Stolen Pixels #1:
Surreal Tournament

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jul 8, 2008

Filed under: Column 56 comments

My new comic project is now live at The Escapist.

I am experiencing an unprecedented level of happiness. I do hope the thing serves your comedy needs. Barring that, I hope you hated the UT3 story as much as I did.

 


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56 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #1:
Surreal Tournament

  1. Eric says:

    Oh, boy did I!!!

  2. Cincinnatus says:

    WOOHOO!!!

    Does anyone else hear trumpets and crowds cheering? I’m pretty sure there’s a brass band outside.

    A great start to what looks to be an excellent webcomic! Congratulations. :)

  3. Gothmog says:

    Hooray! New comic for the Escapist! Congrats, Shamus! :D

    I love the comic, too!

  4. Calite says:

    Yes! Great start to the new comic. Even better, it’s on The Escapist. Escapist has gone from no name site to the top and still soaring, thanks a lot from Yahtzee, but other videos and interesting articles have helped it a lot as well.

    Looking at The Escapist forums, looks like it’s pretty well received by regulars so far, so that’s great. The Escapist is really popular, so you should get more attention then you have in the past.

  5. Now there are two reasons to read the escapist!

  6. Awesome Shamus, this goes direct into my Webcomic list!

  7. Javaboy says:

    My daily routine includes checking the escapist then twenty sided. To my delight I saw your new webcomic. Keep up the good work Shamus!

  8. TehShrike says:

    Hey, Shamus, could you hook us up with an RSS feed for Stolen Pixels? I found this page: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/rss/ but nothing for Stolen Pixels specifically!

  9. Factoid says:

    Very much funny.

    Is UT3 to be the permanent source material here, or will you be bouncing from game to game?

    Also I couldn’t help but notice “Copyright 2008, The Escapist”.

    Are you getting PAID for this? If so kudos to you!

  10. Shamus says:

    Factoid: Yes.

    Also: SP will move from game to game without warning.

  11. DaveMc says:

    That is funny. Sorry, it sounds pretty flat when I say it like that, let me try to amp up the punctuation a bit: That is funny! (Hmm, now it just sounds patronizing.) My personal favourite (what, that’s how we spell the word up in Canada, all right?) line: “It’s very pretty. Put some pants on.”

    With this comic, plus rocketing to the top of the “Jar Jar, you’re a genius” search results in Google, I can see why you’re so happy. Well-deserved successes, both of them, sir.

  12. Rhykker says:

    Good stuff. Most everyone’s view of UT3’s plot is essentially what you captured in the comic. Oh, and I especially appreciated that you added “I’m not saying UT3 is a bad game(…)”

    Quick question – the comic isn’t about UT3, right? It’ll be a different game every page (or so), as we were seeing with your mini-comics for a while? (I suspect you wouldn’t have enough material to work with with UT3 anyhow, what with a whole five cut-scenes and all…)

    EDIT. Seems this question was answered moments ago.

  13. Ozzie says:

    Second the request for a dedicated feed.

  14. Nazgul says:

    Hahahahaha! “Captain Emo!” Thank you for being funny.

    Judging from the URL, it doesn’t look like I should be bookmarking that page to see the latest strip as this goes forward. Do you happen to have one, assuming that there is or will be such a thing.

  15. Bruce says:

    He’s back and he’s bad… !:o)

  16. Calite says:

    Firefox 3 detects RSS feeds for pages automatically, and displays a link for them in url bar. It found this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/rss/articles/comics/stolen-pixels

  17. Doug Brown says:

    Nice. Combolations on the new project. You should include, I don’t know, a miscarriage plotline or somesuch. Yahtzee would totally be into that.

  18. Martin says:

    I never did like the UT half of the of UT/Quake option. However, that story already sounds stupid for a repetitive CTF system

  19. RedHillian says:

    There’s a livejournal rss feed running for Stolen pixels – “http://syndicated.livejournal.com/stolenpixels/

  20. Eric C says:

    Yay! Shamus’ webcomics are back!!

  21. McNutcase says:

    I pretty much quit reading the Escapist at the start of year 3. I’d been unhappy with the format changes at the end of year one, and the second anniversary changes turned me off completely. I’d liked the magazine format (heck, I’d even tried to write for it) but when they turned into a portal, I was turned right off.

  22. Jason Smith says:

    Nazgul: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels

    There’s no link to it or anything yet since there’s only one comic listed ;)

  23. ZeroByte says:

    This might be of interest to you after your Hellgate London breakdown: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=170894&page=1

    Great new comic series by the way!

  24. Reluctant DM says:

    Yay! I never played UT but it’s still funny! Glad you’re getting $$$. Also helps your cred that you’re on the same site as yahtzee! :)

  25. tocky says:

    RSS’d. Well done, getting paid to do stuff you probably would’ve done anyway, Shamus!

  26. Factoid says:

    Nuked my own comment…I didn’t get much sleep last night and it made no sense.

  27. Tryss says:

    congratulations! The Escapist is a great place to be. I’m glad for you.

  28. Mari says:

    LOLed then RSSed.

    *putting a quarter into the sad geek jar for the netcronyms*

    Great work, Shamus. And now I have another reason to go to The Escapist.

  29. Dave says:

    Figures, can’t read it at work. :(

  30. Andy P says:

    “Imagine you get together with a friend to play a little ping-pong. Only, your friend feels that the game needs a story. While you’re playing, he concocts this tale whereby he saves the world by beating you at ping-pong, with each point he scores making him a greater champion against your villainy.”

    Been reading Penny Arcade have we?

  31. Shamus says:

    ALSO: I wrote the bit about ping-pong long before the Penny Arcade series Paint the Line began. It’s just an odd coincidence, not a clumsy attempt to do some sort of tie-in.

  32. Blurr says:

    Can you give us an update schedule?

  33. Shamus says:

    Every Tuesday and Friday, until they stop making terrible games.

  34. Rubes says:

    Awesome. Congrats, it’s great to see a new outlet for these excellent comics.

  35. Jeremiah says:

    “Every Tuesday and Friday, until they stop making terrible games.”

    So, in other words, until the end of time?

  36. Poet says:

    This is awesome.
    I will not, however, put pants on. :)

  37. DaveMc says:

    “Every Tuesday and Friday, until they stop making terrible games.” This reminds me of the quote from Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson), where somebody is being forced by his partner to use an absurdly high level of encryption, and asks how long they want this encryption to stand up, anyway? The partner says something to the effect of “Until men are no longer capable of evil”.

    However, I for one hope you don’t only make fun of terrible games: there’s great sport to be had making fun of terrific games, too. If nothing else, you get the added amusement of reading the comments of enraged fanboys.

  38. hotsauce says:

    Curse you, work filter!! No escapist.com for me :-(

  39. Derek K says:

    But….

    Twenty Sided isn’t blocked at work. The Escapist is.

    !Fair!

  40. R4byde says:

    Hip, hip, HUZZAH!

  41. Blackbird71 says:

    Bravo Shamus, and congrats! This promises to be quite fun :)

  42. Elewir says:

    “It’s very pretty. Put some pants on.”

    Okay, I literally did a spit-take on that. Good job Shamus!

  43. Nazgul says:

    Thanks for the link, Jason!

  44. Adam Bloom says:

    However, I for one hope you don't only make fun of terrible games: there's great sport to be had making fun of terrific games, too. If nothing else, you get the added amusement of reading the comments of enraged fanboys.

    Of course, the key is to make fun of terrific games with really terrible aspects. I’m pretty sure that’s Shamus’ plan, since making fun of terrible games is like shooting dead fish in a barrel.

  45. Chris Arndt says:

    It’s like Penny-Arcade, only funnier and without the swears.

  46. coffee says:

    Work on my battle skirt begins… Soon.

  47. Mistwraithe says:

    Shamus, you should get the address of your website at the bottom of the Stolen Pixels text turned into a proper link.

    Every extra bit of publicity and traffic helps in your carefully disguised plot to take over the internet ;-)

  48. GeorgeR says:

    Haha. I think I’m going to take up using the phrase “Captain Emo”

  49. Nixorbo says:

    However, I for one hope you don't only make fun of terrible games: there's great sport to be had making fun of terrific games, too. If nothing else, you get the added amusement of reading the comments of enraged fanboys.

    But The Escapist already has Yahtzee for that sort of thing.

  50. NobleBear says:

    Dude, awesome!!

    Finally something intelligent and funny besides Yahtzee is appearing there! :D

  51. Iudex Fatarum says:

    AHHHH! I don’t know what is up with my computer, I currently can’t view it in its entirety. the image loads partly (about half way) and the rest just shows up as grey. I like what I see though. Please keep up the good work Shamus.

  52. neminem says:

    Hahaha… wow. That’s pretty great, and I look forward to continued success. Rss now added to my list.

  53. Nathanael says:

    I liked it very much! Keep the funny stuff flowing!

  54. NRD80Y says:

    Great work Shamus. I was really enjoying the comics you were adding to this blog and now you’re getting paid for them. It’s all good!

    Only problem is now I have two webcomics I read called SP; Stolen Pixels and Something Positive.

    :)

  55. Rossmc says:

    Congratulations from another indecently happy regular reader. :)

  56. kamagurka says:

    Fuck yes, finally! And in the same place as the only one other real videogame internet snarkmaster! Joy!

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