Zero Punctuation: Webcomics

[andomamern]

This was great enough to lure me into registering. I really enjoy Penny Arcade, but CAD is horrible. There is no humor! Only ill-conceived story lines and gigantic speech bubbles. Tim Buckley must have looked at Penny Arcade and thought, "Hey, this is great, except for the wit, the enjoyable art, and the lack of taking oneself too seriously."

 

[PsychadelicMonk]

EDIT: I said some stuff here... But I take it all back. Lapse of judgement or something - but I'd rather not be a part of this... What's the point really?

 

[Booze Zombie]

Come on people, is it so hard to understand that people have different views on things? What are we, Scientologists?

 

[Opacic]

I think I'm going to throw up.

How did this get nearly 900 replies?

People have separate opinions, I myself find nearly all Webcomics terrible, CAD being near the bottom, but I'm not about to go and ***** about it on a forum because Yahtzee did a video about it.

Honestly you people are like the normal fans of Yahtzee who'll laugh and call fanboys 'butthurt', only to rage like the fist of the north star because your favourite game got criticised, however poorly.

 

[Tempdude0]

...

I was going to reply to you, but then I realized you aren't worth it.

Tah.

So, I made an point by point argument, taking care to not actually be an asshat, and it's "not worth it." Oye, if you're not going to defend a statement, why make it?

I think I'm going to throw up.

How did this get nearly 900 replies?

People have separate opinions, I myself find nearly all Webcomics terrible, CAD being near the bottom, but I'm not about to go and ***** about it on a forum because Yahtzee did a video about it.

Honestly you people are like the normal fans of Yahtzee who'll laugh and call fanboys 'butthurt', only to rage like the fist of the north star because your favourite game got criticised, however poorly.

The idea is that you should be able to reasonably discuss something without it devolving into shitty back and forth raging...Also, that last comparison doesn't really make sense. It only works if everyone is playing favorites. Some of us here don't try to defend our guilty pleasures, we know exactly what we're enjoying...We just don't care that it's crappy.

As clarification, I'm not referring to CAD as my guilty pleasure, god no.

 

[Jack Spencer Jr]

So, I made an point by point argument, taking care to not actually be an asshat, and it's "not worth it." Oye, if you're not going to defend a statement, why make it?

I already made two absurdly lengthy posts stating my position. If you still don't get it, you will not be get a third.

Incidentally, that care you took resulted in such failure that Mike Myers is probably going to sue you for copyright infringement. You'll probably have an easier time if you put the socks on first and then your shoes.

 

[Tempdude0]

So, I made an point by point argument, taking care to not actually be an asshat, and it's "not worth it." Oye, if you're not going to defend a statement, why make it?

I already made two absurdly lengthy posts stating my position. If you still don't get it, you will not be get a third.

Incidentally, that care you took resulted in such failure that Mike Myers is probably going to sue you for copyright infringement. You'll probably have an easier time if you put the socks on first and then your shoes.

So, you're saying that since you've already explained it, it stands on its own merits. Nice. Way to doge the questions, you lazy bastard. As for my "care" it only extended to my not being constantly insulting, that's about it. Since we apparently can't do this a nice, rational way, I'm just going to say that A) Meyers is still a draw for people, so at least I'd be making money if the two of us were comparable, and B)Insults work a tad better if you don't sound like a kid on the playground...Then again since you're running what appears to be an unbalanced Hawk-eye as your icon, I can't say for certain you aren't fresh off the pavement.

One week later and you fags are still at it.

Bravo.

Free time and nothing much else to do. It's an easy way to waste ten minutes.

 

[Jack Spencer Jr]

@ Jack Spencer Jr

Excellent points - and I think you're right about the punchline placement - they are both different joke attempts, not the same joke attempt. They are both unfunny, but I find the PA one more to my taste given a choice, due to the fact that CAD is always the same. Having read various CAD strips, all CAD strips are instantly unfunny as they are the same 'joke' repeated. Usually ends with character A stabbing, shooting, maiming etc. character B in some moronic way. Therefore CAD loses out everytime.

Hmm... That's a good point. Having not read that much of the strip, I haven't noticed that this is a joke the guy goes for every time when he doesn't know what else to do. Much like how SinFest has strips where character each say one word of a single sentence. But upon reflection, the few strips I did browse did seem to use this gag a bit. I just found the strip not very good for other reasons and didn't notice and grow tired of this trend.

But that's not the issue, we're all in agreement, it is about the method of delivery, rather than the delivery itself. They aren't funny but depending on taste and other factors one would always win over another. It's very subjective in that regard.

Yes, which is my point. Yahtzee used these two strips to demonstrate how poor Ctrl+Alt+Del is, but I don't think his argument holds much water in this particular case. If anything, it demonstrates that Ctrl+Alt+Del is a little better just joke structure-wise in that instead of doing the typical game humor as he mentions in the video, apply real world logic to games with "hilarious" result, which is all the Penny Arcade strip does, Ctrl+Alt+Del starts with that situation and then takes it somewhere. Granted he takes it to his tired, old go-to gag, but I do appreciate the attempt to build off of the clichéd gaming comic humor rather than just reheating it like leftover meatloaf.

But this may be giving Buckley too much credit. I would have to look at more of his work before I could tell if this was the work of an actual creative decision or a total accident. But I'm not gonna do that.

 

[moomintrollop]

Oooh, a thread full of self-important, clueless, ponderously leaden and depressingly humourless raging. Go see the "someone's wrong on the internet" XKCD, while those of us who arrived late check to see if we packed our carefaces.

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.."
(s/elephants/trekkies/ and s/grass/interwebs/)

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Yes, which is my point. Yahtzee used these two strips to demonstrate how poor Ctrl+Alt+Del is, but I don't think his argument holds much water in this particular case. If anything, it demonstrates that Ctrl+Alt+Del is a little better just joke structure-wise in that instead of doing the typical game humor as he mentions in the video, apply real world logic to games with "hilarious" result, which is all the Penny Arcade strip does, Ctrl+Alt+Del starts with that situation and then takes it somewhere. Granted he takes it to his tired, old go-to gag, but I do appreciate the attempt to build off of the clichéd gaming comic humor rather than just reheating it like leftover meatloaf.

But this may be giving Buckley too much credit. I would have to look at more of his work before I could tell if this was the work of an actual creative decision or a total accident. But I'm not gonna do that.

I disagree, that's what Penny Arcade USED to do, I provide counterpoints and examples where Penny Arcade has, unlike other gaming webcomics, truly broken the mold of what a "gaming" webcomic can do... and still be funny.

Paint the Line
Cardboard Tube Samurai
Twisp & Catsby
The Last Christmas
The Deep Crow Storyline
Dr. Raven Darktalon Blood

Mostly these are examples where Penny Arcade tries to be more than a gaming webcomic. It is also MUCH more well drawn that CAD, which gives it major points.

 

[greyhairdgamer]

not a bad vid, not as funny as usual. (yes i know i'm a week late in watching this one)

 

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I disagree, that's what Penny Arcade USED to do, I provide counterpoints and examples where Penny Arcade has, unlike other gaming webcomics, truly broken the mold of what a "gaming" webcomic can do... and still be funny.

Well, my comments and criticisms were limited to the two example strips linked above. Although the examples are from about a year ago. But, maybe they were having an off day or they were on their way to lunch or something. I don't know.

 

[Shadowed Thief]

Really though, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Nobody is either right or wrong in defending or trashing a webcomic or for that matter, yahtzee. If you like something or dislike something, are you going to change your opinion after listening to some asshole that you've never met, reading a webcomic by some asshole you've never met, or reading a forum post by some asshole you've ever met?
I did sort of defend CAD in an earlier post but I like it and I was just saying something that I said was important to the issue. Yahtzee says the shit that he does to intentionally piss people off and spark arguments like this. But in reality his opinion doesn't count for shit and neither does anyone else's but yours. The End.

 

[Lipid]

Hey, guys. I continue to disagree. Well, in a nuanced way. In case I wasn't abundantly clear before, I don't think either comic is very funny, either in these example strips or the whole of their archives. (I tried reading the Ctrl+Alt+Del archives starting with the beginning and the first couple months worth of strips was talking about other web comics. I've found other web comics also do this for the first couple strips. Maybe they should remove those ones from the archives because that isn't very funny and will cause people to not bother with your web comic)

First of all, the joke about doing battle with someone using a odd version of Checkers or whatever the hell that thing is is not very funny in the first place. It's been done zillions of times before. "In Super Mario Bros. You hit your head on bricks to find coins but in the real world you'd just get a concussion. Ha ha." It wasn't very funny when Murphy's Rules appeared in the pages of Space Gamer back in the early 80's and it really hasn't gotten all that much better. You can't rely on this and just this to be funny, because it isn't. So it's all about the execution for this kind of thing.

Penny Arcade more or less relies on just this gag to be funny. In the interest of fairness, they do try a bit more than that, what with the mighty warrior spouting soliloquies and the giant rat thing growling menacingly to contrast with the two of them playing a board game. But, this doesn't work for me. Even after I know what the stupid game they're lampooning is. I'm not sure what it is but there are three panels to this particular strip and I am still looking for a fourth panel that has the actual punchline. In fact, I tend to look for another panel that has the punchline whenever I read Penny Arcade. It's like they were playing comic strip Iron Chef or something and time ran out before they could get to the actual punchline.

Now, to be fair, again, it may be their execution is what sucks here more than their structure. The cut from the two close-up to the two of them playing a board game in silhouette is actually kind of jarring. Maybe it needed a few more panels of the two of them rushing at each other emitting blood-thirsty battle cries before stopping to quietly play a board game. Something like that. That seems to be where they were going, but it doesn't really come across in a visceral way. But, doing that would be contrary to the cramped style where spatial relationships between people and object is anyone's guess that the strip has developed over the years.

Ctrl+Alt+Del, however, does not rely on the board game playing to be the actual gag of the strip so much as the interactions of the characters in response to this situation. The punchline of this strip is not that they are going to play a board game instead of actually fighting. The joke is that the one guy simply stabbed the other guy (third panel) and then that guy was more disappointed that they weren't going to play the board game instead of being more worried that he'd just been stabbed (fourth panel). The punchline is not "We're going to play this board game instead of fight." The punchline is "Aw, man. It took me an hour to set up the board."

Is it all that funny? No. Not particularly.

Is it predictable? Hell, yes.

But the fact remains that I got the faintest twinge of humor from the Ctrl+Alt+Del strip whereas Penny Arcade gave me nothing. (Incidentally, I described both strips to the wife and she did not laugh at the Penny Arcade one but did laugh at Ctrl+Alt+Del. I think that proves my point) It may be because I was looking for another panel after the lame board game joke was told in Penny Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del actually gave me that.

And the point I was making in the previous post and am hopefully clarifying here is that I think Yahtzee was dead wrong in saying that this comparison demonstrates what is wrong with Ctrl+Alt+Del because he misidentified where the punchline was. For Penny Arcade, they could have saved a lot of drawing time and just put the words "Hur hur Games don't make no sense Hur hur" up as a strip instead. Ctrl+Alt+Del used the, at best, mildly amusing joke about the board game as a spring board to set up the situation which led to a predictable but slightly more amusing end.

And before anyone thinks I'm defending Ctrl+Alt+Del and it's titwaggling creator or something stupid like that, let me reiterate that I don't like web comics in general and gaming web comics in particular. They aren't funny. So they're just like the comic strips in the newspaper. They aren't funny, either, with the possible exception of Rex Morgan M.D. Oh, that wacky Dr. Rex. The only difference is you have to print out a web comic before you can line a birdcage with it or use it to start a fire in your grill.

Most (if not all) of this is just your opinion and doesn't at all argue an objective point. You don't like comics? Fine, but there are millions of people who do. PA and CAD are being made for a living so they're obviously pushing someones buttons correctly.

Something I noticed, though:

The warrior wasn't talking in the form of a soliloquy as he was talking to the rat, not himself. Call me pedantic but I just wanted to point that out.

 

[Reaces]

Hey, guys. I continue to disagree. Well, in a nuanced way. In case I wasn't abundantly clear before, I don't think either comic is very funny, either in these example strips or the whole of their archives. (I tried reading the Ctrl+Alt+Del archives starting with the beginning and the first couple months worth of strips was talking about other web comics. I've found other web comics also do this for the first couple strips. Maybe they should remove those ones from the archives because that isn't very funny and will cause people to not bother with your web comic)

First of all, the joke about doing battle with someone using a odd version of Checkers or whatever the hell that thing is is not very funny in the first place. It's been done zillions of times before. "In Super Mario Bros. You hit your head on bricks to find coins but in the real world you'd just get a concussion. Ha ha." It wasn't very funny when Murphy's Rules appeared in the pages of Space Gamer back in the early 80's and it really hasn't gotten all that much better. You can't rely on this and just this to be funny, because it isn't. So it's all about the execution for this kind of thing.

In my opinion you need to see this joke in perspective.
The idea behind it I thought was to appeal to people who had just spend some time in the game the jokes about. And after a few scenario's in which you see people ending disputes which games of bejewelled or whatever it was, I cant remember, you face animals. Which makes no sense whatsoever, but the fights are still plot driven, so you still have a reason to fight these creatures... in checkers or whatever.

In PA its not so much a joke as in "haha in real life this wouldn't happen" as "seriously, have you thought about what you spent 2 hours doing? batteling rats in bejewelled?".
While in CAD it is as usual a bad joke "lol you're challenged to a board game" followed by another bad joke incase you didn't understand the first one "lol he stabbed you" followed by a third bad joke "haha he didn't notice getting stabbed".

 

[Donkeyboy]

All i'm going to say is that I am dissapointed that this episode turned out the way it did. It had the potential to be a lighthearted and cheerful poke at a few webcomics that we all know, love or hate, and to be left at that. But unfortunatley it seems that instead of that it ended up as just short of a personal attack on a single comic and it's artist. I know people have already said words to this effect but surely the fact that this episode has had as much negative feedback as it has shows that it could be, and has been, taken the wrong way. I really hope that there aren't going to be any more episodes like this as I usually enjoy ZeroPunctuation alot, I just hope that Yahtzee was having a particularly bad day when he wrote it because we all become alot more hostile than we mean to be when we have had a bad day.

 

[asdaa]

Yahtzee did put together a rather lengthy editorial on his website about CAD, and he's written about webcomics before.

Yes, in the 23/3/08: You Cad entry on his front page he harped a bit on how CAD sucks and used an example of this Ctrl+Alt+Del strip [http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070718] and this Penny Arcade strip [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/28] as they both make the same obvious joke about Puzzle Quest, some game I've never heard of and apparently hope I never have the misfortune of playing.

Thing is, though, I disagreed with Yahtzee's assessment. First of all, I didn't think either of them were funny at all because gaming humor comics are like a whoopie cushion that doesn't make any noise. But if pressed, I would have to give the advantage to Ctrl+Alt+Del on this one.

For those who have no idea that Penny Arcade is a gaming comic or is not exactly up on all of the stupid games out there, or is aware of such things but does not give two shits, the Penny Arcade strip is a total non-sequitur. Is this supposed to be funny? Because it isn't, you know. It assumes a level of familiarity that if it's not there, it simply does not work on any level. (Personally, I still think the timing or whatever is way off on the damned thing even if you are familiar with Puzzle Quest, but I bitched about that already)

The Ctrl+Alt+Del one, on the other hand, does not make knowledge of the game a prerequisite to get the humor. In fact, it kind of explains it a bit so I have a slightly better understanding on what the fuck is going on. In fact, i think Yahtzee was dead wrong when he wrote:

Both comics identify the humour in the situation - that the rules of a game world seem absurd when applied to the real world - but while Penny Arcade understands that the crux of a joke should be reserved for the final panel, Ctrl-Alt-Del is apparently so excited about the idea that it blurts it out right away, leaving three more panels to flounder in excessive dialogue and pointlessness.

First of all, because since all gaming web comics apply real world logic to games with "humorous" results, this sort of shit hasn't been funny since Steve Jackson Games stopped publishing Space gamer back in 1985. It's old and not very funny. Particularly in this case. I think Yahtzee incorrectly identified where the "punch" is here, because if there is one in this situation, it isn't in the people playing some idiotic version of Chinese Checkers instead of fighting. At best that's dim at worst it makes no sense. I don't think Ctrl+Alt+Del is particularly funny, but I do think it was marginally funnier in this case.

Exactly - it requires that you know the game beforehand. That's why its a GAMING comic.

 

[Jerakal]

Aside from Penny-Arcade there are maybe... 4 webcomics worth reading on the internet, and even that might be generous.


Well said Yahtee.

 

[Booze Zombie]

The Penny Arcade strips are easy to "decipher" with a quick perusal of the news post accompanying the strip, which can be easily accessed, as the news button will take you to the news for the strip you're browsing at the time.

This feature is not utilised by CAD, which means you have to search an archive if you want info concerning a particular page.

 

[svenhoek]

I was hoping I would see SOMETHING on how terrible CAD recent story was, I did not expect it from yahtzee

Hilarious. You touched on the exact feelings I had when I was reading em. WTF was he thinking?

That said, I did expect to see something on PA, which is my all time favorite webcomic, but was kinda sad to see only a warped sort of praise for them. I guess yahtzee's motto is if you have something nice to say, dont say anything at all.