How Penny Arcade is interpreted by people has always been source of great curiosity for me. We know perfectly well that we are selfish and self-indulgent with our comic. People have long complained about the fact that they must, at times, read the things I have written for them in order to appreciate the strip for a given day - it's nice to know that my contributions are inconvenient. Here's a question from this Comixpedia Community Interview thread that might not be selected for the actual feature:
Some people feel that your comic has changed focus in recent years from more openly accessible jokes to more obscure "inside" jokes that generallly require an explanation along with the mornings column. Is this a noticeable change from your perspective, and would you ever consider intentionally swinging your focus back to creating more audience-friendly strips again?
First of all, it's very strange to hear that our comic has changed focus in recent years, as the entire chronology of the strip only spans "recent years." In any case, I don't grant your assertion - as the person who would be writing the text that accompanies these confounding comics, the need for reams of exposition has actually gone down. At any rate, we've been abusing the readership of this comic in the way you describe since its very inception - this is in no way evidentiary of some recent trend. Take into account the fact that ninety-five percent of Penny Arcade content is "inside" jokes to most people anyway, simply by virtue of the subject matter. Raikoh's fascination with dark creatures is not a topic poised to conquer a mainstream audience. Indeed, it is an obscure comic based on a single, almost unknown character in a hard to find action game for a specific system. Making openly accessible jokes - like the one yesterday about Duck Cocks or something else that doesn't deal with issues internal to Gamers - well, that just gets us hate mail from people who feel we've spurned our Gaming Roots.
In the way that a Political Cartoon might, we sometimes deal with personalities or events which are timely and require some knowledge of their circumstances to enjoy them. Imagine looking at a cartoon of that ilk - you would necessarily have some kind of animal, perhaps wearing a tie, and both the animal and the tie would be emblazoned with a name of a concept. Then, the animal might be on top of something else, perhaps another animal, and then a man with a cigar would stand astride a globe which was wearing a wig.
Let's say that this comic details the complexities inherent in global commerce.
I don't assume that everyone keeps up with the latest 3DMark Outrage or N-Gage Marketing Scheme or Spectral Console Announcement, but these are things I think about all the livelong day. And when it comes time to do a strip, these are actual events with ramifications for gamers that we think are important - they're going to make it into a comic, and I'm not going to apologize for it. When it happens, I discuss the event in greater detail in the post, providing links to pertinent information or other perspectives. I mean, the alternative to not writing about it in the post is to a) offer no context for our comments, or b) never deal with substantial issues. There's a whole section of the newspaper devoted to that sort of comic, and it's about as funny as an epitaph.
Creating "audience-friendly" work is not our aim. Now, we hope that you do enjoy it. But I do not perceive the relationship between myself and the reader to have much of a hierarchy to it, where either we're up here and we transmit our holy artifacts to the public, or you are perfect creatures to be adored and worshipped with the work of our hands. I see it as entirely lateral. We produce comics, and we place them unceremoniously in the space between ourselves and the readership, who are then free to like them or not like them. Any romantic notion regarding these transactions has been boiled away by years of actually doing it. For the same comic, I will receive both death threats and handjobs. The only thing I know how to do is write a comic that amuses me - amusing a fluid matrix comprised of a hundred and thirty thousand strangers seems to me quite impossible, and so my system must suffice.
So, short answer: We can't swing our focus back to making "audience-friendly" comics, because we never swung it away. Even saying we have a focus is being pretty generous. I'm sorry if you don't understand my comic, though - I'll try to make it stupider so you and your fucking retard friends might choke on something when you're laughing at it and suffocate.
(CW)TB out.
what we need more of is science
Do you feel like you're leading a fulfilling, satisfying life that you could continue indefinitely? Personally, I'd love to play games all day, but I think that after a time I would become bored with it all. (I know you do more than play games, as comics and rants don't write themselves, but would I be right in guessing that you spend the majority of your time playing games?)
I guess it’s easy to look at Penny Arcade and think that all we do is play videogames all day. Gaming is certainly a big part of our lives. At any given time Tycho and I are probably ass deep in three or four different titles. We have said before that Penny Arcade is a full time job for us and that’s true. What Tycho and I have done over the course of five years is essentially start our own small business. Not only that but we have had to invent a system for making money from our business because no one else had ever done it before. Now PA is a business that employees Tycho, myself and two other people. That sort of enterprise requires a lot of work on our parts to maintain. I am not looking for sympathy or anything, the fact is I have the best job in the world. It is a job though and if you were to ask me how well I liked it one morning while I was up to my fucking ears in QuickBooks I might tell you to fuck off. Penny Arcade is my job and I treat it like a job. We have never missed an update in five years and we have never just posted a picture of a dog on skies and said we were too busy or tired to make a comic. This is my job and I take it very seriously.
How do you respond to the contention that comics cannot stay focused on the topic of games? Kurtz has made the point many times (as I'm sure he gets a fair amount of email concerning his departure from video-game-centric comics), but you guys seem to have no problem coming up with poignant information for both the cartoon and the posts.
Sure I think a comic strip can stay focused on the topic of games. You have to be a fucking nut about video games but you can do it. Kurtz is a great guy and I like him a lot but he isn’t a gamer in the same way that Tycho and I are. He plays the occasional game in the same way that a guy might play softball on the weekends with his buddies. It’s something he does now and then when he has a bit of free time or he wants to relax. Of course he’s not going to be able to write a comic strip about nothing but games on a daily basis. He simply doesn’t have enough material. Tycho and I on the other hand spend nearly every second of free time we have playing games. It is our hobby, our job, our recreation, our you name it. It’s what we do. Scott’s said on his web site that he just doesn’t play as many games as he used to. There is nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t mean that gaming as a concept can't sustain a comic strip. It just means it can’t sustain his.
I find, as another online cartoonist, that it's tough to concentrate on my own work if I read other online comics. Is one more of an online comic fan than the other, and does Gabe put on his blinders when he's working?
Tycho certainly reads more web comics than I do. The only comics I read on a regular basis are PvP and MacHall. Both of those I read mainly because I appreciate the artwork so much. Usually what happens is I’ll go for a few months and then remember that I haven’t looked at diesel sweeties or Real Life or something like that for a while and I’ll go and hit their archive.
How do you see yourselves affecting the industry? Either from a consumer point of view, or a developer point of view.Would either of you ever pursue more developer-oriented positions in the industry as writer and artist, respectively? What do you think your dream company/project/genre would be to work on?
I would certainly love to be involved in the creation of a game at some point. Doing concept art or something along those lines would be a blast. Like I said above though, I already have the best job ever. I’m my own boss and I don’t have anyone telling me what to write or draw. Working for the man again in any capacity would probably be a tough switch. As far as a dream project, I think it would be designing characters for a Capcom or SNK fighting game. That would be a dream come true.
Okay, now I gotta get back to Otogi.
-Gabe out
-Gabe out
-Gabe out
