dork-specific content
I don’t know if you follow gaming comics at all – I have a peripheral interest – but a week or so ago Firaxis, the company that makes the Civilization games, reached out to webcomic artists, commissioning a number of gaming comics to do cartoons about the new Civ IV expansion pack, Beyond The Sword.
I’m afraid I have more than a peripheral interest in Civ IV and half the time that’s why my comics are late. Ahem. Not really selling anybody on anything there! Oh, bother. But. I gotta say, I don’t know who exactly is supposed to benefit from this arrangement. I hope the artists were paid well. That, say, PvP (who did a pretty decent job) was willing to do this makes it seem likely that they were well compensated and not just like promised extra hits and free copies. So I suppose there’s that. Since I don’t follow any of the comics brought on board with this, I initially though that they were inserted into the comics as, you know, the regular comic for Friday, which squicked me out, but that appears not to be the case now that I look at it again, so thumbs up for professional separation. But, I have trouble believing that this initiative is going to attract a bunch of gamers who haven’t already heard of or are already obsessed with the crack-like qualities of Civ games. It’s almost like having World of Warcraft street teams making sidewalk art, isn’t it? But maybe it’s the wrong demographic, and they need to commission posts from history bloggers.
And then where the readers don’t score in this arrangement is, well, when you’re doing something for outside money, you sorta pull your punches. Leave a squishy center. What do I mean? I mean, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff you could do if you were a disinterested party, just doing a gaming comic about Civ IV on your own terms.
“Dude! You just cost us 27% of our possible audience!”
Psh, that’s nothing. We at Nobody Scores! specialize in alienating audiences. If you come out with your stupid expansion pack for Macs real soon, like in the next month, you’ll get this cartoon free.
Haw! Amirite?
• crickets •
I’ll show myself out.
(Real comic still coming. The first of a two-part epic! Sex, violence, funny costumes. Hmmm. I feel compelled to add that these are entirely separate elements in this one.)
my life versus the elements the motion in the ocean, i call it self promotion