T w e n t y S i d e d
Concered, the Half-Life 2 webcomic, has ended. It ran twice weekly for a year and a half, and managed to keep a good pace and a steady supply of laughs. Christopher Livingston did an outstanding job. This was a fantastic comic and I’m sorry to see it end.
I think my favorite gag was this one, which had a very obscure movie quote in it. Given that most readers are probably in their 20’s, and that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out in 1986, I wonder how many people even got the joke.
That’s brave. I’d probably chicken out of a gag like that, but it worked and it made me laugh.
Now that the run is over I discovered that there are notes from the author at the bottom of each comic. You have to click a link to see them, and my brain just filtered it out along with the rest of the banner ad noise at the bottom of the page. Now that I’ve noticed I’m going through again and reading these comments. It’s pretty interesting, as I can see him learning his craft as he goes.
Great work.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Seven Springs
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
I hope we get one or two more pages. The series should end with a laugh, not just with a fade-to-black. (Besides, I want to see what Half-Afterlife looks like.)
That *is* a shame. I’d drifted away from the strip a while back, but it was responsible for quite a few laughs.
Glad he’s “pulling the plug” intentionally, though, rather than letting it just fade away, unupdated.
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