Authors@Google: Penny Arcade

By Shamus Posted Saturday Feb 27, 2010

Filed under: Movies 19 comments

Mike “Gabe” Krahulik and Jerry “Tycho” Holkins stopped in at Google and talked about how their road to triumphant success and heroism led through the valley of screwups, into the swamp of bad business decisions, and over the desert of being broke and not being able to pay the rent.

Hey! I’m on that same trajectory! I can’t wait until I get to “triumphant success” bit. That sounds like a lot of fun.


Link (YouTube)

An amazing story.

 


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19 thoughts on “Authors@Google: Penny Arcade

  1. Stern says:

    That’s a fascinating video. The story alone covering the history of the comic was something I hadn’t heard before and served to be quite an interesting look into the world of webcomics. What I find more interesting is the idea of being a gamer and raising kids. I don’t have any, but at some point I’m really going to have to ask myself what sort of games and bits of geek culture I’ll have to expose to my offspring and at what age. Should I bother showing them the old classics like Ocarina of Time or would they be better off with the latest Zelda title?

    Either way, good find.

    1. Irridium says:

      I say start with the classics, then move to the modern stuff. You don’t want your kid asking “What was so great about the N64?” Do you? :P

      1. Khizan says:

        What was great about the N64?
        In no particular order:
        1) Goldeneye
        2) Ocarina of Time
        3) Mario Kart 64
        4) Super Smash Bros.
        5) Perfect Dark

        Off the top of my head, that’s it.

        1. Irridium says:

          I’ve actually had someone ask me “What is Goldeneye?”

          I told him it was a fantasting first person shooter on the N64 and it paved the way for all FPS’s on consoles, even Halo.

          He then replied “The N64? Was that a console?”

          I know I may sound like a smug A-hole, but I really wanted to smack the kid across the face.

      2. Cuthalion says:

        “What was so great about the N64?”

        Pokémon Snap. @_@

    2. Doornail says:

      You might not know this if you haven’t had much contact with children but they are terrible judges of quality. My little sister’s favorite DS game for a while was this awful Strawberry Shortcake platformer. She also loves Legend of Zelda games and enjoyed playing WoW, even though she had no idea what was happening (I’m pretty sure she was just trying to emulate our older sister). There’s no real point in forcing the classics on your offspring when they’re too young to appreciate them. Let them play what they want, and try not to be too distressed when they choose licensed games. If they still like video games after their adolescence, they’ll seek out the classics themselves.

  2. Telas says:

    They’ll find their own way; it’s like they have minds of their own…

    I am shocked *SHOCKED* that they don’t resemble their online avatars at all. What kind of internet is it when you can appear to be anything you want? ;-)

    1. Yar Kramer says:

      I suppose it helps that they weren’t actually originally meant to be their avatars. ;)

    2. Matt K says:

      That threw me the first time I saw what they looked like for real too.

  3. Renacier says:

    These yahoos are a perfect storm of talent, passion and sheer dumb luck.

    1. Eric Meyer says:

      That’s true of most successful people.

  4. SiliconScout says:

    Good example of why you never sign a contract without your own lawyer reading it through though!

    Great chat with them, awesome stuff.

  5. Moriarty says:

    so Shamus, first you vow to stop talking about DRM for a while and then you link to two guys who end up talking about DRM?

    1. krellen says:

      They spent less than a minute answering a question they were asked in a 52 minute presentation. I hardly call that “talking about DRM”.

  6. Tamayn says:

    I definitely think you should start with the classics. I grew up with an Atari, so I think you have to go back to the classics. It’s the same with literature or art too. Anything creative requires a background.

  7. MadTinkerer says:

    Re: Classics vs. Latest Releases:

    What I’m most concerned about my kids playing at a young age is how educational a game is. Reader Rabbit and Stickybear helped me read and understand math, respectively. Sure, Sesame Street and Square One helped too, but it was the interactivity; the immediacy of knowing whether you got it right or wrong (as opposed to waiting for a teacher to give me a grade) that really helped me learn the material.

    As far as franchises go, the simpler are better. Never mind Ocarina of time, the proper place to start is the original LoZ because of the simple controls and gameplay. Classic 8 bit console games and arcade games (via official classic compilations and Virtual Console) as well as current-gen games that seek to emulate that kind of accesibility.

    Also: My kids will be playing my games. I’ve got Game Maker and thereby a game construction kit that will let me make whatever games they want to play. Then I’ll teach them how to use Game Maker, Alice, RPG Maker, Unity, and real programming languages.

    Playing the classics is important, but we’ve got so many better alternatives to plain BASIC text parsers to learn how to program.

    That’s how I’m raising my kids.

    1. Doornail says:

      Have you ever played the original Legend of Zelda? simple controls ≠ easy.

  8. SireCh says:

    man, I’m sure they didn’t get a lot of positive feedback when they decided to go full time with an online webcomic back in 2000 or so, but I’m glad they did it.

  9. moritheil says:

    Everyone puts in the time. Some make it big; some don’t. The difference between those who make it and those who don’t is often minuscule or arbitrary.

    That’s not to downplay their talent – just calling into question whether or not “the road to triumphant success and heroism” can be relied upon to yield consistent results.

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