Valve has a new game in the works that got a big writeup on the Verge even though there is a message when you start the game asking folks not to talk about it yet. In the 25 years we’ve been making Penny Arcade Jerry and I have had the opportunity to see more unfinished projects than I can count. We’ve seen games that never even got released, hardware that is years away from release, board games that are just the designers notes and doodles on 3x5 cards. Occasionally we are asked to sign an NDA but most of the time it’s just a request not to share any of the stuff we see commonly referred to as a “Friend-D-A”. Actually it’s usually someone kindly asking “Please don’t make a comic about this.” and guess what, we don’t. We don’t talk about these projects for two main reasons:
1. We are not huge dicks
2. We would like people to keep showing us stuff.
As an artist I understand that creative work does not spring into being fully formed. For me there is a long process of sketching out ideas, many of which are not right but you don’t know that until you see them. There is no “wasted work” though as even the wrong ideas serve as guideposts. I’ve been doing commissions the past couple months and when I send over the first rough sketches for the person to look at I always start my message with “It’s time to see how the sausage gets made”. It’s very rare that anyone ever sees that phase of my art but when doing a commission I want to get their feedback early on because it’s easier to change things at the sketch stage than it is to alter a drawing once I’m inking it. I would hate for someone to take that rough sketch and write about it as though it were a finished product. It’s like writing a review of bread when all you’ve tasted is the dough. It's not illegal obviously but it's also not cool.
A quick heads up that our handmade August sticker pack will be going on sale this Friday for Club PA members! This one features a sheet of Merch Friend Tokens (MFT’s) and a cool single Automata sticker plus the usual little suprise bonus stickers.
-Gabe Out
