Penny Arcade Site Analysis

Penny Arcade is a website hosting the web comic under the same name. Since 1999, Gabe and Tycho Brahe, the comic’s main stars, have been parading around the gaming world dishing out comical witty insults and holding no prisoners. The Penny Arcade creators, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, made such a loyal fan base that has given them power to sway their audience towards their opinions. The web comic has set the stage as one of the biggest and most popular and proving this by hosting 3 Penny-Arcade expos, with a forth being planned. Each expo had to be moved to a larger location then the one before because the increasing influx of people. It will soon be the top ranking videogame expo in the United States. All of this was created by two guys who were working dead end jobs and shared a small apartment, all while trying to create the web comic at night.
The website is very simple, yet effective. On the top of the page is the navigation bar. Every page is virtually the same. A basic looking color scheme of blue and gray with a hint of burnt yellow is all the website uses. The ads are placed almost with more emphasis than other sites. The few ad banners selected to be on the website mean they have the ‘unofficial’ Penny Arcade approval. They probably cost a lot to be on the site, too. The website does not have many places to actually go, among them are: the comic page, the news page, link to their forum, the archive, among a couple more. The entire site focuses around the comic. The news page usually updates along with the comic every 2 to 3 days and usually contains the motives behind each comic. The news is just as comedic as the web comic. Occasionally the news page contains hyperlinks to previous news pages or comics which relates to the rant about the current strip, all of which is written by Tycho Brahe, aka Jerry Holkins.
Even though this web comic can be considered the most popular, most people do not even know the creators names. The creators/authors of the comics go by the aliases of their web comic icons. Gabe is Mike Krahulik and Tycho Brahe is Jerry Holkins. Even the posts on their blog-like site are listed as posted by Gabe and Tycho, not Mike and Jerry. The only place their names could be found in fine print and next to the copy write symbol on the image of each comic.
The characters of Gabe and Tycho are merely personal fronts which dramatically embody their perspective human counterpart. Tycho is often quick to temper and has a large vocabulary, while Gabe could often be seen as dimwitted and the happy-go-lucky type. Further more, Jerry (aka Tycho) is the writer of the comic, while Mike (aka Gabe) is the artist. Even though Tycho could be seen as the ‘smarter’ one and Gabe as the best friend sidekick figure (i.e. Pinky and the Brian), they both acknowledge that without their counterpart Penny Arcade would not exist. Yet, they still took the gaming web comic scene by storm through hyper dramatized versions of themselves.
When fans of Penny Arcade see the two creators in person, they are shocked that they do not look anything like their online counterpart. The difference between the virtual world and the real world becomes a shocking awe. Yet, they do not keep their personal lives completely anonymous, such as when Jerry had a child, he mentioned it on a news post on the website. In order to find information about them, one can either search though years and years of back long news articles for a grain of personal information or one can look them up on other websites. Though one would need to actually search for background information, not just stumble across on the site. They do not have a bio page on Penny Arcade. Interestingly enough, they draw a gray line between their online virtual world and the real world. The opinions in the web comic and on the news posts come straight from the minds of Mike and Jerry, yet to the world Gabe and Tycho say them. Basically making the virtual world of Penny Arcade their medium to discuss, debate, promote and complain about games. They would not say something through their respective alter ego that they would not say and believe themselves. The convergence of the virtual world and the real world made by Mike and Jerry may make the difficulty of coordinating the two worlds seem relatively smooth. During video interviews, Mike and Jerry do show a little Gabe and Tycho in their actual personality. Their online personas is a mixture of themselves and their crazy ideas.
The amount of interaction with society comes into question when someone has an alternative life revolving around the internet. Gabe and Tycho, and the name Penny Arcade, have become synonymous with the video game industry, but how? Through the website and the creators use of a web identity. With each news post, Tycho is expressing to the world his two cents. The Penny Arcade expo was created because of these two guys social interactions purely through the website. These two guys simply started a small time web comic about 10 years ago which blossomed into a social icon. They show a complete immersion between virtual and real. As if they are acting a role they created while on the site, and off the site they work for and promote their multimillion reader strong site. Penny Arcade is now a full fledge company employing many. The aliases Gabe and Tycho turned what was once a part time hobby of sharing their opinion to the world into a profitable endeavor. Without the internet, the use of the website and Gabe and Tycho, they would not be where they are today. This proves that people can be more social through the internet; it just provides a different means to do so.