xkcd

by **Qaanol** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:06 am UTC

http://xkcd.com/1008/
Title: Suckville is considered by the Census Bureau to be part of the Detroit metropolitan statistical area, despite not being located anywhere near Detroit.

…is this some sort of knock on “Hell, MI”, which is not really a town?

by **rhomboidal** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:10 am UTC

According to my own gamer friends, I apparently own a timeshare in Suckville's sister city of Blowtown.

by **akrolsmir** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:14 am UTC

When I came to the forums, for the longest time there wasn't any thread about it. My life felt so empty.

What card game do you suppose that is?

by **katamariqueen** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:36 am UTC

Mao, I'm pretty sure

akrolsmir wrote:When I came to the forums, for the longest time there wasn't any thread about it. My life felt so empty.

What card game do you suppose that is?

My bets are on Mao.

by **lly** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:43 am UTC

katamariqueen wrote:My bets are on Mao.

Not if they are talking, no, and usually this sort of back-and-forth discussions are disallowed even during a Point of Order. Not to mention the cards are set up incorrectly for any variant I've played.

by **PhirePhly** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:48 am UTC

akrolsmir wrote:What card game do you suppose that is?

I'm imagining a mix between 1kbwc and Dominion.

by **CorruptUser** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:50 am UTC

Poor Detroit. Always getting a bad reputation, despite having, umm...

by **anu3bis** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:01 am UTC

Given the stacks of cards, I'm guessing Innovation.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63888/innovation

by **Eutychus** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:04 am UTC

a) I don't understand this comic at all

b) The girl in panel 3 has an unsettlingly large number of limbs. Does this game temporarily turn players into spiders?

by **clodpated** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:23 am UTC

The game looks like Spite and Malice to me (enough so that I had to join the forums and hope to find out for certain).

by **NotAllThere** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:57 am UTC

Eutychus wrote:a) I don't understand this comic at all

b) The girl in panel 3 has an unsettlingly large number of limbs. Does this game temporarily turn players into spiders?

a) Me neither. I came here for an explanation
b) It could be construed as trying to imply movement, but I think human fly is more likely.

by **lar** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:59 am UTC

My guess, especially given the Detroit reference, would be for two handed euchre, which uses a tableau like that one.

by **Patch** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:59 am UTC

anu3bis wrote:Given the stacks of cards, I'm guessing Innovation.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63888/innovation

I was going to guess Dominion. Both are plausible.

by **Erwin Brödinger** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:01 am UTC

There is no way this game is anything but Speed... the 4 piles of cards, the hands, the drawing decks... Additionally, speed is a game where there is a lot of smack talking because games go quickly and involve lots of nimble fingers.

by **Hamsvlekiss** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:11 am UTC

If I may explain the joke to death for those who didn't get it:

A common taunt when someone is losing a game goes along the lines of "Welcome to Suckville! Population: You." The comic takes this joke, treats Suckville as an actual town, and postulates that it has experienced population growth since 2000, rendering the taunt effectively underwhelming.

No explanation for spider-woman.

by **jpk** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:14 am UTC

Patch wrote:
anu3bis wrote:Given the stacks of cards, I'm guessing Innovation.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63888/innovation

I was going to guess Dominion. Both are plausible.

Dominion? It's all wrong for Dominion. Neither seems to have a deck or a discard pile, and there seems to be a notable lack of treasure and victory cards.

by **nowhereman** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:40 am UTC

I have traveled from the year 1987 in order to tell you this. She does not have crap loads of legs, those are shadows. Kinda underwhelming given the buildup I gave it... It is hard to tell since the shadows suggest different locations of light source, but the fact that the shadows are grey and not black does make it clear they are shadows. Similar thing happened in a picture I drew once in a drawing class. My teacher insisted I add shadows to the hills in the background. However since a tree shadow was already there, the two sets of shadows implied two suns. Shadows suck. Anyway I think I was done half a paragraph ago.

by **acablue** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:03 am UTC

CorruptUser wrote:Poor Detroit. Always getting a bad reputation, despite having, umm...

The Red Wings? They're pretty redeemable. The Tigers, too, I guess.

Solid sports town.

Other than that, yeah, not much. Not even charm that you'd expect from a once-great industrial city.

Dingy. Dull.

by **imgx64** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:54 am UTC

I actually searched the census website, and discovered that there is an actual town called Saukville in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, it had a population of 4,068 in 2000, so it's probably a different town.

by **MSTK** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:57 am UTC

Yeah, what the heck is going on with the number of limbs in panel 3?

by **Personman** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:03 am UTC

Oh my god I totally didn't even notice the legs at first. There's no way those are shadows, there are no shadows of anything else in that or any other panel... maybe Randall will fix it? Or maybe it's part of some multi-comic series of oddities that, when taken together, form a clue to the XCKD Metapuzzle?

Even though the piles aren't quite right, I'm going to continue to believe that it's a stylized version of Dominion, because that's what it should be :D

by **Ptarmigan** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:17 am UTC

I'm pretty sure that the third panel is supposed have the shadows being cast by the laptop.

by **hephaestos** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:52 am UTC

MSTK wrote:Yeah, what the heck is going on with the number of limbs in panel 3?

It's motion blur!

by **VectorZero** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:28 am UTC

Personman wrote:Oh my god I totally didn't even notice the legs at first.

+1

Erwin Brödinger wrote:There is no way this game is anything but Speed... the 4 piles of cards, the hands, the drawing decks... Additionally, speed is a game where there is a lot of smack talking because games go quickly and involve lots of nimble fingers.

There are 8 piles of cards. Unless you play speed very differently to me...

by **sanchises** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:41 am UTC

: An image showing it all.; xkcd-spider.png (37.3 KiB) Viewed 15993 times

It is indeed some sort of motion blur, in fact, it's two movements combined. See the attachment for an explanation.

by **thesingingaccountant** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:27 pm UTC

Suckville is, in fact, a suburb of Detroit. Our reputation is well-earned.

lar wrote:My guess, especially given the Detroit reference, would be for two handed euchre, which uses a tableau like that one.

I don't think the piles get that big in two-handed euchre (not that I'm any sort of expert--I think two-handed euchre is an abomination). Still, I could believe it.

Qaanol wrote:…is this some sort of knock on “Hell, MI”, which is not really a town?

It turns out that Hell, MI does exist. I've been there; it's about 90 minutes southwest of Detroit. It's basically just a huge sign saying "Welcome to Hell" and a hole-in-the-wall tavern. Pretty much what one might expect to find in Hell. Paradise, MI is much nicer. :-)

by **Ðæƒ** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:29 pm UTC

fun fact: the smallest user-id's that exist on that board are "2" and "3"...
...there is no userid "1" or userid "4"... the next one that exists is "5"...
...then i thought - maybe a prime-pun... shortly after that thought i recognized userid "6" exists...

back to the reason i registered...: maybe userid "2" (davean) or userid "3" (xkcd - randall i guess)
can bring some light into the (dark|shadow|motionblur)

by **radtea** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:34 pm UTC

CorruptUser wrote:Poor Detroit. Always getting a bad reputation, despite having, umm...

I flew through Detroit a while back and the airport was pretty cool. That bright red people-mover made me feel like I was living in the future. Downtown is not so nice, though.

by **radtea** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:37 pm UTC

thesingingaccountant wrote:Pretty much what one might expect to find in Hell. Paradise, MI is much nicer.

A friend once had dinner in Intercourse, PA. He mentioned this to his father, who said, "Now you need to find a town called Dinner..."

by **Socks** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:37 pm UTC

thesingingaccountant wrote:Suckville is, in fact, a suburb of Detroit. Our reputation is well-earned.

lar wrote:My guess, especially given the Detroit reference, would be for two handed euchre, which uses a tableau like that one.

I don't think the piles get that big in two-handed euchre (not that I'm any sort of expert--I think two-handed euchre is an abomination). Still, I could believe it.

Qaanol wrote:…is this some sort of knock on “Hell, MI”, which is not really a town?

It turns out that Hell, MI does exist. I've been there; it's about 90 minutes southwest of Detroit. It's basically just a huge sign saying "Welcome to Hell" and a hole-in-the-wall tavern. Pretty much what one might expect to find in Hell. Paradise, MI is much nicer.

Hell does have ice cream, too! And Paradise is FREEZING. The last time I went there, they had 120 inches or so of snow.

And Detroit is not so bad... At least it smells better than downtown Chicago.

by **Odd_nonposter** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:07 pm UTC

Hey, not all of Detroit is a festering hellhole. Greektown has some nice places to eat.

Other than that... well... yeah.

by **jonadab** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:11 pm UTC

Poor Detroit. Always getting a bad reputation, despite having, umm...

The most notable thing about Detroit, to my way of thinking, is that it's the setting for the movie Robocop.

Okay, so it's an imaginary future version of the city and was somewhat cleaned up compared to reality.

by **sorceror** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:15 pm UTC

I'm in downtown Detroit as I type this.

It's lonely.

by **6thDimensionWave** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:30 pm UTC

Our of curiosity,

Do you think it's possible that this game is not dominion, or speed, or Mao, or any other game like that, but merely some token non-game that is meant to just signify the fact they are playing "any random card game"? Do you think it's possible that instead of being some motion blur effect or multi-shadow, it's actually just a drawing error that went unnoticed? I mean these things seem to lend more credence to idea that Randall was rushed, and just had to put out a quick comic than anything else. Not great, not the prettiest idea in the world, but hey, when you're on a three a week schedule, it happens.

by **dp2** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:50 pm UTC

Fuck y'all. Detroit has a world-class orchestra and art museum, a glut of breweries, is very bikeable (a group offers bike tours of the breweries!), great sports, a beautiful riverfront, incredible architecture, and awesome music venues. Yeah, it's a bit empty, but that just makes me feel all the safer.

Edit: Oh, and three casinos, if you're into that.

by **Kit.** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:52 pm UTC

jonadab wrote:The most notable thing about Detroit, to my way of thinking, is that it's the setting for the movie Robocop.

Okay, so it's an imaginary future version of the city and was somewhat cleaned up compared to reality.

Deus Ex 3, anyone?

by **Atza** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:59 pm UTC

What! Detroit for me brings vivid mental images of a) the Red Wings, and b) horrorcore rap group Insane Clown Posse

by **EpicanicusStrikes** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:04 pm UTC

dp2 wrote:... is very bikeable...

Dear god, Detroit is even worse than I thought.

by **FertRaccoon** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:28 pm UTC

looked at the US 2010 Census, at SF1 Table P1.

The only instance of Population 83 corresponds to "Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander" living in Alabama.

Looking at Population 82, since guy-game-player now makes it 83, this corresponds to "American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander" living in Alabama.

I'm guessing this comes from the part of the Census that asks about your family racial heritage.

by **cream wobbly** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:36 pm UTC

Hamsvlekiss wrote:If I may explain the joke to death for those who didn't get it:

A common taunt when someone is losing a game goes along the lines of "Welcome to Suckville! Population: You." The comic takes this joke, treats Suckville as an actual town, and postulates that it has experienced population growth since 2000, rendering the taunt effectively underwhelming.

I still don't get it, mainly because I don't get how this is possibly taunting in any way. Telling someone that they live in a ghost town doesn't sound so much taunting as plain old bizarre. A distraction, maybe? Rather than a taunt? Similar to "I need a pee/beer/new hat".

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