Penny Arcade author Jerry Holkins handles Joystiq’s questions on completing the first episode in an ongoing series and taking critiques from his peers.
Jerry “Tycho Brahe” Holkins has no time for stopping after finishing his first game with developer Hothead Games, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness.
He stated, “For me the journey is in no way over…. For me the totality of the project is going to continue on for at least another year. Even from now … the story is four chapters long, and I’m more than halfway through the second game.”
The process might be long, but each step hasn’t slowed Holkins down just yet.
“Making one game was difficult but it has not destroyed me,” heaved Holkins. “What may destroy me is the reality that by the end of these games we’ll have been talking about almost three years total.”
“This is just an opportunity for us to think a little bit about how we were able to accomplish this first one, what would we like to do better. What do we think succeeded this time around. Ultimately you have to understand that we don’t really celebrate our accomplishments,” he continued.
This series of episodic games is only a smaller part of the overall Penny Arcade brand.
“Penny Arcade as a project is perpetual,” Holkins explained. “There are three strips a week, and three posts dealing with those strips or other items. Occasionally there is a book released that compiles them, but that’s more a convenience than anything else. Our approach to making work is that it’s a perpetual cycle. We don’t see this as a tremendous opportunity to congratulate ourselves, or some bullshit.”
Joystiq questioned Holkins on whether people not familiar with the Penny Arcade comic would appreciate the game.
Joystiq: Was there any sort of effort made to make an outreach to people who may not have ever read Penny Arcade?[/b]
Holkins: Well, hopefully the comic fans will enjoy the writing, at least. We didn’t make any outreach in specific, no. Hopefully the game is just interesting, in general. Hopefully people will find the situation, the scenario, the art, and the writing interesting in general terms even if they don’t know that these characters are actually archetypes instead of just being repurposed from another context.
They might not know Gabe and Tycho contextually, either as pseudonyms for people writing the comic or as characters that comment on the games industry or popular culture. Maybe they’ll get to know this Gabe and Tycho and grow to like them.
