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. They agreed to run the ads based on liking the first game, but weren’t fans of changes made in the sequel and made that known on the site. Ubisoft wasn’t pleased, but they explained that the reason ads on their site (apparently) correlate highly with sales is that they only allow ads for games they actually really liked. After that, they started making sure they could actually play at least some of the game before agreeing to any advertising deal.

This is an even bigger deal after “Gerstmann-gate.” For those that don’t know, Jeff Gerstmann was an editor at Gamespot, one of the bigger gaming websites, and had been for several years. Eidos, the publishers of Kane & Lynch, were pumping tons of advertising dollars into the site. As in, allowing users to skin the site with Kane & Lynch themes, ads all over the site, etc. Big time promotion. Jeff wasn’t a fan of the game, giving it a 6.0 out of 10, which within the context of that site’s reviews, is mediocre at best and implies that the game is not good. Shortly thereafter, Jeff was fired. Now, there has never been an admission that this was the reason for it, but anonymous tips from other Gamespot employees has suggested that he wasn’t fired for the score, but for the overall “tone” of his review. This outraged many in the gaming community and press, but not much was ever officially resolved. Several other editors and writers left the site, either in protest or fear of being fired for one of their future reviews, and Gerstmann has recently started a new site, Giant Bomb.

It’s not even just big news that gets great coverage from them. Often, it’s just some weird quirk a game has.

So seriously, if you’re into gaming, or just geeky humor, Penny Arcade is a great read.