My magical code machine is still operating at max capacity, and we have loaded it with a few more codes if you still want to get in. Said codes can be transformed into access for whatever machine you want to play it on, in preparation for the beta which opens on the 24th of this month.

It gets mailed out a little later this month to members in Robert's newsletter, but here's the preview panel for this top secret shiz:

Max Max has been a pretty good medicine for returning to normal life, I would say. I have applied it to every exposed surface and I have been improved thereby.

I took off yesterday and played Mad Max pretty much all day. It's a fucking great game and I ended up sketching Max this morning to warm up.

When precisely a PAX ends is a philosophical thing. As I learned after the inaugural PAX South, for many attendees the show actually goes late into the night after the closing ceremony - and for Enforcers and Attendees, the show must be reduced to atoms and then transmitted to the next location. For me, PAX has two culminations: one, after we honor the Enforcers at the afterparty, and two (as previously described) when my phone is provisioned on my home network. Both things have come to pass. The portal is closed.

I couldn't get my mouse to work on the desk in the hotel, but I saw a little glossy advertisement for Hiveswap my son had been delighted by, and that is now my Mousepad. So! Thank you, Hiveswap, even if I find your subject matter indistinguishable from an lunar apocalypse cult.

I know we’ve been really quiet about Thornwatch and there has not been much from the twitter but there’s been a good reason. Behind the scenes we’ve been working on some really cool stuff. The Thornwatch panel just wrapped up and it was a big one. We made a couple announcements that explain why we went dark there for a bit. I know not everyone can make it to PAX though so I wanted to share it all here as well.

There's probably an astronomical metaphor to be made about how Black Ops 3 entered into some specific point in its arc while Grooby Doo, Kiko, and myself were doing some other space thing. The upshot - denuded of linguistic foofaraw - is that it's been a very long time since everything lined up and felt this way. The story in the strip is true, by the way. Technically speaking, you don't have to wait for two immobile months on the couch; if you have access to an Xbox One or a decent PC, it's possible that you could play in the phase that runs until Sunday, a period of time which "perfectly" lines up with PAX. Once the beta shuts down on the 30th, then you can wait two immobile months. Try passing the time by spinning a cocoon.

Here's a bunch of R6 codes in my magical code machine, which can be redeemed for the platform of your choice - apparently this Beta phase gets activated 9/24, so, you know, put it in your calendar I guess. I've been following it super close, especially the destructible terrain slash intelligence gathering phase. Maybe you have, too. It's been awhile. I really want to see what they've done with the place.

Some things are said to have been "a good idea at the time," the subtext being that it was actually a bad idea even at the moment of its conception, and that this badness was compressed during both the execution and aftermath into a kind of crystalline shit matrix. I think that my panel idea may exist somewhere in that continuum.

They did such a great job on these, holy shit. I can't believe it. if you're gonna be at PAX, they're available in Room 210 on the 2nd floor in the Tabletop Area for ten bucks. I don't know what the plans for them are outside of that, and I haven't seen the stat card - you'll have to ask them.

I really didn't enjoy the small amount of time I spent with Toy Soldiers: War Chest and I'm not one hundred percent sure I'll be back.

At the very first PAX in 2004 there was a daring theft. One of our banners, THIS banner actually

Hello Penny Arcade readers. I'd like to introduce our merchandise guy Brian. He is not good at Fantasy Football like me and he is very physically fit. He's going to talk about merchandise at PAX Prime.

The top-line bit in any story about Fig - a Kickstart-alike from a gaggle of crowdfunding apex predators tired of paying Kickstarter's fees - is that there is a route here to get equity in the games produced. Eventually they'd like that to be broadly applicable, but for now, it turns out there are laws that govern this type of speculation. It requires that those who partake in the ritual be Accredited Investors, which means among other things that they have money to lose. It presents a scenario where you could lose your shirt funding a game where you play as a shirt in a world where shirts have been outlawed.

This has been my doom from the very beginning, all my life. Most of the words I know I got from books, which I thought were my friends, but they don't necessarily have pronunciation keys and also the English language is a kaleidoscopic whorehouse.