You might have already noticed a new button under the comic strips. the "Buy A Print" feature is something we've been working on for a long long time and it's finally ready to go. So for $9.95 you get a high res 11x17 print of the comic strip on a really nice heavy stock paper. These prints are made directly from my original PSD files so they look awesome. Kiko took some pictures this morning so you could see exactly what you're getting.
I brought the donuts in this morning to celebrate the launch of the print service. They are only there for scale and are not included with the print.
Like I said the majority of the strips are printed out at 11x17 but some of the odd sized comics will be printed out at 11x11.
Clicking the Buy A Print button will automatically take you to our store and add a print for that comic to your cart. You can add shirts or books or anything else you like from the store to your order before you checkout.
You can purchase prints of just about any comic in the archive. We've done something like 1370 comics and of those only about 60 can't be purchased as prints because we don't have the high res PSD files anymore.
Going forward the Buy A Print option should be available as soon as the comic is live on the site. I know occasionally the comic will have some screw up in it like a misspelled word or the shoulder armor in the last panel of today's comic. Assuming you purchase the print before we catch the mistake you will unfortunately get the screwed up version. I personally like to think of those as "rare". Perhaps they will even become super valuable. Maybe in thirty years you'll sell A PA print with the word " artifact" spelled wrong and put your kids through college.
Probably not though.
In other store news we've added a new section called "Accomplices". As of right now our only accomplice is Guild Wars but we'll be adding more soon. As it turns out managing a functional store is actually sort of hard and it takes a lot of work. Not every developer or artist has the resources to operate one. Anyone who's followed PA knows that we struggled for years before we got the store to this point. It's pretty solid now though and we're actually in a position to help out our friends. That's why you see stuff from people like MC Frontalot, Optimus Rhyme and now Guild Wars. So if you're a fan of the game check out the Guild Wars section. We've got some shirts and prints that I think you might like.
Finally thanks for the feedback on my AC rant. It seems to me like it's a very divisive game and I realise not everyone is going to love it like I did. I was just worried that people might be making purchasing decisions based on these reviews and honestly I can't blame them. There's so many great games right now that it would be easy to skip over something with middling scores. I got quite a bit of mail from people actually telling me they had planned on doing just that before they read my post. The thing you need to remember is that these guys they have reviewing games aren't special. They do not have some magical ability to divine the true quality of an experience and then assign a score to it. You can certainly take their opinions into consideration but don't let their made up numbers determine what you play and don't play.
-Gabe out
