Penny Arcade Assumes EA Is Evil; Gives Away DS Donated for Child's Play

It’s called good PR. Admit your mistakes first so as to deflect it’s severity. It works every time for politicos and pundits alike.

Well, when they put the comic up they thought they were sticking it to the man.

What makes you think they posted the comic after they realized what had happened and not before?

Yeah, this is cruel and bizarre. Even as they admit their mistake, they’re still telling the million people a day who only read the comic that EA are despicable bribe-mongers.

I don’t think taking it down would look like they were trying to cover it up, given that there’s a great sodding news post about it.

But the decent thing to do to make up for a disastrous mistake like that is to put a little extra work in to make it up to the people whose donation they just squandered - come up with a new comic that makes fun of themselves instead of EA. It writes itself.

So they’re manipulative slimeballs if they admit their mistake.

They’re lying shitsacks if they don’t.

Obviously the best decision would be to have not made the mistake, but people make mistakes.

In this case they’re doing their best given a situation with no positive out.

Well this morning I hit the site and the comic was there but the commentary on the front page was still from Wednesday. So it appears the article appeared online later.

From my prospective.

The blog entry is regularly posted after the comic.

Oh, I assumed “not telling anyone” would mean just keeping the entire thing a secret. I didn’t know we had to use real-lie parametres. You win, this time.

Wait, fuck. Sure, he’d read the comic and think he got a second hand bribe from EA. He wouldn’t have know there true intentions until the article went up. And if they didn’t write the “we fucked up” part, he still wouldn’t kow. Someone at EA would, though, and that would be bad.

So…I win?

I’m not sure that anyone here is saying they’re manipulative slimeballs if they admit their mistake. I think they are suggesting that you’re not really saying, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake,” if you make it part of a, “See, I’m still subtly sarcastically telling you that the donor of the DS is a sleezy scumsucking corporation that fucks little children, by the way, we’re sorry we threw out the free autographed DS they sent for us to put toward our little children’s charity.”

I’m sure that the comic was actually intended to suggest that maybe they get a little to rambunctiously stupid in their “corporate shill” hatred, and that stupid things like this happen because of it. I could, however, imagine people believing it to be a bit in bad taste, sort of like kicking Scrooge in the nuts at the end of a Christmas Tale after he gave Tiny Tim the free ham.

And especially when the start of that message is:

It’s been reviewed much better on the mobiles than it has been on the portable, but I imagine that people who review games that you play on a phone have a more forgiving palette.

And then promptly never get round to actually apologising. (“We fucked up bad.” isn’t the same thing).

They need to DRAW IT TOO. I think they sent the DS off, drew a comic, were about to blog about what fucking renegades they were, and saw the card. They then scribbled up an apology and left the comic, with their creative juices spent.

I appreciate everyone saying “well if gabe and tycho didn’t want us to know, we wouldn’t fucking know”, but come on, if this guy (who made the best phallic cookies) got the autographed DS and mentioned it somewhere it’s only a few degrees of separation before it comes back to EA(especially in the absence of an auction of the item they gifted them) and then EA looks good(which is impermissible for the PA guy’s messianic complex).

Honestly, they’re being real pieces of shit. It sort of takes the cake compared to any of the grey-area bitching and moaning they’ve done previously(about everything ever).

They basically were given a situation they couldn’t comprehend, responding in the most indignant manner (to the company and the guy who won the contest, “oh great, I won gabe and tycho’s trash” scratch that, the fucking toadie is probably in negotiations to return the DS for a pair of their dirty drawers), and then not apologizing for their behavior, but apologizing for the mistake their totally justifiable behavior(after so many years in this game etc) got them in.

I previously just ragged on these guys to keep current with their bullshit and not have to be a fan. Though they’re real shit stains if they can’t muster an actual public apology and somehow rectify their huge HUGE HUGE HUGE error.

BLOOD! WE WANT THEIR BLOOD!!!

Why did John Carmack sign a DS? Is he making a DS game?

You act as though EA isn’t actually evil. You’d also think the world’s largest game publisher (is this still true or is it Blizzion now?) could manage more than a single DS.

This good deed sure doesn’t cancel out all of EA’s evil deeds.

Personally, I think it unlikely that the comic was drawn while they still believed the DS was some sort reviewer bribe, but regardless of the chronology, I think there is absolutely no apology necessary. PA comics aren’t intended to stand alone from the newspost; many of the comics don’t even make sense if you haven’t read the post - and in this case, in the context of the newspost, the comic is very clearly self-mocking. It reads as Gabe and Tycho taking the piss out of themselves, not as vicious EA bashing.

I didn’t see the comic before running across this thread today, so I didn’t come to it blind, but my wife reads PA and not Qt3, so I asked what she had though of the comic. She took it entirely as Gabe and Tycho making a joke at their own expense, and was boggled that anyone saw it otherwise.

GIVE US BARABBAS!

I’m sure Gabe’s garbage men would have appreciated that.

I think there’s a disconnect when a corporate entity IS EVIL OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, and when two individual human beings fuck up and can’t even properly apologize.

I think there’s a disconnect when a corporate entity fucks up, and when two individual human beings fuck up and can’t even properly apologize.

His wife Anna Kang is the producer (?) of the DS Orcs & Elves they just did for the DS, and he was proselytizing for it at QuakeCon. Their idea is to start with a modest platform – cell phones in this case – as design up as they progress to more powerful platforms.

-Tom