[Zimahl]

The scope of their audience is somewhat irrelevant. I'm not criticizing their comic here - other than a somewhat simple blog(ish) design, they just need to handle a lot of users to their semi-static site which is a solved problem. Maybe deal with a ton of users on their forum - once again a solved problem. Otherwise, like I said, most of it is office IT stuff for a handful of people working in an office.

I'm not sure how that is any more impressive than many other businesses that aren't known in the geek world.Their other endeavors (Child's Play, PAX) are more business and logistics and light on the IT. From what I've read most of that stuff is outsourced anyways so that PA can focus on the content and not the tedium.

[RandallBrown]

are massive user forums a solved problem?

Reddit still gives error pages to me dozens of times a day.

[Zimahl]

First, comparing Penny Arcade to Reddit is laughable. Second, Penny Arcade doesn't even host their own forums[1].

[1] http://vanillaforums.com/