Look, I’m not going to link to much that’s Penny-Arcade very often. I might never again. And I might eat my hat later for doing this when something untoward happens at Pax at some point. But it can only be a good sign to read this:

You can’t threaten people with death, and I resent very strongly being made to type that out.  Not only can you not do that because you can’t fucking do it, it has the power to obliterate everything else you say.  In fact, it obliterates everything the people around you are trying to say.  That’s what has happened now.

Then again, even a stopped clock and such.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Penny-Arcade without getting at least one thing wrong about it, and here it is:

I know that this situation is more complex than anyone is willing to enunciate.

No. No, it’s not. There’s nothing “complex” about this situation. It has nothing to do with anything other than people being detestably mean to other people for no other reason than they dared state their opinion.

And there’s also this:

When your media doesn’t represent you, or actively attacks you as it has here, it’s not your media.

Hate to break it to you, but “attacking” from the media isn’t what’s happening here, either. What they are doing (though not the games media, really) is shining some light on the real problem.

I can’t disagree with this, though:

You’ll have to make your own, and it’s not impossible.  It’s more possible now than it has ever been in human history, and you’re reading an example of it at this moment.  Go your own way.

The problem with arguing this to the GamerGate crowd is that they are fighting against people who are doing exactly this.

Tycho:

There’s an incredibly short list of people I trust to tell me the truth about the industry, even if I don’t always want to hear it, and Ben Kuchera is on top of that list.  You may already be a reader of his at Ars Technica, where he’s been in charge of their gaming coverage for…  well, ever.  Until today, I guess, when I hired him.

We’re bringing him on to create industry coverage you can read without holding your nose, essentially; I want a perspective, I want a Curator for the Internet’s gaming content.  In a couple words, I want something less insulting and disposable.

Ben has ben one of the best voices in games news for a while now and I am extremely interested in seeing what he will be able to do with this move. This is a good thing for the state of games “journalism” and news reporting.

So like the opposite of the Kotaku Core announcement.

Says Tycho from Penny-Arcade:

I purchased twenty fluid ounces of Halo 3 “Limited Edition Mountain Dew Game Fuel” in the hopes that it would taste so horrible that we’d get a strip out of it.  Before I read the ingredients in preparation for this post, I often found myself desirous of this strange liquid – a liquid the precise color of tubercular sputum. I would trip over to Seven Eleven to obtain it, tipping a small portion onto the concrete for the Spartans we lost at Reach. Once I discovered that the soda contained a compound called “Brominated Vegetable Oil,” my ardor was diminished for some reason. The flavor of the beverage is not unpleasant, especially if you like bromide.

I see the stuff all over the place on sale, and I still can’t bring myself to try it again.

Ever.