M.R.I. #4: Changes at 1UP, Webcomics, and "What Video Games Would Jesus Play?" - Editorials

More Randomness from the Internet (M.R.I.) is an on-going editorial series from The Armchair Empire's Omni.

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M.R.I. #4

Changes at 1UP, Webcomics, and "What Video Games Would Jesus Play?"

From Luke Smith’s upcoming departure from 1UP/Ziff Davis

For some reason there seems to be an inordinate amount of navel gazing when it comes to the gaming industry – more specifically, the journalism side of gaming. I’m just as guilty as the next guy – looking for lint in my belly button – so I don’t feel bad about ruminating about this particular subject: the “revelation” that Luke Smith is leaving 1UP/Ziff Davis .

The departure was “announced” in the closing frames of the 1UP Show (4/13/07), with a surprising amount of muted drama, as Luke speaks with Kathleen Sanders, ?managing editor? at 1UP. Besides sparking threads that lionized and/or sodomized Luke (with words), who only joined the 1UP group about a year ago, it forced me to go back and watch those old 1UP Shows to compare just how far the show has traveled since its origins, when it was basically editors sitting around talking – sometimes to themselves. That show has done some serious evolution.

Which is kind of what Luke Smith seems to be doing. As of this writing, there’s no confirmation on where he’s going next, though many forums are buzzing with

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speculation – everything from working at Bungie or Blizzard to starting his own goat farm (which is my own contribution).

Wherever he’s headed, I’ve always appreciated the fact that he stayed steady with his opinions, even when people disagreed with him. He’ll be missed at Ziff Davis I’m sure, but the current crew is pretty solid so it’s not

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like the whole organization is suddenly going to collapse.

Hey that means there’ll be a position to fill… faxing resumé!

From the masses of webcomics on the Internet

When I read the funny pages in the city paper, probably 90% of the comics won’t even elicit a chuckle. Mostly it’s an internal dialogue, “Oh, I get it. But it’s not funny.” The same can be said of web comics.

Admittedly most of my web comic reading centers of gaming-related strips, which have people like me in mind when they’re created. “For gamers; by gamers” is a fair way to label them. Most of them will actually make me laugh out loud – maybe not on a weekly basis but consistently enough to encourage me to come back. When the Half-Life 2 parody “Concerned” – following the trials and tribulations of Gordon Frohman – wrapped its run it actually took me a couple of weeks to accept that it was finally over. That particular comic followed a very specific timeline but others are more freeform in their approach, sometimes following story arcs, sometimes leaping all over the place.

Besides the usual visits to Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del, I’m one to regularly swing by sites like Extralife, Half-Masked, The Reset Button, and VGCats. They don’t always make me laugh – every web comic has its share of hit and miss (though if you read NeoGAF VGCats misses 97% of the time) -- but it’s all in a desperate search for laughs. More specifically, gamer laughs. I get the jokes because I know the references. But bookmarking these things started to annoy me. How come there’s no central “funny page” to hit and get them all?

Well guess what, there is! Head over to the The Webcomic List, which has a daily listing of (probably) most of the web comics out there, including all those that aren’t game-related.

From a metaphysical/theological question that has been bugging me for at least three weeks.

Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show? It’s a question that Ray Stevens initially asked back in 1987.

Well, what kind of gamer would Jesus be? Pushing aside some of the basic theological objections this very question will no doubt spur (and the very fact some Christian groups call for the outright banning of video games), try thinking about the question.

Do you think Jesus would go for first-person shooters? Would he be just as annoyed with Half-Life 2: Episode 2’s delay? What about role-playing games? And if he went for RPGs would he prefer Western ones over Japanese ones? Racing games? Would Jesus be onboard for Forza 2? Would he own a complete rig to play it? Would Jesus be excited about action games like Dead Rising, Devil May Cry 4, or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2? Fighters? Platformers? Strategy? Or would He more predictably lean toward Black & White 2, Populous , The Sims or other so-called God Games?

I wish I had an answer.

- Omni

(April 20, 2007)


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