>Hasn't updated since February.
Is PvP dead?
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>Hasn't updated since February. Is PvP dead?
>Hasn't updated since February.
Is PvP dead?
Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
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I would say that timeskip demonstrated he is just running on fumes. Same character types but on new faces.
I am left very curious exactly how he burned his bridges with PennyArcade, WizardsOfTheCoast and Straub.
>"You may or may not have heard, but I got a literary agent. We sold a middle-grade version of Table Titans to Holiday House publishing! It's a lot of work (each book is going to run 200 plus pages), but it's a thrilling opportunity and I've never been more excited to be a cartoonist. My hope is that over the next three to five years I can transition from being a daily web-cartoonist to being a kid-lit author and educator. I love cartooning and I would love to pass on what I've learned. My hope is that with Table Titans and some side projects, I can inspire kids to create their own stories and make their own comics."
Literally read the blog post on the front page maybe?
Seems like a decent career shift. Making daily comics for eternity is kinda painful
Penny Arcade started their D&D show, Acquisitions Inc which Scott was originally a part of with his classic D&D character Binwin Bronzebottom which he had been using for years. Penny Arcade was starting to build Acq Inc into a huge brand with live shows and merch and all that, essentially profiting off Binwin, but Scott was not given ownership of any of it, he'd just be an employee basically. I assume that it why he had the falling out with everyone as even Straub is doing Acq Inc stuff to this day. But he seems to be on at least friendly terms with them now.
His dad's permanent decline fricking broke him, on top of a mid-life crisis and general burnout. If he's happy doing his book shit now then that's fine
He legally separated Binwin because he thought he could leverage the character better somehow than being part of a seven figure multimedia empire. Binwin's Minions petered out years ago and he showed up in that DnD Idle game, I think that's about it. Dude is either greedy or has an ego he just can't check
>has an ego he just can't check
That tracks. Part of why I used to love following him is that he was very opinionated on the comics industry and the world in general and was not shy about going off on people who made him mad. He's mellowed out (or restrained himself) a lot more in the last 10 years though
The thing about this whole situation just doesn't make sense to me about how it all went to shit.
The Penny Arcade guys gave Scott an office, the way they portrayed it it was rent-free and they were just helping a sad guy out. But even if Scott paid rent it was still nice of them to do because it put him in a fun wholesome work environment. I mean I would fricking pay rent to be in the same room as those people every day of my working life.
So they do their D&D shit. I really feel like at some point the Penny Arcade people, who run a fricking tight ship, would sit down with Scott and tell him, "Hey, these stupid D&D things we sit down and record and distribute for free, well it's good marketing and we want to cut you in". For all their mental problems, it's just impossible to imagine they would be such fricking buttholes that they wouldn't cut Scott in voluntarily and insist he takes the cash.
Like, just think about the situation. You've been doing the D&D shit for what is likely zero compensation. And now your friends want to buy it, and let's be clear here, they're buying a thing the world didn't fricking know you even owned until they gave you a chance to share it. So it's not like they bought Superman and started fricking him in the ass.
The more I write here the more I realize how complex it actually is. It's a character you enjoy with your friends. And now they want to complicate things by selling it. So now your character is a job, and playing it with your friends is a job, and if you get tired, you'll be pressured to sell it. I guess I wouldn't fault someone for saying "Why does it always have to be business with you man?"
>The Penny Arcade guys gave Scott an office, the way they portrayed it it was rent-free and they were just helping a sad guy out. But even if Scott paid rent it was still nice of them to do because it put him in a fun wholesome work environment. I mean I would fricking pay rent to be in the same room as those people every day of my working life.
I remember him making a particularly autistic blog post about relocating his entire life to Seattle from Texas, and moving away from his dad and brother because he wanted to belong to a 'gang' and feel like he was living in an 80s sitcom like 'Night Court'.
>So they do their D&D shit. I really feel like at some point the Penny Arcade people, who run a fricking tight ship, would sit down with Scott and tell him, "Hey, these stupid D&D things we sit down and record and distribute for free, well it's good marketing and we want to cut you in". For all their mental problems, it's just impossible to imagine they would be such fricking buttholes that they wouldn't cut Scott in voluntarily and insist he takes the cash.
Pig and Bald wouldn't voluntarily screw anyone over even if they had the emotional capacity to, but you're neglecting the fact that Robert Khoo ran Penny Arcade until 2016, and would have probably have to have been pretty merciless/tight fisted to create a small multimedia and convention empire on the back of two such middling talents.
As an aside, what is Khoo even doing nowdays?
I was kinda referencing Khoo in my post. On one hand, Khoo isn't going to give people free rides, but on the other hand, he isn't the sort of person who just lets things slide on gentlemen's agreements so people can come back and sue him. It would make sense to contractually lay out Scott's involvement within the Penny Arcade family BOTH in fairness to Scott's contribution and so Scott can't come back and legally frick them in the future.
At some point I stopped caring about Penny Arcade and just wanted to know what Khoo was doing. He built an empire from nothing. And it really was nothing back in the day where your income was in t-shirt sales and fricking stickers and posters.
The soda can hide and seek game was probably the funniest thing that has ever come out of Penny Arcade.
Khoo is fricking inhuman, he works like 20 hours a day and has the power to turn anything we wants into gold. Mike and Jerry are extremely, EXTREMELY lucky he took an interest in them.
The realization that the vast VAST majority of Penny Arcade fans have zero fricking clue who Robert is was the first time I realized that a fandom, regardless of fandom, was not as detail oriented (i.e. obsessed) as I could be.
I remember being at PAX and just talking to random people, I mean dozens if not hundreds of people, and getting hype about being there and all I fricking wanted to do was see Robert's talk and they were like "who?" My heart fricking died that day because I realized that fans, just might not be all that caring despite being so vocal and loud.
I don't know that I would take it that hard, it just may not be the level they work on. That said it's not like Khoo is some dark secret of PA's past. Mike and Jerry have said multiple times they'd probably have had to quit and go back to "real" jobs decades ago if it weren't for him because they have no idea what the frick they're doing. They didn't even technically own the publishing rights to the comic when he got involved
Not sure at all that's how it went down. Mike and Jerry had also openly stated for years how they genuinely had huge respect for Kurtz even though they'd give him shit in the comic. At one point Jerry said he was the only other guy on the planet who had the credentials and ability to upload comics on the site
>Not sure at all that's how it went down. Mike and Jerry had also openly stated for years how they genuinely had huge respect for Kurtz even though they'd give him shit in the comic. At one point Jerry said he was the only other guy on the planet who had the credentials and ability to upload comics on the site
That was during PA and PvP's ascent when they both used to affectionately throw shit at each other, with PA calling Kurtz 'Steve Kuntz' ect. The previous poster's talking about the fallout that happened years later, post Kurtz moving to Seattle, the Trenches, Acquisitions Inc ect.
I don't even know if The Trenches was a fallout thing. I think they just quit doing it because it got too fricking real, like people forgot FatBabies was a thing
I never read it because it was boring, and the characters looked like skin coloured modern Pokemon, but iirc Kurtz dropped out after the split and Pig and Bald continued to write it for other artists.
Yeah, I've been legitimately fascinated by Kurtz' pretty aggressive mediocrity, and consistent shitting the bed with creative partners and bigger webcomics since the early 2000s, he's basically a slightly more talented Andrew Dobson, who was in the right place and time, able to establish himself with the first wave of webcomics, and never quite able to live up to the heights of former contemporises.
Nobody else seems to have the same level of interest in the fat frick I do, and he doesn't even register as a minor lolcow. It'd be nice if someone decided to compile his greatest sperg outs (trying to get PvP in newspapers, declaring himself the next Jim Davis, banning people from his site's forum when they didn't like the Stewie cat character, the terrible Flash animated series he paid people actual money to make), plus the details of the PigBald breakup, but I'll be fricked if I'm autistic enough to do it.
Now i want to hear more details about his lolcowdom
It's basically nothing that isn't in
Kurtz never really hit the big leagues of having a weird fetish/out there politics/publicly going after other creators, and has been smart enough to stay away from the limelight for the last decade or so, but his tantrums and unwarranted ego were consistently entertaining for years, and it's a shame most of shit shenanigans have been lost to time. Detailed info on the Penny Arcade split obviously being the holy grail.
I've always been curious what happened between Kurtz and PigBald. Did the Trenches have something to do with it? Also why the frick can't they just update the site to have more stories?
>plus the details of the PigBald breakup
That's interesting, because I used to follow this group regularly with that Webcomics Weekly podcast and I remember they did that webcomic, all 3 of them about video game testers that went no where.
He’s probably busy taking care of his father who has mental problems.
Is that Eek! the Cat?
That's what I thought from the thumbnail, then after enlarging it all I see is Chowder.
How is he doing financially? PVP used to be HUGE. It was one of the flagship webcomics. They had collections and merch and were being put out by Image. Scott co-wrote those books about making comics. He was featured at all the big conventions. I literally haven’t heard him mentioned in at least 5-10 years. Sometimes I see old PVP issues in bins in comic shops but that’s it.
>How is he doing financially? PVP used to be HUGE. It was one of the flagship webcomics. They had collections and merch and were being put out by Image. Scott co-wrote those books about making comics. He was featured at all the big conventions. I literally haven’t heard him mentioned in at least 5-10 years. Sometimes I see old PVP issues in bins in comic shops but that’s it.
PvP was one of the biggest webcomics 20 years ago when the internet was a few hundred thousand people, and its main competition was garbage like Shlock Mercenary and Sluggy Freelance. Kurtz threw several very public shitfits when B^U first turned up and within a year or so was lapping him.
It's weird, in its heyday PvP was so milquetoast and bland (literally a mediocre 80s sitcom with semi topical videogame references) that I can't really imagine it ever cultivated a diehard following; for me and the few people I know who can remember it it was more just a bookmark to check everyday because there really wasn't very much to see or do online in the early aughts, it was like reading Garfield in the newspaper everyday, just kina... there.
Would be interesting to see what kind of Patreon bux Kurtz makes. I hope he's doing ok, and has at least managed to rebuild bridges with Kris Straub, they seemed like really close buddies back in the day.
PvP, much like CAD, is too big to fail at this point. He has enough of a die-hard audience to support him through anything, but for Kurtz it's guys in their 40s who aren't posting on the sites we see.
I imagine the breakup was slowly brewing for a while. Wil Wheaton left Acq Inc because Kurtz was a dick to his wife if I remember right. I also remember him saying something about how the reason having an office in PA's building didn't work out is because his dad got sick to the point he had to move back to Texas and be his caretaker, but he might've been using that to cover up the falling out.
>Wil Wheaton left Acq Inc because Kurtz was a dick to his wife if I remember right
Huh, that makes me like Kurtz more
Gotta say, I got into Acq Inc pretty late and went back to see some of the earlier ones. Kurtz really does come off as an butthole, at least unintentionally
I think the last time I read was when ponytail proposed to shrew. Can’t be arsed to remember their names? Brent, maybe? I remember him revealing himself in a knight costume. Did they stay together? I think the edgelord kid was going after the grrrl intern at around the same time, but I can’t imagine she hasn’t been turned into a lesbian by now.
iirc he revealed himself in the knight costume way before, when he was pretending to be someone else playing Everquest and they first fell in love. Frick me am I ever autistic for remembering this shit
PvP was actually pretty good at updating the status quo occasionally. Brent and Jade got married and stayed married, Robbie won the lottery and stayed rich, Francis and Marcy got aged up a couple of times from teenagers to 18 and then mid-20s.
Last year he attempted a 15 year timeskip starring Brent and Jade's daughter, with Francis as the boss, but it petered out and now he's back to "classic" PvP
What's killer is the timeskip wasn't really done to make it relevant to audiences or anything, it was purely done for his own flagging interest. Really he should have just retired or properly hiatus'ed it
...I wasn't aware it was still running, I haven't read that shit in over a decade.