Humor in Games?

commiesubverter writes "Slate.com has an article up about humor in games. It's a decent summary of where the gaming industry has been and is going with its humor. From the article: 'Comedy is typically marginalized into background sight gags and interstitial cut scenes. Even games that generally strive to be funny incorporate humor into window dressing: In Grand Theft Auto, you can sow mayhem while listening to a mock-NPR that's broadcasting a roundtable discussion on violence.'"

Comments

Misguided article

[Ignorant Aardvark]

I play games because they're fun, and not for any other reason. Recently I've been playing GTA:SA, and I can see why WCTR is window dressing - because it gets old. It only has so much content, and after that, it becomes stale and repetitive. To make a good game that is genuinely funny the whole way through would take a LOT of work - and frankly, I'm not even sure it would be possible. It's much easier to make a game fun by allowing you to run over pedestrians or what not - this stays fun for awhile. But once you've heard a joke once, it's pretty much used up.

Re:Misguided article

[Zorilla]

That reminde me of clip involving Madden 2004.

Re:Misguided article

[secolactico]

The new LSL Magna Cum Laude is horrible however

I'll say. You go from one boring mini-game to another mini-game and back to the first mini-game... Like playing a boring "Strip Simon Says".

Re:Misguided article

[Sage Gaspar]

That's... not true at all.

First, there's always going to be a market for more traditional games. They are still releasing new entries in the Myst series, a new (good) graphic adventure slips out once a year or so, etc. Hell, even side-scrolling shoot-em-ups still get made.

Secondly, comedy is possible even if a game's primary goal is not comedy. I would use GTA as an example of this. Sure, you have your main mission arcs where the more serious events happen, but in between you're listening to hillarious sound bytes on radio stations and getting missions from the most absurd caricatures of cops/drug dealers/gangsters/lawyers/etc (and let's not forget Love Fist) to do things like steal combines from a hippy commune to help fund a spaced out pothead called The Truth. Hell, half the comedy in the game is just the ridiculous violent overkill that is possible (i.e., running over hippies with a combine).

So yes, you can have "cool driving" with funny comedy, and there is a point to having both - just as the best movies aren't usually straight-up drama or gags every second.

Re:Misguided article

[parliboy]

You know, considering the current market, and considering that they didn't run with Al Lowe (which was nonetheless a mistake), I thought the humor in MCL was a really good attempt. The gameplay was totally not fun, but the way it was depicted was, at times, inspired. If you stayed in it long enough to play the sendoff to Grease's "Summer Nights", you know that the new writers had some respect for what the game should have been about.

"Went to her room, she begged me to stay"
"We made love, now I am gay"
"College life turned her into a dyke
"But uh-oh, those lesbian nights"

But still, at the end of the day, it's not Larry.

Humor in games in the past 20 years

[BrotherZeoff]

Actually I thought that a lot of the earlier games were firmly tongue in cheek.

Infocom's Zork and Enchanter series had a lot of gags. Planetfall and Hitchhiker's Guide were, too.

Bard's Tale, as the aticle mentioned. But Keef the Thief and Escape from Hell were funnier. There were quite a few funny cut scenes in one of the Duke Nukem games--I remember Duke ripped off a defeated alien's head and, uh, took care of business down its throat...

I think gaming used to be geekier and have more self-depracating and sarcastic humor. Later, console systems opened gaming up to a younger and less geeky population, and games became more fast-paced and serious.

These days, it seems that Blizzard is keeping up the humor tradition more than most other publishers.

Re:Humor in games in the past 20 years

[kmcg83]

You want the funny?

Alexander Seropian (founder of Bungie) has recently created a new company called Wideload Games. It's geared towards making quality humor games, like their most recent announcement: a game based on the Halo engine about a zombie, and his passion... for brains.

Grim Fandango

[Anaphiel]

Possibly the most consistantly funny game I've played, with a very sophisticated sense of humor.

"Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!"

Agreed.

[antdude]

Both No One Lives Forever and its sequel (not Contract Jack) made me laugh a lot. The dialogs and the humor.

Examples:

1. "Are you insulting my monkey?!" --a moroccan civilians line"
   
2. "Do not be apprehensive about this apprehension!" --the HARM guards in Morroco
   
3. Cate: "Spare yourself the suffering and you might walk out of here with clean underpants."
   Harm Guard: "Too late for that!"
   
4. Cate: Who is your favorite historical character?
   Baron Dumas: Hmm...I would have to say....er....Beowulf.
   Cate: Ah... I was thinking of historical rather than fictional individuals.
   Baron Dumas: Beowulf is a historal character.
   Cate: You mean the Beowulf who slew Grendel and is mother?
   Baron Dumas: Ah, yes: thats the one.
   Cate: He's a FICTIONAL character.
   Baron Dumas: YES, I know that, but there was also an HISTORICAL one.
   Cate: The Beowulf who fought the dragon?
   Baron Dumas: Indeed.
   Cate: But there AREN'T any dragons. Unless you count the dinosaurs of course, but there weren't any of those wondering around during the time that Beowulf WOULD have lived, had he been a REAL person instead of a fictional one.
   Baron Dumas: Are you quite sure?
   Cate: Yes.
   Baron Dumas: I see...
   

Duke Nukem 3D

[turgid]

May years ago there was a DOS game called Duke Nukem 3D, which was very similar to Doom in many ways.

One of the things I found very funny was that you could actually "use" the toilets in the game. If you walked up to one of the urinals and pressed the "use" button, Duke would do a wee wee and flush the toilet.

One day I was playing it over a direct modem connection with a friend. He shot me in the face with a rocket. I jumped up and backwards, breaking my chair in the process.

I don't have time to play games nowadays, and I don't have Windows, so my choice is severely limited anyway. Xbill is about my limit now.

Re:No One Lives Forever

[jnd3]

Tron 2.0 (by the same company that did NOLF) had some good humor as well ... enemies known as "Resource Hogs" would often carry names like "lookout.exe" and "wordwin.exe" and other assorted plays on Microsoft programs. Definitely more "geeky" humor, but still good.

LucasArts' Armed & Dangerous is pretty fun slapstick as well -- from the tea-brewing robot to shark launchers and topsy-turvy bombs -- and the cutscenes are just a hoot. And to top it off, it's hit the $10 bin.

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System Shock

[dr bacardi]

The first one... the elevators played, well, elevator music. "The Girl from Ipanema" specifically.

Add to that most LucasArts adventures

[upside]

...and Sierra Online. Gutbusting fun in Day of the Tentacle, Leisure Suit Larry, Zack McCracken etc etc. Those were the days.

Grand Theft Auto is funnier than that

[Taco John]

As you go alone in Grand Theft Auto, it gets a lot funnier. I would say a huge percentage of the jokes are inside jokes from the previous games. Catalina in San Andreas is a lot funnier as a character when you realize you killed her in GTA:3. So for a newcomer to the series, some of the jokes might not be all that funny.

What about Minsc?

[code_nerd]

I cannot believe no one has mentioned my favorite brain-addled barbarian and his Minature Giant Space Hamster, Boo! The voice acting in Baldur's Gate I and II was hilarious.

"Butt kicking for goodness!"