Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Humor in Games?

Posted by michael on from the stick-around dept.

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.'"

3 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Misguided article by Ignorant+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
  2. Humor in games in the past 20 years by BrotherZeoff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Duke Nukem 3D by turgid · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Stick Men