Update.strip is now available.

You might have heard that Sony Online Entertainment was now giving away Everquest II to Fileplanet Subscribers, which we suggest may be one plank of an overarching strategy. Though it rarely gets to the final stage we detail in the strip, simply handing out the client for fee-based games happens all the time: Puzzle Pirates operates under this model, as does Meridian 59. Same with A Tale In The Desert. Gunbound, the self-proclaimed "Shooting game of new generation," used to be funded by players who paid a premium for avatar customization items. Might still be true.

If there was an Olympic event that involved creating concepts for comic books and then never completing them Tycho and I would have a case full of gold medals. Coming up with ideas for stories, starting the project and then never following through is really a sort of hobby for us. With that disclaimer out of the way I’d like to show you something we came up with last week.

I think I could be very comfortable just writing Annarchy strips from here on out.  Their construction is a bracing exertion for the mind, and I welcome the (highly novel!) sensation.  Aromatic continuity does make an appearance, but I hope you won't deny an old man his small amusements.

I suggested some time ago - around when Enterprise was cancelled, I think - that those at the helm of the franchise could no longer be trusted with Star Trek or our abiding commitment to the setting.  The fact of the matter is that they have perpetrated acts of a villainous kind against their devoted "constit'iency."  The addendum I made to that firm pronouncement was that videogames may themselves constitute a kind of "Final Frontier," a polychromatic reach wherein authentic experiences could be honestly generated - perhaps the last, best option.

You can only imagine my surprise when I saw that Bethesda - fabled genitor of the Elder Scrolls saga - had snatched up the license, for what I would guess to be a diner receipt and a Lifesaver covered in lint.

You'll recall that Bethesda also owns the rights to Fallout, in any case you should recall it, lest I cluck at your tarnished hardcore credentials.  Perhaps I should say they own limited rights - I believe that MMOs aren't covered, and their Star Trek license follows a similar pattern.  On the Fallout tip, the powerful need to interview them like a doting father about their intentions re: my daughter is omnipresent.  They haven't said word one since they picked it up a year and a half ago, though a first-person medieval RPG "set in the Fallout universe" seems likely. 

No radio silence of that type accompied the Star Trek announcement, with two titles materializing in the body of the release itself.  The portable stuff they announced looks pretty raw, yet - but we got an interview with the creative director on Star Trek: Legacy, a real-time game of stellar combat with a tactical focus for the PC and 360.  It is described as playing "like a squad shooter, with spaceships."  That doesn't sound bad, but I also don't really know what it means.  Dukes of Hazzard was once described to me as "Rogue Spear with Cars,"  when the formula was really more like :

Rogue Spear + Cars + Neurotoxin

(CW)TB out.

making too many problems

I didn't expect the information that we are surrounded (at all times) by online shills to reverberate so. I assumed, perhaps without support for the notion, that everyone else was as paranoid about this kind of thing as I was. I found concrete evidence of schizoid post farms to be a kind of comfort.

Hey we were mentioned in Canada’s Globe and Mail today! They have an article about Shilling online and they mentioned Tycho’s post about Hype Council. You can read the entire article online.

I was looking for some military pictures to help me with a project I’m working on. You never now what sort of digital adventure a google image search will take you on. Today I discovered www.petsinuniform.com. Maybe you’ve already seen this but if you haven’t its damn funny.

I made a huge PAX 06 post a few weeks ago when we opened up pre-registration. If you want to know why PAX is “like totally the coolest thing like evar” then you should give my old post a read. With the actual event still months away we’ve already got well over 700 people registered. Last year I think the final count was around 9000 attendees. I wouldn’t be surprised if we beat that this year.

The "Battle Box" is now available on the store, if you're interested.  This is the full set of cards, in the form of a Tycho Deck and a Gabe deck.  We wanted to do a CCG style card game that wouldn't involve buying foil packs or hunting around for your favorite card, and Sabertooth obliged.  They didn't exactly go wild printing them though, so if it is the sort of thing that you would enjoy I would ask that you not hesitate. 

If our particular manifestation doesn't turn your crank, but you are interested in the mechanics of a card game based on arcade fighters like Soul Calibur and Street Fighter, there is some recourse for you.  You can actually get demo decks for free online, print them out, and play to your heart's content - here is the Soul Calibur one, and here is one for Street Fighter.  You can even mail the guys at Sabertooth at demodecks@sabertoothgames.com, and they'll send a couple to your house if you so desire.

(CW)TB

It is probably no surprise that we do not hitch our psychological wagons to the on-field rigors of this or that sporting outfit.  Like many Mark I geeks, we tend to associate sports and the period they occupy in the school day as the geography of physical abuse.  I'm assuming this isn't true for people who purchase the annual Madden, and then play the game wearing a jersey.  But I don't really know that guy.

After living in my town the last couple weeks, some measure of the enthusiasm people expected to find in me grew there spontaneously.  We ended up watching "the game" in Spokane, which is a reeking wound cut into the Earth.  I'm not sure if the people who toil there really understand that they live in an entire country full of towns they could move to, or that living there is itself a kind of death.

In any case, this will be the last time I invest myself in a game where I have no power to determine the outcome.  I really feel a need to emphasize the distinction between this and the sort of game that usually occupies my time.  When I feel the kind of plundered devastation I felt on Sunday, there is usually a "learning phase" that follows it.  It's the first step in a process, a chain of well-documented events which culminates in the expulsion of self-doubt and leaves as the remainder the possibility of future victory.  Provided, of course, that I have internalized the deep wisdom presented by the universe - taken the yoke of that strange intellect which courses through defeat.

When other people are playing the game and it is my job to watch helplessly, all that exists is desolation.  It really was a terrible thing to watch.  The entire conflict turned on demoralizing penalty calls and grave mistakes which mounted a wall of points too high to see over.   And then, with the ashen Mark of Failure already inscribed, there's still time on the clock so you have to sit and watch as your anointed warriors file into the mouth of hell. 

And all throughout, the leering of Steeler's coach Bill Cowher - like the hated visage of Goldstein.  I swear to G-d, every time they showed that fucker it was another Two-Minutes Hate.  

(CW)TB out.

how i loathed the thing

At the Child's Play dinner and auction, bidding for the "appearance in a comic strip" quickly leapt to twenty thousand dollars - a tale Gabriel related at the time.  While we certainly won't turn down support for the charity at that threshold, creating a strip that in any way represents that amount is difficult, like pounding in a nail with your forehead.  We needed a little something to stoke the creative furnace.

When I say a little something, know this.  The something I am referring to should - under optimal circumstances - roll upon twankie deuces.

Many stories about the man who donated that money bubbled to the surface that night.  Was he a friend to young people, fashioned from transient living snow?  Ex-game developer, perhaps.  Possible vampire, dispensing a hoard of ancestral wealth over lonely centuries.  I even heard (actually, for real heard it) that he was the luminous counterpart to Jack Thompson:  a lawyer who used his powers for good, not evil.

The reality is that as a young man, a grievous injury gave our benefactor the "opportunity" to see just how the care at a children's hospital can change a person's life.  I love Child's Play, it's the most important thing I've ever been a part of.  I've gotten up early, delivered the toys, and done the thing right.  But I've never needed it.  I hope that my son's only serious medical concern is the prematurely thinning hair that is his birthright.

Child's Play is in no way theoretical For Christian Boggs.  Nor are his contributions -  which we have shaped into profound comforts, as is our charge.

(CW)TB out.

The new strip is now available - you should be able to perceive it with your optic nerve.  It started out with a discussion of the EA layoffs and the odd nomenclature they used to describe what they did.    They have to keep changing the words they use to describe this process, because people catch on to this shit.  You can't really get away with a term like resizing anymore, because people are like, wait...  You're changing the size?  Well, what is the new size?  That seems smaller.  Did you fire someone?  etc.  

And now we see why, of course - those gods must have their sacrifice.  If you lost your job because it was Q4 and this number was not larger than that number, you have our condolences.

After that the comic went to a strange place.   Korea, actually.

I wanted to wait until I talked to Kiko before discussing Empire at War, because he probably spends the most time on real-time strategy games out of any of us.  I fall in and out of the genre, myself.  I like them best when they don't behave exactly like the genre kings, peace be upon them - for example, I don't really enjoy building bases according to the old ways.  I used to savor planting those blueprints according to my exacting and most likely fallacious ratios.  These days, I'm intrigued by how Rise of Legends has buildings that must be placed elsewhere, you also build onto a city core by creating specialized districts.  I also like the metamap aspects of the original Rise of Nations, something that has been maintained for the (spiritual) sequel.        

Empire at War does a few things that are counter to RTS wisdom, or at any rate RTS tradition, and I'll be curious to see if they're rewarded for their pluck.  It's hard to call it an RTS with a straight face, actually.  It's a galactic empires game that happens to have real-time combat resolution.

It's trying to simultaneously do more and less than most people think, and without playing the demo you won't know what I mean.  I didn't really understand it myself when I started playing, and it was right there in front of me - I'd simply generated a kind of template I thought the game was trying to adhere to and not succeeding.  There's only one resource, money.  Money is generated by owned worlds, not storm troopers shuffling in and out of mineshafts.   There's absolutely no base building, as we take it to mean.  Kiko was looking for a game that combined Homeworld style stellar combat with a more genuine genre experience once troops hit the ground, and I think he could probably do without the galaxy management stuff, which is fairly abstract by RTS standards.  

I suppose that I like it precisely because it isn't a straight RTS.  Through good planning, I can create a situation where I bring a knife to a fistfight on any one of the worlds in the map.  The Y-Wings that survived the orbital battle will give me the ability to perform bombing strikes once on the surface.  Then, utilizing key "named" characters and a sympathetic indigenous population, I can bring down a larger entrenched force.

It's got three multiplayer modes, which you can see detailed here and here.  You have a two player mode that resembles the campaign experience, and then separate (co-operative) space and land battles which utilize more traditional RTS elements.  I've been chomping at the bit for the retail copy from the moment the game "clicked" on my second playthrough.  I haven't played an RTS online seriously since Red Alert II, and I have a fantasy wherein I actually spend some time embroiled in a bid for interstellar domination.  We'll see.

One thing that didn't make sense to me:  the cinematic camera.  It can supposedly be activated at any time to provide a dramatic perspective on the proceedings.  I have been able to get somewhat stirring results out of it in terrestrial conflicts, but using it in a space battle has - to date - provided exactly zero amusement.  Imagine if you could watch a car chase from a camera mounted inside the glove compartment and you will get some idea what I mean.

(CW)TB out.

through the cracks in the wall

If you see a copy of Attack of the Bacon Robots out there in the wild, it's one of the last books left in the first printing.  Dark Horse has completely sold through the initial thirty thousand books in the last two weeks, and as a result have begun ordering a second edition based on my careful edits of the original holy text.  I want to be excited about it, but honestly I'm just breathing a sigh of relief.

I've been really worried about this stupid thing, because after our last experience I had come to believe that the medium of books itself was haunted in some way.  It was all I could do not to beg you to rush out and buy it, in some common way that utilized the dark triumvirate.  This foul alliance consists of bold text, caps lock, and their cruel regent:   the reviled blinky tag.

(CW)TB

I’ve been working on a lot of different projects recently. Finally I think its okay to give you a look at a couple of them. In order to view these hot sneak peeks you will of course need to join our Penny Arcade Supreme™ service. This is a program I’ve designed to reward our very special fans with exclusive content. Unlike other similar services ours has no subscription fee and requires no passwords. PA Supreme content will simply be displayed right here on the front page along with our regular updates.

I entered that contest Bioware was having.  Did you hear about that?  The one where you write a dialogue centered module using their tools, and maybe they give you a job writing their actual games?  Invigorating!  There are plenty of challenges where gamers are exhorted to produce their finest maps and so forth, their finest software - tasks so removed from my own experience as to be mythical trials.  

If you entered a piece into this contest, I do feel a little bad.  They might not even get to yours because they may still be writhing on the floor, overwhelmed by the torrent of pleasure sprayed by my own epic product:  The Black Barn of Horesion.  Something happened in that  charred stable a hundred years ago - and within it neighs a waiting doom.

What Bioware is doing here is highly unorthodox, if not out and out unprecedented.  Stories occupy a debased strata of development priorities already, and the execution of those stories clings for dear life on a rung far below, foot very close to the black crust that has hardened over a cauldron of burning magma.  They have other shit to worry about, I don't blame them.  All the same, it was interesting to see a company move in this way, fishing for authors right out of the community. 

Many people were curious about the revelations of one Mr. Smith we posted recently, revelations authorized only for agents whose sec-prot threshhold is Delta or higher.  His seismic expose rocked  the very foundations of the thing that we are talking about.  I cast my net again recently, and came up with this tasty little cracker:

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