Interesting topic line, I know. I didn’t expect to write that either. And below is an interesting picture you didn’t expect to see. It’s an image from Penny Arcade that appeared on a shirt they were selling on their website. It has since been removed, but not because PA is afraid of doing dick jokes. There are some lines of political correctness being drawn because of the marketing/merchandising.

There’s a little bit of story here behind this.

I met Mike, Jerry, and Robert back in 2006 and have always respected what they do. In fact, 8-Bit Cubist will be exhibiting at their PAX convention in Boston this March. But sometime last year, Mike and Jerry from Penny Arcade created a comic called The Sixth Slave which caused a bit of a stir for more than a few reasons. For those who don’t know MMO culture or Penny Arcade, the following strip actually shows off some comic artistry in more than a few ways, but I won’t explain, condemn, or condone the humorous nuances here. That’s not my point here. There are cultural ramifications to that shirt.

The Original Strip, “The Sixth Slave”

Think what you will of that, but it’s Penny Arcade’s artistic expression. They even graced us with a comic response that I didn’t think was amazingly useful, but was better than nothing.

The Follow Up Response Comic

Then, at some point, the “Penny Arcade: Dickwolves” team shirt was created to be sold on their site. Here’s the thing, Penny Arcade is loved by quite a lot of people, and a huge number of these shirts sell. The memes they create are usually strong and lasting within their community. Merchandising is also a strong and effective way to grow your audience. The fans literally buy into the ideas behind these products. Sporting leagues do this all the time to push team pride. Unfortunately, Penny Arcade has created an connection to unhealthy behavior with this shirt.

Does everyone buying the shirt identifies themselves as a dickwolf? Does Penny Arcade thinks dickwolves are cool? Do gamers wearing the shirt cheer dickwolves? (And when I say “dickwolf”, I mean a proud member of a fantasy team of rapists.) Of course the answers to those question are ‘no’, but like many serious matters on the Internet, it just gets giggled at and written off. So although I like Mike and Jerry, I must say that the Dickwolves shirt was probably a bad idea for the game culture and the gamer population in general.

One argument that will immediatly arise is that, “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” Unfortunately, Penny Arcade has a responsibility to the game industry at large, and this shirt might be doing more damage than good. To illustrate how things like this affect people, here’s a screenshot of a Twitter feed from a guy known as TeamRape. Yes, TeamRape. Funny? Harmless? Offensive?

Some Twitter Foolishness

Penny Arcade’s has chosen to remove the shirt from their store. Personally, I think that was a was a good choice.
Here’s some links if you want to dig deeper:

• Penny Arcade’s response to the Dickwolves Tee is here.
• A blogger discusses why she’s not speaking at PAX here.
• A post about their reply comic is here.
• A popular blog post about PA’s combination of rape and humor is here.
• Good backstory on the entire issue can be found here.

Mr Benja.