The Worm Has Turned . . . If the Game Sucks

Well, the dudes at Penny Arcade are making a PC game. It's called--deep breath--Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness-Episode One. The game is described as a "comic adventure," a genre that is as underdeveloped as it is hit or miss, at least as far top-selling games are concerned.

However, in this instance, it's not as much about the game as it is about its developers. The boys at Penny Arcade are game pundits turned game developers. This is a potentially interesting transition for the gaming community at large because Mike and Jerry have a history of some pretty brutal game reviews and the buzz out there wonders what will happen if the game is even marginally panned by the professional reviewing community.

Personally, I'm not aching to see them flop. Sure I thought they overreacted when they rescinded their endorsement of WoW because of the server outages not long after the initial release. They had a point to be sure, but Blizzard squashed those hiccups right quick and the game of course went on to be a very well-fed, well-maintained monster (If Blizzard dropped the ball anywhere, it's immediately preceding the release of BC where my server queues often exceeded twenty minutes during peak hours, and that crap went on for weeks.)

This seems to be unprecedented, from commentator to producer; I can't think of anyone who has made the leap from reviewing games to making them. But I have to hand it to them, they've got guts for trying. Their site and comic strip are smart and funny, which means I can't imagine the two didn't forsee the potential pitfalls of making a game after years of ripping into others'. Whether their game ultimately fails or succeeds is immaterial to me. Very often, the most vocal and fierciest critics are incapable of creating that which they judge. It's pretty cool to see someone take a stab at proving that notion wrong.