Will Strip For Games

1up has a piece today on the backbone of the gaming zeitgeist: online comics. From PA to 8-Bit Theatre, they have thoughts on all of them. From the article: "The 'real' origin of game-based comics came in May 1998, when Scott Kurtz started Player vs. Player, a strip based around the office hijinks at a video game magazine. Hosted at MPOG.com, like Polymer City Chronicles, early PvP reflects its origins as a lighthearted way to lampoon games in the context of a larger gaming-focused publication. Some of the earliest gaming webcomics were started in a similar fashion; Penny Arcade, for example, was originally conceived and submitted as a strip for Loonygames."

Misleading title

[penguin_asylum]

The title really had me looking forward to reading the article...

Re:Misleading title

[Shadow Wrought]

I felt the same way after a friendd took me to a Bare Naked Ladies concert. Three lies in one name.

Re:Misleading title

[clintp]

ObSimpsons References:

Movie, Naked Lunch -- Nelson: "I can think of two things wrong with that title"
Store, "Stoner's Pot Palace" -- Otto: "Man, that is flagrant false advertising!"

Re:Misleading title

[Nivoset]

would you rather just have the last word false advertizing?

It's serving it's purpose.

[gmezero]

It's a promotional piece designed to drive traffic to their new comics portal.

Re:I hate PA.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

They sold out? How's that? By wanting to make money?

The horrible people wanted to make money doing their jobs? How TERRIBLE!

Don't think too much about it

[AvantLegion]

"Sold out" is one of those things people say when they don't have any intelligent criticism to offer.

Re:Don't think too much about it

[Meagermanx]

It's also what they say about a band when people like them.
Or what they say about a band when they make different kinds of music, even though you'd think making the same kind of music over and over would be 'selling out'.

Re:Don't think too much about it

[AvantLegion]

Varying reasons, but same thing: they have nothing intelligent to offer.

Re:Don't think too much about it

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent likes VG Cats right now, but Scott Ramsoomair is making T-shirt and misc swag based on his comic, so pretty soon, he'll have sold out too (if he doesn't already fit the grandparent's definition of "sold out"), and then I expect the grandparent will start liking a sprite comic, but not 8bit or Bob and George, because they're popular and they've sold out too. No, it will be a sprite comic so obscure it'll be based on a small-release game from the 80s on the Famicom (Not the NES, lamers) and h

Re:Don't think too much about it

[thebdj]

Actually looking around both sites I see about an equal amount of ads for their individual merchandise. Actually, I see more ads per page for not site related materials on VGCats then on PA. I mean seriously, from what I can tell the nice people bringing us both strips seem to like each other, and better yet VGCats even has a link on their main page to PA's Charity.

Everyone seems to be complaining that your argument against PA is that they sold out. Not only do you use an ill-defined term that will get

Re:I hate PA.

[Chemical]

Ob South Park quote:
"If you work in the entertainment business and you make money, you're a sellout!"

Re:I hate PA.

[Headcase88]

"Dude, you're working for a corporation, you're a total sell out!"

"Man, you're spending all your time and money working on your business instead of hanging out with us, you're a sellout."

"Dude, you're bumming off of welfare and mooching off of us. You're such a sellout."

"Dude, ever since you became rich and famous, you forgot who you are. You've really sold out."

"Man, commiting suicide because every other option would label you a sell out? That's the easy way out, you're a sell out."

Re:I hate PA.

[Anthony]

I like an interview I saw with "The Clash" who, when asked about selling out said (paraphrase) "Selling out is great, it means that the fans like our shows".

Re:8-bit theater

[fwitness]

Read the bottom of the page. It's a work of parody, fully lawful in the U.S. That's why you can have Saturday Night Live product/commercial spoofs. It's a crack in the law that allows us to continue our normal lives without fear of being sued if we say "Pepsi" in a sentence.

Actually PvP was not the first...

[AutopsyReport]

I recall Dank & Scud (for those of you who Quake'd way back then) as a comic based on a video game being made back in 1996, not long after Quake was released. Check it out here [pk.edu.pl], and for a date reference, see this article written in Nov. 96 [planetquake.com].

So I'd definetely wager that PvP was not the first... good ol' Dank and Scud were veterans by the time the other comics started swinging.

PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[TarrVetus]

The 'real' origin of game-based comics came in May 1998, when Scott Kurtz started Player vs. Player, a strip based around the office hijinks at a video game magazine.

Wrong. Dead wrong. My proof? Howard and Nester (http://hn.iodized.net/main.htm [iodized.net]), a comic which successfully ran in Nintendo Power for several years in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

And while Howard and Nester predates PvP by 10 years, I'm almost positive it wasn't the first of its kind, either.

Re:PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[The Kow]

I think the context is web-based gaming comics, so you should probably just let this one go.

Re:PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[Gulthek]

Then consider web-based comic Dank and Scud, which was both machina (of Quake) and a web-based comic in 1996.

http://riad.usk.pk.edu.pl/~pmj/quakecomics/ [pk.edu.pl]

The article is about online gaming comics.

[gmezero]

If you want to just cover "gaming comics" in general. Nintendo had one, Famitsu had a couple (I love the strip were it turns out that Wario is actually Luigi in disguise, getting revenge for all those years of Mario getting all the credit), GameFan had one... and there were about a billion others. Heck Atari published Atari Force under DC Comics in 1982 when Nintendo was nothing but a Game'n'Watch fad in the U.S.

Re:PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[Soybean47]

It's a misleading excerpt. If you RTFA, they're not claiming that PVP was literally the first gaming comic... note the quotes around "real". They even mention one that came earlier. The claim in the article is that PVP was the first one that mattered, or something along those lines. The "real" beginning of the current crop of gaming webcomics. Or...you know... something like that. I don't really know what they're getting at there, but the statement is clearly not meant to be taken literally.

Arg, type-o in article.

[gmezero]

I've already written to the editors, to fix the errors at the beginning of the article:

In the third paragraph, it is stated that PCC started off in 1995 on MPOG.COM, that is wrong. It started out on the web on GameZero.com in 1995. It only ran on MPOG for a short stint from mid-2000 to mid-2001.

And only the archives for the current storyline date back to 2000. For previous strips dating back to the start you need to visit the pre-2000, older archives on the Game Zero site at:
http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/comics/ [gamezero.com]

Please see wiki for clarification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_City_Chronicl es#Basic_Chronology [wikipedia.org]

Sigh...

Next Gen, not Loony

[ZephyrXero]

Actually, the real first intentions for Penny Arcade was to submit two sample strips to Next Generation (or perhaps it was different mag?), then when they didn't win the contest, they decided to keep making strips and that's when Loonygames started hosting them. I've been reading PA since their 4th strip was ever released ;)

8-Bit Theater

[Pluvius]

I remember posting on the 8BT forum once that the only reason the comic was worth reading is that it's a goofball retelling of the original Final Fantasy story with twisted renditions of the main characters; if the comic was about something else, even if it only changed over to a more generic fantasy story, it would no longer be funny because then it would rely entirely on its repetitive, often ripped-off jokes to come across to the reader. The other people on the forum, being fanboys, of course ripped into me for stating that opinion. But imagine my surprise when the creator himself admits as much in this article!

So it's perhaps inevitable that the writing would be a secondary concern, and the humor is often far more repetitive than the art. To compensate for this, Clevinger begun focusing more on story than jokes some time ago, but as a rule the quality of the writing hasn't become any sharper. A large component of the strip's popularity is love for the characters Clevinger uses, something he acknowledges when he says "I've lost count of how many e-mails I've gotten from fans thanking me for reminding them how much they loved the original Final Fantasy."

Some people just can't handle the truth, I guess.

Rob

The Game Comic Revolution

[Eli Gottlieb]

The Revolution only truly came with Bob and George [bobandgeorge.com], the first sprite comic!

Hey, look, it's Mega Man!

ZOINK!

Re:The Game Comic Revolution

[Eli Gottlieb]

I stand corrected, BTW. Bob and George is merely the inspiration for most sprite comics afterwards.

backbone?

[Tedium Unleased]

as a diehard gamer, i don't read any of that shite.. face it PA sucks.. out of a month's worth of comics they have maybe one or two borderline funny. PA is like the HBO of comics, cheaply put together trying to exploit the novelty of cursing every other word.. except guess what, it's not a novelty, fucktards.