A Review of Penny Arcade - Video Game Webcomic
Comic Strip Includes Child's Play Charity and PAX Convention
Sep 27, 2009
In all the best sitcoms, the central characters can't stand each other. Penny Arcade take this logic a few steps further with Gabe and Tycho regularly inflicting physical violence and death on each other. Of course with the ever handy instant re-set button to hand. Add ever more complex tangents and lots of profanity and they have created the perfect mix for the internet audience.
They have been consistently producing at least three strips a week, with a focus on quality prose and commentary, and acerbic insights into how the video games industry works. The minds behind this creation have been working together since school and have forged one of those symbiotic working relationships that enables them to produce genuinely funny, anarchic and worthwhile work.
Artists and Businessmen
Penny Arcade have been developing their style over the last 10 years, both as artists and as a business concern. Integrating art with technology has been one of the great promises of the internet and Penny Arcade has delivered this. Technology that complements and enables the art rather then displaces it.
They are not noted for abstract introspection but none the less they advocate for the ability to maintain the integrity of their work whilst building a substantial and successful business. The easily navigable archive records how their art has transformed in quality and presentation over the years, alongside an ever expanding portfolio which has made Penny Arcade a profitable company.
Electronic Games as Art
One thing that has remained consistent and that is their powerful advocacy of the art of video games. They have constantly mocked the nerdishness of their peers while also undermining the merely commercial concerns of video games publishers.
In many ways they have created a space that allows men and women growing up, raising families, and working hard to find an expression of the joy and exuberant enjoyment of video games. All the while they have maintained a high level of literateness and helped those too caught up in the electronic arts to see the other joys in life, whether music, literature, family or work.
Violence and its Relationship With Playing Games
Having locked horns many times with those concerned with taking easy pot shots at video games in relation to wider social ills, they have become a powerful voice in favour of the positive aspect of the culture of gamers. Indeed in some ways defining the existence of such a culture. In this regard they have harnessed their success and voice to rally gamers to a charity in order to substantiate the citizenship of gamers.
Child's Play has raised hundreds if thousands of dollars towards children hospitals, as well as donated countless games and games consoles for children in hospital to enjoy. This is clever on many levels because not only does it show that gamers care but also how much joy games bring to kids, fatally undermining the assumption that games themselves are superficial and meaningless forms of human expression.
PAX, Child's Play and Making Money
They have become a powerhouse of the economics of the internet, showing that the model needed to succeed long term is a powerful attachment to the subject, patience, word of mouth and technological and business know how.
Having created both a gamers charity and an annual convention called Penny Arcade Expo illustrates the behemoth they've become. They have successfully monetized their model and must be a sure bet to enjoy another ten years of success, at the very least.
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