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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.'"
Nothing beats the Monkey Island series!
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
I remember countless adventures from Lucasarts where the principle element is pure comedy. From Monkey Island to Day of the Tentacle to Sam and Max, these classic games were both funny and fun. They don't make many games like those any more ever since FPS's became popular (and hence, more profitable for the majority of game studios to develop).
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
For the simple reason that the first couple of times you play it a joke is amusing, the 200th time you play, its a worn out fucking nuisance.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I've only played the sequel and that has to be the funnies FPS I've played. Some of the conversations between the guards were priceless, and the overall goofiness was highly entertaining.
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.
where how the user plays creates the comedy? I laugh my ass off when I am playing Monkey Ball with friends because of some of the wonderfully random ways you can kill your monkey. The best comedy is usually unscripted, and the best games usually provide lots of unscripted comedy(whicih is also another reason why I don't play 1 player games or games on the internet, too boring)
Monstar L
... if you want an FPS which will make you laugh check out Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Absolutely hilarious plot as a bunch of Cockney Aliens end up on a planet with a magic using race of merfolk and a 300 foot tall beast.
The cutscenes are brilliant but the comedy is left out of the action with the exception of the various cockney aliens chiming in with progress reports and saying things like "Oooh my leg!".
And as for comedy being annoying upon repetition. I could play Monkey Island till Guybrush Threepwood actuall becomes a mighty pirate.
Come on people! Bob, Float, Drift? What's NOT to love about that series!?
Maybe the reason games are low on humour is because most jokes are only funny once or twice, whereas a game needs to be playable many, many times. If playing the game a second time is like watching reruns of Fresh Prince in Bel-Air, I'd rather not.
Of course, there is comedy that will always be funny, such as Monty Python, but who dares create a complete game hoping that all or most of the comedy will last?
The Incredible Machines and Day of the Tentacle are two of my favourite old games with lots humour. But I think the reason I still like them is because I haven't played them for a long time.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
... so why does humor seem like a distraction? Maybe it's because the game designers aren't comedians, they're geeks? Geeks can be funny, as seen on these very pages, but to step out and design a game that tries to be funny is way too risky. What if someone buys the game and doesn't laugh? Bad news.
Comedy takes a certain mindset. You have to program the user with a setup, then redirect them to the punch line. That's a different plot than blowing up an alien mother ship or whatever.
Comedy is usually only funny once. By the time the designer has seen it for the six hundredth time, it's not funny to them any more. By the time the user has seen the gag a few times, they're bored with it. By contrast, I still pull out Doom 2 now and then.
sigs, as if you care.
Surely this depends on what you personally find amusing? I have fond memories of Dungeon Keeper & DK2, which I thought were wickedly funny... torture, anyone? Similarly, Carmageddon & Carmageddon 2 had me laughing out loud as zombies exploded around me whilst pulling off utterly insane stunts. A whole bunch of LucasArts games (Sam & Max, Day Of The Tentacle, etc) are funny. Grand Theft Auto's gouranga bonus. Simply playing Unreal Tournament and for example, jumping at an oppenent, emptying a weapon at them, completely missing, and they pick you off with one shot... I find that funny (or maybe I suck at UT ;)). Max Payne. Countless sub/side games in countless titles.
Maybe I'm just twisted.
I don't think traditional comedy will work in games... you tend to get in-jokes in games, which is ok because those playing the games will usually get it. Jokes that are scripted and get forced at you again and again as you replay, whilst they may have been funny the first few times, they almost certainly aren't after a few dozen.
In my opinion, scripted humour can not replace gameplay touches that allow the player to make their own fun.
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"Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!"
Someone set us up the bomb
or
The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?
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Everyone knows if you click the people in Warcraft/Starcraft enough, you get some funny jokes, but my favorite was in WC3.
"I'll attract the enemy with my human mating call. I'm so wasted! I'm so wasted!" -- The Dryad
Straight up comedy games ala the original Lucasarts ones wont work now. A lot of those were filled with injokes and specifically geeky jokes. Now that the demographic has changed to the non-geek and general populace they don't work. Not only do they not work, but to create a game that would the humor would have to be so broad as to be either unfunny or work once.
I have seen some humor left but it is either background, in jokes, or specific. Case in point, alot of the quest givers in WoW have some funny stuff to say and the voice emotes are a riot but the game itself is pretty serious.
One thing that people fail to mention is the switch in humor in the games has worked. People are buying these games or subscribing to the serives in record numbers even in this declining economy. Weither or not any of us agree with humor in games in its current incarnation it moot really. Pander to the lowest common denominator and make lots of money. Sad but true.
Examples:
Harm Guard: "Too late for that!"
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...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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WARNING: SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAMES!!
Examples:
Harm Guard: "Too late for that!"
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...
Thanks to NOLF Girl for a lot of these.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Tons of interactive user-created violent slapstick occurs in FPS/action games, especially during multiplayer. Everything from some guy rocket-jumping and exploding on impact, to accidentally driving the Hellbender off a cliff when two other teammates are riding on top is FUNNY. It's just very unsophisticated humor, which is part of what the article is complaining about.
Sadly, I always sucked at the funniest games - even Monkey Island had me reaching for a walkthrough every ten minutes or so, because while the game is brilliant, it's a little *too* brilliant for me to solve half the puzzles on my own. And being frustrated, or "cheating" are not so much fun even when you can appreciate the game's humour.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Triv
Space Quest and the Quest for Glory series are what really got me into gaming. Some of the later Icon based Sierra games were half-way decent, but in my mind the text-input games were the ones that really shined.
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
Well at least he whom you call a "towelhead" knows where his towel is.
That wacky Minesweeper game just cracks me up!
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You fight like a dairy farmer.
How appropriate, you fight like a cow.
The author of the article probably has not experienced "emergent comedy" in a game. Take the Sims, for instance as a recent example -- it's funny when your party guests get stuck in a corner, fall asleep and urinate all over themselves. No, but being a writer for Slate, the author probably has only gone to real parties of this type.
... Let's make a reality show game!!" Which would then, of course, be designed with a linear storyline :)
What do you bet a producer somewhere is reading this and saying "A-ha! If unscripted comedy is funny
The first one... the elevators played, well, elevator music. "The Girl from Ipanema" specifically.
You couldn't even re-bind the keys to the standard ASD+mouse configuration.
Actually it was based on the previous television program "The Young Ones"
Once again Ade Edmondson was the complete bastard as punk Vivian. The "How to be a Complete Bastard" bit came up origionaly for the Young Ones Batchelor Boys book (and later a book of its own, then the board game, then the spectrum/ C64 game)
That's OK. They'll come out with a special Eurepean version where you run over Jews. It'll be a big seller in France.
Go ahead. Accuse me of generalizing about whole nations based on the bigoted words of a few. I dare you.
--- Ban humanity.
Space Quest by Sierra was a funny game. You're travelling around in the crazy future universe that's kind of an odd combination of every future universe you've seen in movies and films. You'll occasionally see a Star Wars ship thrown on a trash dump or a reference to a Star Trek charachter.
The games were also very self referential. In one game (SP3) you had to save thinly veiled versions of the two guys who wrote the game. In another (SQ4) you travelled back in forth in time within the Space Quest series jumping from the original game into a game that hasn't yet been made like Space Quest 14).
My favorite line came from a moment when you asked to "get" a ladder and the game responded. "You get the ladder and put it in your pocket... Ouch."
Ah, the memories. That's some good abandonware.
--
RumorsDaily
...and Sierra Online. Gutbusting fun in Day of the Tentacle, Leisure Suit Larry, Zack McCracken etc etc. Those were the days.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
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.
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!"
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was the old king's quest games - I miss the old school sierra pythonesque humor.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
Worms! If the idea of a worm with a bazooka isn't funny enough, you can blow up the other team with a sheep or banana bomb or the Holy Hand Grenade... not to mention the insane chain-reactions where you meant to kill the other guy's worm but ended up blowing up about three or four of your own instead, and then he finishes you off with the Prod.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
..is raw comedy: #1, because it's raw; #2, because it's comedy. The guys at Videlectrix really knew what they were doing when they put this together. (Check out the trailer too.) Haldo!
an article on humour in games that doesn't mention Earthworm Jim!??
A game where you get to fight lawyers with briefcases and jump into toilet-warps...