If you’re like me and were wondering why so many people were buzzing about Penny-Arcade last night without actually saying why, here’s your clarification. I have collected it in a format that makes it easier to read in chronological order (top to bottom), because he didn’t put it in to a thread or anything.
The maximum top level explanation is that Penny-Arcade was one of the biggest webcomics of the early 2000′s. They eventually parlayed it in to a corporate empire of video shows, podcasts, books, merchandising, a series of both video games and physical board games, and more. Most importantly, they created both the Child’s Play charity and PAX, the Penny-Arcade Expo. For a period around 2007-2011, they were a serious force to be reckoned with.
They were known for their crude humor but also taking game developers and publications to task for perceived injustices both in creating games and reporting on games.
This lead to the creation of The Penny-Arcade Report, their own gaming news publication. It was pitched as a smarter media outlet, one that didn’t need to rely on clickbait or backdoor deals in order to operate. They figured that a focus on quality would sell itself. The Penny-Arcade Report lasted just over a year before it shut down. It marked a big turning point for Penny-Arcade in general, where they backed away from the empirical aspirations of being a multimedia conglomerate and simply settled for just making webcomics and podcasts for the rest of their lives.
The Penny-Arcade Report was headlined by Ben Kuchera, a name I didn’t really like at the time. Dig in to some of my oldest posts on this blog and you’ll find a few where I yell about Ben Kuchera being pathologically wrong about a lot of things. However, in the years since then, I’ve had friends transition in to the games press, and I myself spent a long time at a niche game press site, so I have a little more sympathy for that kind of stuff now.
Especially with the above, where Ben Kuchera talks about how, even though Penny-Arcade talk a big game of “justice,” they were worse than many of the publications they made their targets. It started out as Kuchera ranting about the state of politics and how openly people lie and get away with lying, and it lead to the dam bursting about his time as the sole writer for The Penny-Arcade Report.
It’s not the first and probably won’t be the last time the creators of Penny-Arcade have been taken to task. Kuchera references “Dickwolves”, which happened around the time The Penny-Arcade Report was operational. The comic side of Penny-Arcade not only made a rape joke, but even tried to turn it in to a brand they could sell on shirts. People rightfully reacted poorly, which just made Jerry (”Tycho”) and, in particular, Mike (”Gabe”) dig in their heels until they were forced to remove the merchandise, something they later admitted regretting. These sorts of “I want to be offensive but I shouldn’t have to deal with consequences from the people I’ve offended” moments happened to Penny-Arcade more than once in the years following.
But if you were wondering, now you know.
