Even after issuing an apology, in which he spoke of his “regret”, the controversy over Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik’s comments at this year’s PAX continue to have repercussions.
Today, Max Temkin – one of the designers and co-founders behind the massive Cards Against Humanity – took to his blog to talk about his company’s experience at this year’s PAX, and how Krahulik’s comments “just fucked us”.
“I wasn’t at that panel, but word reached me that afternoon and I knew shortly after that a good amount of the work we had done for PAX had been washed away”, he writes. “After the show, nobody would remember the cube that I spent months designing or the cards and fortune cookies that we gave out, they would only remember that quote. I believe my exact words were, ‘Mike just fucked us.’”
I think this is an important step in people’s reactions to the show, and its organisers, because until now most people taking a public stand – at least behind their company’s name – have been small indie projects.
Cards Against Humanity, with millions sold, millions made and an enormous presence at the show, is not a small indie project.
Having weighed up his options – which included pulling out of PAX entirely – Temkin says that for future shows, Cards Against Humanity is “going to use our place there to talk about what we think is right and fair, and welcome all kinds of gamers into our booth.”
PAX [Max Temkin]
Comments
28 responses to “So This Dickwolves Thing Won’t Go Away”
Soooooooooo Im unclear on his point…
i agree, I’m not sure what his point is…
I’m even less clear on exactly what cards against humanity even is *goes to google*
Answer: Worth your time and money.
Secondary acceptable answer: Kickass fun at parties.
Same. I couldn’t really get the point of this article.
“I wasn’t at that panel, but word reached me that afternoon and I knew shortly after that a good amount of the work we had done for PAX had been washed away”
What panel?
“they would only remember that quote.”
What quote? This is kinda crap reporting to be honest.
Though I’d commented pretty much the same thing, apparently not. But yeah, I got to the end and wondered if I’d even read anything at all.
I’m struggling here, but I THINK the point he’s trying to make is that they spent all this time and money and energy on setting up a booth for PAX, then because of Dickwolves comments, felt they had to pull out or boycott, but they couldn’t do that without shooting themselves in the foot, and if they had at least known about it in advance they might not have bothered in the first place. Or something.
That’s what I’m reading into it, anyway. I think there’s a lot of assumed subtext knowledge, which is really only ‘self-evident’ if you subscribe to a certain agenda or perspective, which clearly a lot of folks here don’t.
(Seriously though, I’m all for people boycotting PAX because they’re hypersensitive idiots who want to claim some utterly meaningless ‘moral high ground’ points. It tells me who doesn’t deserve my money or attention.)
I don’t think he’s saying he was too upset by the comments about dickwolves themselves I think he is complaining that he spent time and money trying to be the biggest fanciest thing at the show and he was upstaged.
The actual blog post is much better, and far more interesting.
Well it’s certainly not going to go away if we keep writing articles about it, Luke.
Not only that, this particular story was about as transparent an attempt to drum up self publicity for this idiot and his game as they come. And you gave him free publicity, Luke, just like he wanted. Are you going to publish an article on everyone that makes even a passing mention of dickwolves in future?
I think it is best if we all just stop caring.
3..2..1..and
Sounds like an excuse for failure to me.
If MS had dropped a massive bomb at PAX, would he have said “MS fucked us! Boo, MS!”?
If Sony announced free Vitas for every PS4 pre-order, would he have said “Sony fucked us!”?
If Wizards announced a brand new M:TG expansion, would he have said “Magic fucked us!”?
It sounds like anything that was more memorable would have been blamed, which suggests their default position was that their cube and card handouts were SO AWESOME everyone should have been talking about them for days – nothing else from the con.
I don’t think you understand what Max is talking about. He’s referring to the potential negative impact it could have on the CaH brand for being associated with with an event run in part by Mike.
I think you’re reading that into his comment. His product is a card game about making inappropriate phrases, he’s not going to be offended by someone else’s inappropriate phrase. Here’s the important part:
“After the show, nobody would remember the cube that I spent months designing or the cards and fortune cookies that we gave out, they would only remember that quote.”
This is saying that he’s upset that his efforts to stand out got upstaged, and he thinks people are so stupid they can only remember one thing about a massive event like PAX. He’s an idiot.
No, he’s not.
He’s referring to a weeks-old incident, well after the fact, and linking it to the outlay he made to sell his product and claiming that this one comment made everyone at the convention forget all about his product.
He’s also not taking a principled stand. He’s jumping into the middle of a rar-rar movement and saying “Yeah! Fuck these guys! Let’s totally continue to go to the show, pay them for a booth, try to sell our products, but by hanging an A4 paper saying ‘Don’t be idiots’ we’re STICKING IT TO THE MAN! YEAH!”
What is notable is that he didn’t come out with this the day after the event, or even in the first week – other, smaller companies started whipping up the rage and getting progressive support, and I would suspect he simply wanted some of that. And look at this free publicity – “Hey guys, you know that thing you HATE that has died down? WE HATED IT TOO! Promise!”
Keep in mind the card game can be much more offensive than anything related to PA. Kind of hard to get on your high horse when you have no legs to stand on.
“Law and Order”….everytime I see this story, that’s where my mind still goes to….
I think most of the points he made in the article, or particularly, the other people’s quotes he included were fine. And them I’m like, wait, this guy is from CAH? How is he indignant about this again?
Does it seem to anyone else that he went ‘oh this negative marketing overshaddowed ours, so we should just jump on the band wagon and use that as our marketing’ ?
I mean.. if you weren’t there.. and you don’t have an affiliation.. then you’re basically no better than a tabloid journalist. Unless there’s some tie i’m not aware of.
PS; it also seems ironic to have the title be ‘this wont go away’, but then to be one of the main sources perpetuating it…
What is “Cards Against Humanity”?
Go forth and educate yourself my son. It’s an awesome simple card game about making funny, offensive and inappropriate phrases. Started life as a small kickstarter, got stupidly popular.
Hard to get a hold off in Australia but I believe you can get the PDF of all the cards from their website and print it out for free.
The tag line is “A card game for horrible people”
Offensive and inappropriate phrases… and we’re back to the Dickwolves again.
This is my point above. How again is this guy offended?
It’s great damn fun, is what it is.
(Especially if, like @inquisitorsz quotes – you are in the target ‘horrible people’ demographic.)
honestly i think it’s arrogant of the CAH guys, as it more seems like they pulled out because their game can be pretty offensive at times, and a lot of bad press around PAX would have rubbed off on there game as well.
http://maxistentialist.tumblr.com/post/61535552966/as-you-may-have-surmised-from-the-instagrams-and
For everyone still confused, this blog post that was linked in the article gives the context and depth that the article itself sorely lacked.
I just read the article, the guy basically just complains that he thinks he got upstaged at the conference. What a dick.
This will never go away.
The reason is:
A: People don’t want to read the apology, they ~want~ to think Krahulik is an ass-hole (and he can be on occasion from what I’ve seen… but so can most people)
B: People don’t like to admit they are wrong, so once they say Krahulik is evil they don’t want to admit that he isn’t that bad.
C: Sensationalism sells. you get more coverage if you’re talking about how evil someone is than if you point out that there is nothing to see here.
I know people who where on the “evil” band-wagon and wouldn’t listen to reason until they where forced to read the apology, then they started agreeing that this can all go away, Mike just sometimes speaks without engaging his brain.
I can’t help but wonder if the big games companies are trying to stoke the flames in the hopes of killing PAX, but I’m a cynic.
The link does explain it better – but I still struggle to give much credibility to the makers of CAH complaining that (allegedly) offensive comments made by someone took away their publicity/tainted their association. Oh, and there is this:
“Boycotting PAX creates a huge problem as well: If all of the progressive people boycott PAX it will just become a carnival of rape culture and there will be no cool game show to go to.”
Overreaction much?
Yea I’m with you guys, not really sure what he’s on about..?
Also saying someone ‘fucked us’ and using language like that on a blog, or alongside promoting his product isn’t really doing him any favours either, even if his game is supposed to be offensive (in a joking way), people who had no idea about the game until now (people like me) could likely be turned off by some idiot complaining and swearing.