Category Archives: video game webcomic

The Webcomic Overlook #182: Dueling Analogs

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When I bring up Steve Napierski’s Dueling Analogs, your first reactions is probably, “Good Lord, is that comic STILL being updated?”

Followed swiftly by your second reaction: “No, seriously, bro, is that comic still being updated?”

After a bit of research, it should be a surprise the Dueling Analogs is still around. While never as successful as Penny Arcade — and really who could be — the history of Dueling Analogs is filled with relatively impressive achievements. Compete.com calculates that it’s had at least 127K unique visitors. That’s seriously mind boggling. In comparison, PvP only gets a third of those numbers.

Dueling Analogs is also a founding member of the Gamers Pair of Dice collective, which includes prominent titles like Goblins, 2P Start, and Nerf Now!! The comic has been nominated twice in the WCCAs (for Outstanding Gaming Comic and Outstanding Web Design) and has been voted best gaming webcomic by Joystiq readers at least nine times.

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The Webcomic Overlook #181: The Noob

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I think I’ve mentioned it on this site before, but I’ve never gotten into MMORPGs. Oh, I’ve played RPGs that bear striking similarities to to modern MMORPGs. I’ve played my share of Ultimas and Final Fantasys and Dragon Ages and Baldur’s Gates, but I’ve never experiences the glories of joining guilds, grinding, and dealing with mods. I’m most familiar with MMORPGs through the South Park World of Warcraft episode, perhaps my favorite South Park episode of all time.

We have a former professional gamer who just joined us at the office, and when he shows us Youtube videos chronicling his World of Warcraft exploits, my eyes completely glaze over. From what I have gleaned from my discussions with him, there are sanctioned competitions and joining a party requires filling out forms in a process that can be more strict than a job interview. This probably strikes to the heart of why I never got into MMORPGs. I love me some fantasy literature and imagery — a love that has endured since I picked up my first Hickman & Weis novel when I was a wee one — and from what I hear about the politics surrounding MMORPGs this seems to be anything but. In fact, it seems like math. And if I wanted more math, I’d go to work. Like, more often.

This makes me seem like I’d be terribly ill-equipped to review Gianna Masetti’s webcomic about life in an MMORPG. Fortunately, the comic is told from the perspective of … The Noob.


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The Webcomic Overlook #180: GG Guys

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It may be my old-fogey-ness talking here, but the things kids find hilarious these days seem to be about being super-annoying. Take that Fred character. The guy talks like a squeaky helium balloon, which is pure comedy gold for the kids but is like nails on chalkboard for anyone over twelve.

Or that Problem Solverz show on the Cartoon Network. Granted, I have no evidence that anyone actually watches it, but, again, it seems to traffic with the same premise that “funny” and “headache inducing visuals” are the same thing. When I was younger, I had the vague sense that my parents were rolling their eyes at a lot of stuff that I found funny. Now that I’m on the other side, I suddenly know why, and it makes me feel old as hell.

It makes me want to buy a rocking chair, put a shotgun on my lap, and warn young whippersnappers to stay off my property. Partly because of the symbolism … but mostly because rocking chairs are hella sweet.

Which brings me to Psyguy and Supadave’s video game webcomic, GG Guys. At first glance, it seems to be something aimed at the Fred crowd. Will all the eye-rolling cause my eyes to come unscrewed from their sockets, thus preventing me from reviewing webcomics ever again?

Let’s find out.

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Crabcake Confidential: Brentalfloss

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Penny Arcade Expo blew into town last Friday, causing a substantial uptick of enthusiasm at my office. A co-worker, who was once a professional gamer, scored some badges and is probably currently basking himself in fantastic awesomeness. My boss, who was once a pretty hardcore gamer but now is happy to play a few games now and then on the Wii with his wife, was fairly envious. He proposed that my co-worker do a lunchtime presentation so we can vicariously live through his experiences.

Heck, if I want to be brutally honest, so was I. Sadly, the cheapest badges on Craigslist at the time were $65, and I’d have a very hard time convincing my wife to drop that much money just to play video games all day.

It’s pretty humbling to realize that all this, the greatest video game expo in the world, started off with a webcomic about video games. It inadvertently launched thousands of dreams, where webcomic creators everywhere imagined an amazing world where their own webcomic about Mario being a delusional middle-aged man met similar glorious fortunes. I should point out, by the way, that I have nothing against video game webcomics. In fact, I enjoy a fair amount of them. There have been so many of them now, though, that it takes quite a bit of effort to stand out from the ground.

In honor of Penny Arcade Expo, I’m tackling video game webcomics all week. First up is Brentalfloss, by Brent Black, Dan Roth, and — as you may be able to tell from the sample panel posted below — Webcomic Overlook’s favorite webcomic creator, Andrew Dobson.

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The Webcomic Overlook #151: No Cash Value

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In the climactic sequence of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, or main character (played by Mike Meyers) confronts his nemesis, Dr. Evil (played by Mike Meyers) in the evil conference room. Nonchalantly stalling for time, Dr. Evil sneers, “There’s nothing as pathetic as an aging hipster.”

To me, this comment makes little sense. First of all, Austin Powers wasn’t an aging hipster. He was just unfrozen and in the prime of his life. He was simply just acting his age. Secondly, while Austin was a fish-out-of-water in the first movie, subsequent movies (where we can assume Austin was more aged) showed that he was more awesome than all the button-downed squares. And finally, his dad, played by Michael Caine, was the best thing Austin Powers In Goldmember, and he actually was an aging hipster.

Had Dr. Evil said, “There’s nothing as pathetic as an aging gamer,” then perhaps he would be on to something. Austin Powers would nod in agreement, Dr. Evil would be happy someone appreciated his opinions, and they wouldn’t have to wait for the last movie to discover that they are indeed brothers. (Whoops! Spoiler alert!)

Matt Thompson’s No Cash Value takes a look at gaming from the perspective of an older gamer. The writer and the comics’ stand-in, a bespectacled fellow ridiculously named Alan Spectre, are both in their mid-30′s. The days of hyperactive caffeine-fueled gaming are for a younger age and have passed him by. In a way, this is a departure from other webcomics, which have always were written from the perspective of ….

What’s that you say? Scott Kurtz is in his 30′s? And the Penny Arcade guys?

Huh.

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The Webcomic Overlook #145: Critical Miss

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When all’s said and done, webcomics are a damn cushy media to be reviewing. While the total audience isn’t small, it is somewhat fragmented with readers spread out over different genres and formats. At the same time, there are few centralized communication channels. Reviewing webcomics are not too different than reviewing books, only without gray ladies like the New York Times to give everyone an air of legitimacy. On the plus side, the low-pressure environment means that webcomic reviewers are, for the most part, free to state most controversial opinions and not have to worry about backlash.

Compare that to, say, video game reviews. Pretty much everything that can be said about video game reviews is encapulated in the story of its patron martyr, Jeff Gerstmann. For Webcomic Overlook readers unfamiliar with the controversy, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: in 2007, Mr. Gerstmann was the Editorial Director of the Gamespot website. Eidos Interactive had bought up a bunch of adspace on the site to promote it’s new Kane & Lynch game. Gerstmann gave the game a negative review, and shortly afterwards, he was fired. Rumors quickly circulated that his termination was directly tied to Eidos pressuring Gamespot to fire the guy, and those rumors only escalated when several Gamespot staff members quit in protest.

There’s a lot of stuff digest here. There’s the confirmation, in many people’s minds, that video game reviews are basically just big ads for the video game companies, and you can lose your account like an advertising agency would if things don’t go right. So how do you, the reader, know that the review you’re reading is not merely of a multi-million dollar marketing strategy to trick you into dumping money on a worthless game?

Then there’s the issue with the rating. Did you know the controversial review actually scored a “Fair”? That’s a middle of the road 6.0-6.5, according to Gamespot. I video game reviews, this is called a bad score. Video game reviews live and die on Metacritic, which is supposed to aggregate all reviews everywhere. If a game doesn’t score at least in the high 80′s, it’s considered a bad score. And we can’t have one guy’s opinion ruining the average, right?

Worst of all, video game companies aren’t the only thing putting pressure on video game reviewers. There’s the gamers. Gamers are competitive by nature. So when a game they love is given a low score, they bay and cry and accuse the reviewer of being ignorant about video games. How dare they bring the Metacritic score down! Woe to those who commit the heinous crime of daring to say that they didn’t enjoy Fall Out or Grand Theft Auto.

So there you have it: the messy double-edged sword of video game reviewing. Give a game a good grade, then you’re in the pockets of the game companies. Give the game a bad game, then you’re an ignorant moron who should never touch a keyboard again. Yet people want to put up with video game reviews because a new game is upwards of $50, and no one has the sort of disposable income to throw away on a game that’s no good at all.

This is the sort of cutthroat world that Erin Stout, the heroine of video game webcomic Critical Miss, finds herself in. Yes, Virginia, this is another video game webcomic review! Critical Miss is hosted on the Escapist website, and it’s written by Jonathan Grey Carter and illustrated by Cory Rydell.

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The Webcomic Overlook #135: Virtual Shackles

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It’s the dream of every little gamer to want to grow up to be a video game programmer. That’s because they don’t know about the 20 hour work days and the suffocating deadlines and the bucketloads of shovelware that needs coding that makes you eventually want to give it all up and take a job selling mattresses. No, when you don’t know any better, programming is all about seeing your imagination come to life on a video game screen and, to a far lesser extent, dreaming of the a chance to date Playboy model Stevie Case.

Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie are two such programmers. Both have worked around the gaming industry, toiling on illustrious content like High School Musical 3: Senior Year DANCE! (XBox 360, PS2, Wii, and PC), Tomb Raider: Underworld (Nintendo DS), and Superman Returns (Nintendo DS, Nintendo GBA).

While their computing efforts may not exactly make them candidates for the next PC Gamer “New Game Gods” feature, these two do stand a chance at making their mark on webcomics with Virtual Shackles, with Vinar doing the art and Fahmie doing the humor. Some of the strips look like they’re based on their their experiences, since the two protagonists, Orion and Jack, also work as video game company employees. Of course, as with all video game comics that part’s just window dressing for the multitude of parodies and caricatures of popular characters, the life blood of the video game webomic industry.


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