7 ms·

You Had Me, And You Lost Me: Why I don't read Megatokyo (2004)

44 points by luu 8y ago

Freak_NL 7y ago
Fascinating how some articles manage to pop up on the front page. I wonder what prompted this to be submitted and upvoted? I remember reading Megatokyo back then (fifteen years ago!) and stopped when it got too — excuzes le mot — cringey. Long standing webcomics can change over time as the author(s) age and change. Some stay fairly constant (e.g., XKCD, The Perry Bible Fellowship), others change so much they alienate many of the readers (e.g., Sinfest). And some just stay awesome (e.g., Oglaf (NSFW)).
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  What happened to Sinfest? I remember reading it, but I eventually just sort of stopped, but I don't remember why.
  - Anon84 7y ago
    It’s still around. It effectively went on a political rampage after the Obama election in 2008
    - cotelletta 7y ago
      >I'm launching a new forum for people who like the message of my comic. >The new forum will be anti-pornography, anti-prostitution. >It will favor the radical feminist perspective over a liberal or conservative one. Radical feminism is a dude telling people what they can and can't do with their bodies, apparently. I swear these people want to be puritans but it's too unfashionable where they live so they wrap it up with some token progressive buzzwords.
  - esyir 7y ago
    Tldr: Became absurdly preachy and political.
  - mcv 7y ago
    My experience is different from the others; maybe I don't mind the political message. But at some point it was just rehashing the same jokes over and over again. A bit like Dilbert. Still great, but nothing new anymore.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    For me it was that it reused too many jokes too often.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Oglaf is still around!? I have a lot of catching up to do.
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    They are, and I envy you for getting to read a bunch of their comics you've never read. I find Oglaf intriguing in how its backdrop is essentially a mediaeval fantasy world, in which the authors (Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne) manage to consistently present a world where diversity and sexual diverseness are a given, without coming across as forced or overtly political. From skin colour ranging the whole gamut, to physical characteristics (boobs in different sizes including A-cups, hair styles both above and below the fold), to sexual attraction (gay, straight, dead, and everything else), it's all there, and yet it never really jars or gets in your face. I find that quite an achievement and inspiring.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      These days I give them money through Patreon, but back in the day the usual way to support comics was merch, and since I wear T-shirts most of the time it's no trouble to buy merch from most comics I read. I'm wearing one right now which says "Jetpacks are impractical and dangerous". But Oglaf seemed to go out of its way to make it difficult to find anything sane to buy. I own the Sithrak shirt, and almost bought the Derp Fox recently, but "I'm telling!" is a sufficiently unsubtle joke that I'd have to actually think about where I might wear it, and likewise "Steak and Bitches". These days they have a few more options I may buy one day, but definitely when I was last looking it was harder than it has any right to be, for a comic that is often much Safer For Work than it has any right to be. Take last weekend's "Fog of War". You could make a shirt of that (not the entire comic but you get the idea). Most D&D players would laugh at the joke even without knowing what Oglaf is. But nope, there's more chance Trudy will decide to do a joke shirt about medieval architecture or something. Not complaining, they should do whatever they want, but it's weird is all.
      - Freak_NL 7y ago
        I've just bought their new mediaeval architecture joke T-shirt a month ago: https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-upright https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-upright I like it. Subtle, droll.
- tokai 7y ago
  Fred really needed a guy like Caston. I thought the series became too insular right after Caston left.
orhmeh09 7y ago
I am struck by the self-absorbedness and entitlement this person shows as they go extensively over trivial points relating to a free online webcomic. The community represented longitudinally exhibits the same odious qualities.
- taneq 7y ago
  Back atchya. It's some random person's blog rant and I bet they didn't ask for it to be here. >.>
- egypturnash 7y ago
  Websnark, back in 2004 when this post was written, was a major critical voice in the world of web comics. He read a lot of web comics, was passionate about the medium, and talked a lot about them in detail. And Megatokyo was a major web comic back then, despite ever-slower updates. It was one of the successes of the first generation of people saying “hey what if I put my weird indy comics up on the World Wide Web”. This all feels much more trivial thirteen years later. Megatokyo would probably be unnoticed if it started now. But this was a major, respected critical voice of that scene talking about the slow decline of one of the major fixtures of the medium.
raesene9 7y ago
I used to read Megatokyo back then but stopped visiting regularly as updates slowed, and eventually I stopped altogether. It's interesting that there's a different business model open to webcomics now, than there was back then, with Patreon (And similar sites). I back a number of webcomics that way (Gunnerkrigg court, Questionable Content, Wilde Life, Girl Genius Online) but it only really suits webcomics that get regular updates, as you're generally paying by the month. It'll never make them super-rich, I'd guess, but can provide a decent amount of monthly regular income.
- Crinus 7y ago
  I also used to read Megatokyo and then stopped, although for me was that i started losing interest in the story. But it was the first webcomic i read and for a while i was reading a lot of those (i even managed to finish one... i don't remember the name but it was about some anthropomorphic animal magicians or something - no, it wasn't erotic at all - and had insanely great quality, with fully colored pages and detail, which was very rare), although it has been many years since i followed any (i do not really like the weekly wait... :-P).
- moomin 7y ago
  Grief, Gunnerkrigg Court is amazing.
mcv 7y ago
I don't know Megatokyo, but I do recnogise the comment about speed and consistency of updates. I used to read Order of the Stick, which is a brilliantly funny yet epic fantasy comic. There used to be fairly regular updates, then it dropped, came back, dropped again. At some point, he had a very successful Kickstarter, but somehow things became even more irregular after that. Eventually I sometimes had to wait more than a month to see how the story continued. And when there's no need to check for a month, eventually that turns into two months, and I think I haven't checked it out in more than a year. Years maybe? I should probably check, but chances are there's now an immense backlog and I don't know where I left off. Or there's still only a few. I don't know which is worse.
- roenxi 7y ago
  OotS was an interesting case; doing a Kickstarter seemed to partly destroy the author (Rich Burlow for anyone who wants to look him up). I don't think he's recovered his peak upload speed, but it has been so long I don't recall what it was. He understandably got caught out by the demand, the Kickstarter totaled up ~$1,200,000 vs $50,000 target and the webcomic really took a hit. And he sliced his thumb open filling orders which didn't help at all. It would be lovely to know what his take is on the strategic success/failure of that with benefit of hindsight. A lot of money was involved; but he did suffer physically and the webcomic would have suffered an audience drop. $1.2 mil is a lot of money but it has been 6 years and I think there still might be a few outstanding items from that Kickstarter campaign.
  - kibwen 7y ago
    As a longtime reader who pitched a few bucks at the OotS kickstarter years and years ago, I do still get occasional progress reports to my inbox. The last one was from September: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive/posts/2288387 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-... A choice quote: "While there, you may also notice that it's the tenth wallpaper I've released, so that means the wallpaper reward is officially finished. One thing I saw when posting this last one, though, is that it's been so long since the first one that the screen resolutions I've been putting these out at are a little dated in some cases—especially with regard to phones. Is Windows Phone even a thing anymore? And I know the iPhone has completely different screen sizes now, right? So if you have a device that isn't represented with any of those resolutions, go ahead and comment on this post with what screen sizes you'd like to see, and I'll try to go back and add like 5 or 6 of the most popular for all ten wallpapers by the next time I send out an update." Also be sure to check out the image of his "workometer", which he's been using to track his reward fulfillment progress since the very start. It's nearly all complete by now, but some of the remaining items are substantial. If I had to guess at what his folly was, I'd say it was simply overpromising with the stretch goals for various milestones. Remember that this was in the early heyday of Kickstarter, and few people had any experience with what an absolute slog fulfillment would turn out to be. I commend him for sticking it out regardless when so many other projects have just defaulted.
a2tech 7y ago
Wow, Megatokyo. Thats a blast from the past. Next you'll bring up BBspot!
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Truth! I'm kind of amazed that it's still around. I went to check it out and if anything the pace of updates seems slower than ever. Ten so far this year. What's amazing to me is that he has $2000 a month of Patreons for this pace of output. That makes it clear to me that this comic really touched something for a lot of people.
Paul_S 7y ago
When Rodney left it stopped being funny and slowly spiraled into generic romance and drama. Sinfest is a sadder loss. You will never see a bigger difference between first and last comic strip. The first ever Sinfest strip is still best Sinfest.
- danharaj 7y ago
  I just took a look at sinfest after not reading it in several years. I read back a few days in the archive and I liked it. The style has gotten cuter. Could you explain what you don't like about it?
  - angersock 7y ago
    Decent summary here: http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Sinfest http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Sinfest Tldr, he took the soul out of the comic and the characters to push an agenda, and devoted cycles to mocking his fans instead of keeping up the wholesome stuff. This is like the one case where that isn't an exaggeration.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Tatsuya is taking a stand against the Patriarchy. He will defeat it with his stomach.[1] Beginning around October, 2011, though with antecedents. The patriarchy objects, as a patiriarchy does. The Sisterhood http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-03 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-03 ...Crim gets Lit http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-06 ...'Nique gets woke http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-07 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-07 Patriarchy http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-17 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-17 Rad Fem http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-05-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-05-06 Peak Dudebro http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-14 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-14 Woke Televisio http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2018-10-11 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2018-10-11 Though the early days had some highlights http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-03-15 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-03-15 1. http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2014-10-24 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2014-10-24
cryoshon 7y ago
when i was a kid i would read megatokyo because webcomics seemed like they were new and cool to me. then, i stopped reading eventually due to a combination of factors: 1. the jokes got stale, or i grew out of the humor 2. the plotline moved too slowly 3. i grew out enjoying the "will-they get together / why won't-they get together" relationship arc(s). as a younger teenager the dorky and childish romance was relevant to my life, but i grew to find it very cringe inducing eventually. i don't really miss reading it.
- taneq 7y ago
  Yeah, I read it too back in the early days, then it just sort of stopped going anywhere. I've halfheartedly intended to catch up on it for about 14 years now.
bartwe 7y ago
Megatokyo is still in my fixed rotation of daily webcomics...
mdhughes 7y ago
I'm one of the people who kicked in for the Megatokyo visual novel kickstarter. Years later, no visible progress; I'm not even mad, I knew exactly what I was signing up for, which was supporting a comic that had slowed to almost non-updating, and maybe getting a thing someday. New comics are still weekly to monthly, if that. I've completely forgotten the origin of the current catgirl plot, but possibly Ping (or the catgirl she's based on?) will finally do something, maybe in the next couple years? Who knows. The guy who drew "Sad girl in snow" isn't going to be one of your super productive Jack Kirbys, he muddles along as best he can, like a lot of us.

44 points by luu 8y ago

Fascinating how some articles manage to pop up on the front page. I wonder what prompted this to be submitted and upvoted? I remember reading Megatokyo back then (fifteen years ago!) and stopped when it got too — excuzes le mot — cringey. Long standing webcomics can change over time as the author(s) age and change. Some stay fairly constant (e.g., XKCD, The Perry Bible Fellowship), others change so much they alienate many of the readers (e.g., Sinfest). And some just stay awesome (e.g., Oglaf (NSFW)).

pavel_lishin 7y ago
What happened to Sinfest? I remember reading it, but I eventually just sort of stopped, but I don't remember why.
- Anon84 7y ago
  It’s still around. It effectively went on a political rampage after the Obama election in 2008
  - cotelletta 7y ago
    >I'm launching a new forum for people who like the message of my comic. >The new forum will be anti-pornography, anti-prostitution. >It will favor the radical feminist perspective over a liberal or conservative one. Radical feminism is a dude telling people what they can and can't do with their bodies, apparently. I swear these people want to be puritans but it's too unfashionable where they live so they wrap it up with some token progressive buzzwords.
- esyir 7y ago
  Tldr: Became absurdly preachy and political.
- mcv 7y ago
  My experience is different from the others; maybe I don't mind the political message. But at some point it was just rehashing the same jokes over and over again. A bit like Dilbert. Still great, but nothing new anymore.
- jeltz 7y ago
  For me it was that it reused too many jokes too often.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
Oglaf is still around!? I have a lot of catching up to do.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  They are, and I envy you for getting to read a bunch of their comics you've never read. I find Oglaf intriguing in how its backdrop is essentially a mediaeval fantasy world, in which the authors (Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne) manage to consistently present a world where diversity and sexual diverseness are a given, without coming across as forced or overtly political. From skin colour ranging the whole gamut, to physical characteristics (boobs in different sizes including A-cups, hair styles both above and below the fold), to sexual attraction (gay, straight, dead, and everything else), it's all there, and yet it never really jars or gets in your face. I find that quite an achievement and inspiring.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    These days I give them money through Patreon, but back in the day the usual way to support comics was merch, and since I wear T-shirts most of the time it's no trouble to buy merch from most comics I read. I'm wearing one right now which says "Jetpacks are impractical and dangerous". But Oglaf seemed to go out of its way to make it difficult to find anything sane to buy. I own the Sithrak shirt, and almost bought the Derp Fox recently, but "I'm telling!" is a sufficiently unsubtle joke that I'd have to actually think about where I might wear it, and likewise "Steak and Bitches". These days they have a few more options I may buy one day, but definitely when I was last looking it was harder than it has any right to be, for a comic that is often much Safer For Work than it has any right to be. Take last weekend's "Fog of War". You could make a shirt of that (not the entire comic but you get the idea). Most D&D players would laugh at the joke even without knowing what Oglaf is. But nope, there's more chance Trudy will decide to do a joke shirt about medieval architecture or something. Not complaining, they should do whatever they want, but it's weird is all.
    - Freak_NL 7y ago
      I've just bought their new mediaeval architecture joke T-shirt a month ago: https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-upright https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-upright I like it. Subtle, droll.
tokai 7y ago
Fred really needed a guy like Caston. I thought the series became too insular right after Caston left.

orhmeh09 7y ago

I am struck by the self-absorbedness and entitlement this person shows as they go extensively over trivial points relating to a free online webcomic. The community represented longitudinally exhibits the same odious qualities.

taneq 7y ago
Back atchya. It's some random person's blog rant and I bet they didn't ask for it to be here. >.>
egypturnash 7y ago
Websnark, back in 2004 when this post was written, was a major critical voice in the world of web comics. He read a lot of web comics, was passionate about the medium, and talked a lot about them in detail. And Megatokyo was a major web comic back then, despite ever-slower updates. It was one of the successes of the first generation of people saying “hey what if I put my weird indy comics up on the World Wide Web”. This all feels much more trivial thirteen years later. Megatokyo would probably be unnoticed if it started now. But this was a major, respected critical voice of that scene talking about the slow decline of one of the major fixtures of the medium.

raesene9 7y ago

I used to read Megatokyo back then but stopped visiting regularly as updates slowed, and eventually I stopped altogether. It's interesting that there's a different business model open to webcomics now, than there was back then, with Patreon (And similar sites). I back a number of webcomics that way (Gunnerkrigg court, Questionable Content, Wilde Life, Girl Genius Online) but it only really suits webcomics that get regular updates, as you're generally paying by the month. It'll never make them super-rich, I'd guess, but can provide a decent amount of monthly regular income.

Crinus 7y ago
I also used to read Megatokyo and then stopped, although for me was that i started losing interest in the story. But it was the first webcomic i read and for a while i was reading a lot of those (i even managed to finish one... i don't remember the name but it was about some anthropomorphic animal magicians or something - no, it wasn't erotic at all - and had insanely great quality, with fully colored pages and detail, which was very rare), although it has been many years since i followed any (i do not really like the weekly wait... :-P).
moomin 7y ago
Grief, Gunnerkrigg Court is amazing.

mcv 7y ago

I don't know Megatokyo, but I do recnogise the comment about speed and consistency of updates. I used to read Order of the Stick, which is a brilliantly funny yet epic fantasy comic. There used to be fairly regular updates, then it dropped, came back, dropped again. At some point, he had a very successful Kickstarter, but somehow things became even more irregular after that. Eventually I sometimes had to wait more than a month to see how the story continued. And when there's no need to check for a month, eventually that turns into two months, and I think I haven't checked it out in more than a year. Years maybe? I should probably check, but chances are there's now an immense backlog and I don't know where I left off. Or there's still only a few. I don't know which is worse.

roenxi 7y ago
OotS was an interesting case; doing a Kickstarter seemed to partly destroy the author (Rich Burlow for anyone who wants to look him up). I don't think he's recovered his peak upload speed, but it has been so long I don't recall what it was. He understandably got caught out by the demand, the Kickstarter totaled up ~$1,200,000 vs $50,000 target and the webcomic really took a hit. And he sliced his thumb open filling orders which didn't help at all. It would be lovely to know what his take is on the strategic success/failure of that with benefit of hindsight. A lot of money was involved; but he did suffer physically and the webcomic would have suffered an audience drop. $1.2 mil is a lot of money but it has been 6 years and I think there still might be a few outstanding items from that Kickstarter campaign.
- kibwen 7y ago
  As a longtime reader who pitched a few bucks at the OotS kickstarter years and years ago, I do still get occasional progress reports to my inbox. The last one was from September: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive/posts/2288387 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-... A choice quote: "While there, you may also notice that it's the tenth wallpaper I've released, so that means the wallpaper reward is officially finished. One thing I saw when posting this last one, though, is that it's been so long since the first one that the screen resolutions I've been putting these out at are a little dated in some cases—especially with regard to phones. Is Windows Phone even a thing anymore? And I know the iPhone has completely different screen sizes now, right? So if you have a device that isn't represented with any of those resolutions, go ahead and comment on this post with what screen sizes you'd like to see, and I'll try to go back and add like 5 or 6 of the most popular for all ten wallpapers by the next time I send out an update." Also be sure to check out the image of his "workometer", which he's been using to track his reward fulfillment progress since the very start. It's nearly all complete by now, but some of the remaining items are substantial. If I had to guess at what his folly was, I'd say it was simply overpromising with the stretch goals for various milestones. Remember that this was in the early heyday of Kickstarter, and few people had any experience with what an absolute slog fulfillment would turn out to be. I commend him for sticking it out regardless when so many other projects have just defaulted.

a2tech 7y ago

Wow, Megatokyo. Thats a blast from the past. Next you'll bring up BBspot!

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Truth! I'm kind of amazed that it's still around. I went to check it out and if anything the pace of updates seems slower than ever. Ten so far this year. What's amazing to me is that he has $2000 a month of Patreons for this pace of output. That makes it clear to me that this comic really touched something for a lot of people.

Paul_S 7y ago

When Rodney left it stopped being funny and slowly spiraled into generic romance and drama. Sinfest is a sadder loss. You will never see a bigger difference between first and last comic strip. The first ever Sinfest strip is still best Sinfest.

danharaj 7y ago
I just took a look at sinfest after not reading it in several years. I read back a few days in the archive and I liked it. The style has gotten cuter. Could you explain what you don't like about it?
- angersock 7y ago
  Decent summary here: http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Sinfest http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Sinfest Tldr, he took the soul out of the comic and the characters to push an agenda, and devoted cycles to mocking his fans instead of keeping up the wholesome stuff. This is like the one case where that isn't an exaggeration.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Tatsuya is taking a stand against the Patriarchy. He will defeat it with his stomach.[1] Beginning around October, 2011, though with antecedents. The patriarchy objects, as a patiriarchy does. The Sisterhood http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-03 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-03 ...Crim gets Lit http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-06 ...'Nique gets woke http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-07 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-07 Patriarchy http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-17 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-17 Rad Fem http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-05-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-05-06 Peak Dudebro http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-14 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-14 Woke Televisio http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2018-10-11 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2018-10-11 Though the early days had some highlights http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-03-15 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-03-15 1. http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2014-10-24 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2014-10-24

cryoshon 7y ago

when i was a kid i would read megatokyo because webcomics seemed like they were new and cool to me. then, i stopped reading eventually due to a combination of factors: 1. the jokes got stale, or i grew out of the humor 2. the plotline moved too slowly 3. i grew out enjoying the "will-they get together / why won't-they get together" relationship arc(s). as a younger teenager the dorky and childish romance was relevant to my life, but i grew to find it very cringe inducing eventually. i don't really miss reading it.

taneq 7y ago
Yeah, I read it too back in the early days, then it just sort of stopped going anywhere. I've halfheartedly intended to catch up on it for about 14 years now.

bartwe 7y ago

Megatokyo is still in my fixed rotation of daily webcomics...

mdhughes 7y ago

I'm one of the people who kicked in for the Megatokyo visual novel kickstarter. Years later, no visible progress; I'm not even mad, I knew exactly what I was signing up for, which was supporting a comic that had slowed to almost non-updating, and maybe getting a thing someday. New comics are still weekly to monthly, if that. I've completely forgotten the origin of the current catgirl plot, but possibly Ping (or the catgirl she's based on?) will finally do something, maybe in the next couple years? Who knows. The guy who drew "Sad girl in snow" isn't going to be one of your super productive Jack Kirbys, he muddles along as best he can, like a lot of us.