Mon 3 Dec 2007
Penny Arcade and Punchlines
By
I’m sure you’re all up to speed with the rumours surrounding the departure of a Gamespot editor last week. If not, pop over here for helpful rundown and commentary on the ‘story’ so far.
The ‘news’ of Gerstmann’s firing was initially spread by absurdly popular webcomic Penny Arcade – a weekly, 3-panel strip that provides commentary on the videogame industry and its subcultures.
While the comic receives over 2 million visitors a day (according to Wikipedia) opinion is split over its quality and worth.
One poster over at forumopolis, who apparently worked on the Kane and Lynch advertising campaign upon which the Gamespot controversy pivots, is clearly a big fan:
I worked on the K&L ads personally, and I had a front-row seat to the whole debacle.
The ads were originally supposed to point to the GS review page, as they sometimes do. When the review came out, Eidos was understandably upset, and yes — they did threaten to pull the whole campaign — but they eventually simmered down and kept the campaign. They had us change the clickthrough URL from the GS review to the official site, but other than that little changed…
I think the whole thing is likely a combination of factors, the biggest being poor timing. Gerst gets canned just two weeks after the K&L incident, so people blame it on that (especially when backed by PA, the gaming journalism equivalent to The Daily Show).
Woah there! Videogame journalism’s equivalent to The Daily Show?!
I don’t read Penny Arcade other than when it’s linked to in forum posts etc. When I do happen to see it, it’s always a disappointment.
Penny Arcade seems to me to be afflicted by a problem common to many comedians/ satirists who work in small niches solely for the audience within that niche: their humour is based on people recognising the thing to which they are referring, not on an actual joke.
It’s nod, nod, wink, wink, ‘did-you-notice-that-thing-in-that-game-well-wasn’t-that-funny!’ stuff. Readers enjoy it because they feel like they are in the know, because ‘Yes, I DID notice-that-thing-in-that-game-and-wasn’t-that-funny LOL!’
Sure, it’s tough to provide incisive or perspicacious commentary on a news event in three short panels AND to provide the funny but Penny Arcade rarely manages either, existing instead as a kind of broad brush stroke thematic shorthand for gamers devoid of their own thoughts or ideas to cut and paste into forum threads.
This is the case with the Gerstamnn strip (where there is no discernible joke at all) as it is with the one from the week before (where I have literally no idea what it’s on about).
Apologists might say you need to read the accompanying blog post to get the meaning, or you would have had to be reading the strip religiously to understand it (despite the fact Penny Arcade doesn’t really do meta-narratives). But these are weak excuses for what is a weak strip designed to make kids feel like part of a big club of cognoscenti rather than to effectively satirise or comment on the videogames industry.
Comic strips based on current events should still be accessible and enjoyable to people who don’t necessarily know the issue or story intimately.
I’m sure that a mean-spirited but witty commentator could perform a kind of Marmaduke-explained style website that pulls the strips apart for what they are.
Then again, as CNET is finding out, 2 million angry Internet kids bound together by the solidarity of indignation are, on reflection, probably not worth the hassle.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I’m disappointed with the weak analysis of the strip and lazy deriding of, as you say “over 2 million” readers of their web site. I’ve followed your often interesting and intelligent discussions about the world of videogames for well over a year, and will probably discontinue that practice from here on. Though I am not by any means a dyed-in-the-wool Penny Arcade proponent, I believe they have their ups and downs, and just because you don’t “get” something, does not make it valueless.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Hi there Withdrawn, apologies for upsetting you on this topic and yeah, perhaps dismissing the strip’s gigantic readership in one sweep is a little unfair – there’s hardly much else in the way of topical videogame-related comics to engage with.
I said in the body of the post that I don’t read the strip other than when it appears in front of me so these comments are only based on those few strips I’ve seen recently.
However, just because I don’t read it weekly, I’m fairly sure I’ve seen enough enough issues to ‘get’ what the strip is about and on what it bases its humour.
Where’s the joke/ commentary in the Gerstmann strip? It’s simply using the medium as a means to spread a rumour – surely not the remit of any satirical comic.
Perhaps you have some links to PA material that refutes what I’m saying?
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Withdrawn, I think you’re over-reacting to a quite valid point – if you’re prepared to leave this site after two-odd years enjoying reading it, simply because a favourite comic of yours has been questioned, then you probably deserve the kind of unquestioning right / wrong mentality that three panels and an in-joke a week give you.
My perspective is that occasionally the PA blog has made me laugh (I remember a pretty good post about Pokemon and the shame of buffing up your team to max levels when you’re playing schoolkids) but all-too-often the comic leaves me cold. Why? Exactly for the reasons Simon outlines – they depend on insider knowledge to a huge degree, referring to videogame personalities, many of them arguably obscure, by first name or nickname, referencing obscure incidents that crop up on forums that, I would argue, aren’t known to a lot of people like myself.
Perhaps I’m simply ignorant? That may be the case. But I find that, all-too-often, I get to the final panel and simply don’t get the joke – if indeed there’s a joke at all. It’s simply a lot of insider-referencing that doesn’t apply to the experience of joe average who plays videogames.
Having said that, I do think their strip on the Gamespot situation was OK – at least, I thought there was a black joke in there, and I guess that some things are simply beyond satire (in the sense of maybe dressing up the exec as Death or something, that would have been pointless).
But my overriding feeling is simply that, whatever these guys produce, people will lap it up and say ‘you guys are right’. They’re not – no more so than any other commentator, and for evidence of that look at their post on Assassin’s Creed a week or so ago (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/14/) following the critical reaction to that. Now those are the words of someone who thinks his own opinion is more important than that of others, and by extension the words of someone who thinks people are privileged to read what he writes – hence the increasingly cliquey nature of the comic.
Just my 2 cents, of course, but Wired calling them ‘the most influential people in gaming’ a few months ago was offensive b*llsh*t.
Have a nice day!