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I don't have them for protection. We say a lot of silly things through life (which was kind of the secondary point of the comic) I have no idea why I have them. I DO know they come in handy when I have to break open cd wrapping or envelopes or cut in a new book or whatever. And they keep my hands occupied when I am in front of the computer but not typing.

Check.

Yeah, whereas I won't stop anyone else from doing their own variations of this if they desire, as far as 'Helm's Fill In The Comic compo' goes, it'll probably be on a when-we-feel-like-it basis.

Eric: because the scope is small and managable, they don't depend on huge teams and coordination nor do they require the intensive effort of anyone for more than one week at a time.

But I don't see how that answers how frequent this can or should be. It's not like captioning a comic takes more than half an hour or effort to think and edit. What I'm scared of is whether people will care to do this again for a third, fifth, fifteenth time without this becoming dead weight. The orows are relatively young yet, and still orow3 was much poorer than 2 and 1 in my opinion.

You'd have to be pretty myopic to attribute that to arrogance.

I'm sure you know that passively asserting what the other person has to be when there's dispairity of opinion is a great way to strawman your way onto making your sale. Since you've studied business and advertising and everything. Do you also know it's pretty insulting?

I've studied (and am close to getting my degree on) not taking shit and being cautious in my assumptions in equal parts, myself. It works great. Perhaps it would dispel such negative opinion about you being arrogant if you didn't persue such agressive selling tactics when talking with people. Just saying. Beyond character critique now, I will now address your points.

Slogans die out, new campaigns are made, agencies vie for accounts, but every company started somewhere. You can find the puffery on every level.

Oh sure you can. Is Herculean Effort one of these companies that want to 'start from somewhere' and end somewhere else, then? This justifies stupid mottos? One of the companies that in order to get there will need the 'puffery' you speak of? I find that a shame because there's so many exciting things people can do outside the mainstream, besides uh, breaking in the mainstream, using all the mainstream-methods.

Sales is more of an indirect goal than an adequate measurement.

Yes.

The business world isn't made up of faceless corporations, but a bunch of people.

Diverting. The business world is made up from models of financial enterprize. Looking at the people building block is dualistic and not at all what I was talking about. I am talking about the attitude of corporations and the tried and tested models of advertising you've gotten your degree on. I believe these models have no place in the AGS scene. Not even in an ironic usage, which I can however stomach if adequately funny, but much less in what you're sort of admitting here as being a legitimate business practise of a 'company that starts somewhere' to end somewhere else.

How many professional game companies have even heard of the AGS Awards?

What does this mean?

Don't take this community too seriously, Helm.

I will take seriously what I find important. I find this is respectful and fitting. You?

As for Apprentice, that was like making a recipe that wins a town fair, then adopting the "best in the universe" slogan.

Yes, think how arrogant and silly that would look.

There's just too big a difference between those two realms.

I agree! How awkward would it be when small-timers adopt the methods of bigshot advertisers just because 'they have to start from somewhere'.

Dude I can't draw an extra page a week (at least not with the attention a page deserves) for this contest. The only reason I say I am willing to keep this up and I'm pretty confident in can be of satisfactory quality is because I draw these comics anyway for work.

Started to really worry how to make Henri walk these stairs

not to worry, you need about 3 frames for each leg. Just make sure you do the whole walking down animation, frame by frame on a layer-supporting program in a 320x240 bounding box and import that (or a smaller box you'll have to align manually if you don't like compressing dead space) in ags. Don't even attempt to synch it in ags and animate in a primitive way.

Ishmael: no

I guess I might as well post my own version,



hah! Okay, now



As it is painfully obvious, the script that went to print was vastly inferior to a lot of these entries, which goes to show I should be putting more effort into into the exposition part of making it, however sparse it may be. I feel like I've been severily Comic Strip Doctored here. To my defense, I do a lot of understated comics, so my Charlie Brownisms fall a bit flat against the punch-in-face brilliance of +10 xp!! or '...like this space mask!'. Besides, it's based on reality.

Only reality's degenerated since.


don't look at me like that. See how I'm looking at you?
Don't look at me like that. They're for protection.


I'm thrilled this has had such a wonderful turnout thus far, and we're still only on the second day of the compo. I'm going to have a very hard time picking a winner, but I do intend to comment on every piece when this is over. Which brings me to something I need to discuss with you guys. Since this went good, should we do it again? Every week? Every when-we-feel-like-it? That's one thing, I'd hate this to dry up and become just another compo, god knows, we have enough here. So I'd prefer this being an one-off than it being a regular piece of inanity down the road. So I need opinions.

Second issue to discuss: should the winner draw/assemble the next page or should I keep putting my own work for this up? I don't know to what extent the art helped the brilliance and abundance of these entries, but I do know I do comics anyway for work and I have a large backlog which is usually meticulously drawn, which isn't exactly the same as telling someone 'congrats, you win, start a new compo tomorrow or something'. I know eric or jess or a few other people here do comics and they probably have pages for this, but most people, even if they are brilliant in their captioning and clearly win, going through thr trouble of making a comic for a silly internet competition might be too much to ask. Opinions?

If you guys want me to continue putting comics up, I have an extensive archive, and I draw a new one every week anyway. Not all is suited for this type of thing (or is it? I thought originally this comic would be very bad and look at all these brilliant entries!) but at least some is.

you have scaling issues. The character is too small by about 10%, the mirror is too high, the height of the room is approximately 5 meters (or 15 feet) the door too small, the light HUGE, the table a slab of wooden thickness, the chair is ok though!...

and who the hell frames a picture of a sports car?

"The best a man can get" (Gillette razors)
"The Best never rest." (Ford Trucks)
"The Best Built Cars In The World" (Toyota) -- wooh, that puts our strapline to shame!
"America's Best Record" (Puritan Records)

Without heavying up the thread too much, a small point: this is exactly the sort of marketing approach AGS games DO NOT have to go with. Ford aren't doing this for fun. This is memetic terrorism. These taglines are repeated enough times, not because they're valid or invalid, that is inconsequential. They are repeated as much as possible just so they can be ingrained in the collective subconsciousness of the buying public by large. And not even because this will lead to better sales (although that's still the end goal) but because in such a way, they can be considered part of relevant pop culture. And a company, such a Pepsi or Nike, when it achieves that, when when people think of 'carbonated soda' or 'athletic ware' respectively they think their name, their logo, their tagline, such a company never dies. This is the point. You shouldn't, even in passing joviality adhere to this marketing attitude. A wonderful example of someone that has done a joke on the 'best game in the universe' is bspeers in his RON thread with the promotional video. He is very much aware of all I just said and approaches the 'I made the best game!1' deal with hilarious results - and great respect of how he must constantly undermine the validity of his own statement.

We are not bigshot companies. Do not ape the marketing strategy of bigshot companies. Do not tell me 'I did this because Ford did worse'. I detest Ford. You know and I know how Apprentice I and II were recieved by the AGS crowd, it's risky to say 'we are the best' when you have so many AGS awards and then go 'wha? huh? it was a joke! nobody got it?'

btw guys that's not a guitar in his avatar, it's a mic stand

hahahaha the disconnected disparate tak! does it for me, given this NEW SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES

SpacePirateCaine, I loved your entry. It's difficult to let the 'punchine' hang and have it still work, but you did it based on good writing and an eerie sense of pacing. Excellent.

Hey Big Brother and Geof, do you think you're the best, and if so, how difficult is it to be such?

I just checked their website to finally get what you're talking about. It's not part of their logo, it's a motto, apparently, and a very arrogant one, I'll give you that.

dude I'm just sayin' I ain't touching your comic. Just a bit of critique if you want it.

Them doing a herculean effort does in NO WAY put the effort other people put in their games down. Where did you get that? One must have so many insecurities to infer theis one.

Tuomas, yours would work much better if the last row of panels had no words in it.

Haddas, do not talk to the woman. Talk to me. If you dare.

chrille's bourgeoise bond is one of my favourites yet.