It’s hard to believe but this month (November 18th specifically) marks Penny Arcade’s 15 year anniversary. We honestly had no idea what we were doing when we started. Certainly we didn’t intend for it to become what it has. When I look back at those first comics I remember those 21 year old kids living in a shitty apartment, eating Top Ramen, playing games and making comics. It seems like such a long time ago but when I read one of those old strips I remember exactly what we were doing and why we made it.

Pinny Arcade has gotten so big that we felt like it deserved its own site. You will probably still see Pin News pop up here until we get people used to checking the new site for Pin info...pinfo? It has its own blog that we will use to highlight upcoming pins as well as give you a behind the scenes look at how they get made. You'll see sketches and designs from me and the rest of the pin team here at PA. We will be using it during PAX to announce pin meetups and trading opportunities. We will also try and give you more in depth looks into projects like the Pin Ultimate edition.

Maybe I should have tried to buy one at the store...?

Our PS4 orders should be at our houses "by 8:00pm," so we are at our respective houses awaiting the cyber-stork. I bought mine on the eleventh of June, probably some time very shortly after the now legendary press conference, so getting it now has a feeling similar to Kickstarting something. The purchase and the acquisition are strangely attenuated. That is to say it feels less like a "purchase," and more like harvesting a crop.

So, I wrote that sea shanty comic thing, and then Katie Rice drew it, so my life was more or less complete. But then we got a mail that Ubisoft was going to have a real band actually perform it, which wasn't anything we'd talked about previously, but obviously I was fine with that. So pirate rock outfit The Dread Crew Of Oddwood got hold of the lyrics, and then they made this. Which is fairly (if not utterly) wow. You can by the track here if you are so inclined, but I thought that was pretty cool.

We recorded a podcast which also covers all this stuff, and the enthusiasm with which we anticipate it, but while I've been clearing the deck game-wise my demonic counterpart has been clearing it physically. For the most part, if you needed a new box or needed to replace an old one, you could still leave the sinews back there largely intact. This means that these thick, signal-bearing trunks are ancient of days, imbued with a strange kind of life, flexing and slacking like the myomer bundles of a Battlemech.

The first one was a blast, even at the venue we had, where we had to construct hallways out of canvas and pipe. The main question was, were attendees ready to PAX - PAX as a verb, to PAX properly? The answer came swiftly. It was an answer in the affirmative! There was zero ambiguity. PAX is something we discovered, not something we invented. And it was present in a profound way.

I just got an awesome mail from Rex over at Disney Mobile. Here's what he sent over!

The Disney/Marvel brand cinematic engine is purpose built, unrelenting in its aim, and terrifying thus far in its efficacy. It drives in deep rods that culminate in ensemble films, and then reaps gains while it girds the next one with a new round of worldbuilding and starmaking. These people have Star Wars, now. "Witness the firepower," as they say.

Jamie just delivered a massive Child's Play announcement and I wanted to share it with you all. Here's Jamie's post from the Child's Play site:

The best part about Call of Duty: Ghosts is the dog, you've heard that. You might even know it yourself. The strange part is that as I sit down to type this, it seems like the only part. The only part I can remember.

We have turned to people "in the company" to sort of project manage the things we want to accomplish. Jeff regularly harangues me about the Lookouts novel, and Mike Hayes (nee Fehlauer) prods Gabriel until he starts sanding the edges on the Thornwatch GM's Guide. Too hard at work, frankly. There's too much focus. He needs to ease off the throttle a bit, to reintroduce those lumps and failures and delicious oversights that have brought me such comfort in the past, that ones that have so pleasantly situated my place in the universe.

I’ve set a goal of this time next year as a release date for Thornwatch. Is that doable? I don’t know but I’m going to work as hard as I can to try and make that happen. So over the next year as I’m working on the game I’m going to share as much of the process with you as I can. I’m gonna start with a basic overview of the game and how it works because honestly I’m not sure I’ve done that yet.

I got this mail today and saw a tweet with the same sentiment last week. I figured my response might be interesting to more than just the person who sent the mail.

We received the finished version of the Killer Instinct Pin Ultimate edition here in the office last week. You can do all the awesome artwork and design that you want but it’s still scary waiting for that final version to come back from the manufacturer. This is one of if not the most complicated merchandise projects we've tried to build here at PA and I am so happy with the final product. When it showed up last week all of us on the pin team ran from office to office showing it off.

Of course, we're buying both; that's not some kind of potent metacommentary you've discovered. Call of Duty, like Halo before it, is the game almost everyone plays but must still afford themselves ironic cover. I played the last one a bit, aided by the WiiU's clever ability to let parents play M rated games privately, but (in the manner of some films) I don't think it really likes being squozen onto a tiny screen. I'm gonna try the next one for realsies, though. I've been away long enough that novelty has almost certainly been restored.