Oh look, Penny Arcade’s in the news again. Wow, these guys get more bad press than EA. Before I talk about their latest PR disaster, let me tell you how I feel about the company. The truth is, I’m pretty neutral. Their webcomic isn’t bad, but not good enough for me to visit more than a few times a year. The only reason I ever go on the site at all is to watch Extra Credits. I’ve heard a lot of bad stuff about them, but I don’t pay it much mind. I thought the Dickwolves comic was untasteful, but I don’t think that makes them terrible. I felt that their comic response was well done and they could have just left it there. I don’t like the Dickwolves (oh dear, I just realized it’s a proper noun) comic, but it doesn’t at all give me the impression that the creators think that rape is okay/isn’t a big deal, or that they would laugh at a real life rape victim. However, how they handled it later made me facepalm so hard that my friends are still convinced that I run an underground fight club. Instead of just letting it be, they won’t stop talking about it. They even made a damn t-shirt!
Public relations? What’s that?!
The other thing that people talk about is Mike (real life version of the comic character Gabe) being transphobic. I’ve looked at the tweets and the subsequent blog post he made, and it doesn’t seem like that to me. I’m not going to argue with anyone about it, but here is how I see the situation. Gabe was ignorant about some things regarding gender identity and genitals, and instead of politely educating him, the social justice warriors jumped down his throat. He then responded by being an asshole, which as a professional and a grown man he never should have done. I’m absolutely not saying that Penny Arcade was blameless in either of these incidents, but I don’t think they’re terrible people. I just think they’re just super immature and unfortunately need PR reps to babysit them (or at least Mike). Well, that’s part one of my two part series on Penny Arcade. Next week I’ll be talking about the recent job posting disaster. When I started writing this I intended it to be all about that, but then I started talking about the stuff they’ve done in the past and it ended up being an article in itself. That’s probably better anyway, since I’m sure more info will come up about the job in that time. Feel free to put in your two cents in the comments. Will Penny Arcade handle it well or will they screw themselves like they always do? Find out next week in another exciting episode of TheLateNightGamer.com! —