2015 in silly back page jokes

March 2015: Just Cause 3

Chris: The key to producing an All Over in an hour and a half while Sam looks at you like he’s about to collapse inwards like a dying star is finding a joke that is basically just writing with one visual flourish. I had no idea how to make it look like there was a grappling hook flying towards a whiteboard that you could also read, but I asked our designer to do that anyway and they did. I quite like this one. 

April 2015: American Truck Simulator

Phil: What we've done here is create a pretty good pitch for a game.

Chris: Antarctica: the wacky continent that you can make jokes about because nobody is there.

Andy: When we came up with this joke, we thought, what would Euro Truck Simulator be like if it was, in fact, set in the Arctic? And then we made John mock it up in Photoshop. It really was that simple.

Chris: Slow down Andy you’ll ruin the magic.

May 2015: SteamVR

Tony: Making it look like a mocked-up desktop: always a sign of desperation.

Chris: I thought ‘mocked up magazine cover’ was the bigger sign of desperation. (This is both.) Also: first time I made a joke about Half-Life 3 on the back page, I got abuse from random people on Twitter and Reddit for a week and a half. I got no abuse this time, which I take as a sign that we weren’t baiting the internet hard enough.

Phil: At least it isn't 'found memo with a coffee stain on a desk,' which was roughly 80% of 2013's All Overs.

Chris: There’s literally a cup of coffee, though. The stain is implicit.

Andy: I don’t get it.

PC Gamer

The collective PC Gamer editorial team worked together to write this article. PC Gamer is the global authority on PC games—starting in 1993 with the magazine, and then in 2010 with this website you're currently reading. We have writers across the US, UK and Australia, who you can read about here.

Latest in Gaming Industry
A masked man with an axe in the woods
Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'
A computer screen with program code warning of a detected malware script program. 3d illustration
Coder faces 10 years' jailtime for creating a 'kill switch' that screwed-up his employers' systems when he was laid off
Atomfall screenshot
Rebellion CEO puts the studio's recent avoidance of layoffs down to control of scope and cost: 'Sometimes we say, guys, this game's too big'
Judge Dredd promotional image in Warzone
Half-a-dozen 2000AD games were in the works before fizzling out: 'The games you get to see are a tiny representative of the number that get started—sadly'
sniper elite 5 cover
Sniper Elite CEO reckons Swen Vincke is right to snarl at short-sighted publishers: 'You could argue that their business at senior level isn't making games… their business is managing their shareholders' perceptions'
Kasumi and Joker in Persona 5 Royal.
After 31 years in games, Persona director Katsura Hashino just got a 'Newcomer Award' and $5,000 from the Japanese government
Latest in Features
A vampire with a dark castle and swarms of bats in the background.
We need to decide on a genre name for Vampire Survivors-like games before a really terrible one sticks
Olivia, Alma and a palico
I wish Monster Hunter Wilds wasn't so afraid of letting me play Monster Hunter
SteelSeries QcK Performance mouse pads overlapping on a desk
The SteelSeries QcK Performance series has reignited my excitement over the simple pleasure of a quality mouse pad… and trying to click skulls with pinpoint accuracy
OneXPlayer 2 pro on a table
I never thought a handheld PC bloated with Windows could replace my Steam Deck, but after gaming on an old OneXPlayer 2 Pro I can see now I judged it too harshly
A screenshot from the original Assassin's Creed game
Assassin's Creed: Shadows is just around the corner, so come and see the last 17 years of the series' PC graphics at max 4K settings
Beyond the Ice Palace 2 screenshots
I’m not sure what’s weirder: that someone made a sequel to a completely forgettable 37-year-old game I played as a kid, or that it was actually worth the wait