No Funny Business
Typical gaming genres are more open to action epics and globetrotting adventures than hopeless pirates and unlikely wizards. “To have a properly funny game, you need gameplay that supports that,” says Pratchett. “With Overlord, the gameplay itself is inherently funny and twisted, so a twisted, funny script suits that.”
Zombiecow’s Dan Marshall hasn’t had as much luck in applying humour to different genres. “I’m currently working on a shooter/platformer,” he says, “and I have to admit it’s proving to be a lot harder than I’d imagined writing the script.”
“I think part of it is the way in which the dialogue is crafted,” adds Twisted Pixel’s CCO Josh Bear. “You want to make sure the character is saying more than ‘Huh!’ and ‘Hmmph!’ and “UH!” while they run around the game.” Twisted Pixel’s first two independent games, The Maw and ‘Splosion Man, relied heavily on visual gags, slapstick comedy and absurd, surreal humour, but their upcoming game, Comic Jumper, will have fully written gags and spoken dialogue. “I am just now diving into that portion of it, so we’ll see how it goes,” Bear says.
“I definitely think that going full voiceover is more of a challenge,” he explains, “not only on a budget and asset basis, but also on presentation to player. If a character only has a few things voiced that they say, or a pretty random story like ‘Splosion Man, I think players are more forgiving.” The titular ‘Splosion Man speaks only in iconic movie one-liners and endears players with his childlike animations, so moving to a fully voiced character is proving to be a challenge for Twisted Pixel. “For something fully voiced and written out like Comic Jumper, one little thing that sucks can throw off the whole experience for somebody.”
And then there’s the worry of trying too hard and inundating the player with witty one-liners and verbal gags. “If they talk too much then it doesn’t seem cool at all,” says Bear, “because no one runs around jumping and shooting stuff without running out of breath. I think it just comes down to being smart about when, where and how it is used. Hopefully we can get the right balance.”
//What do you get if you cross an Orc with a Level 54 Priest?
Comedy isn’t just about witty dialogue and funny pictures; in terms of more traditional literature, comedy is a deep and varied genre with many different subcategories and hybrids. Movies like Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead tie humour to horror and action, black comedies deal with taboo subjects, and comedic elements can make up the entire piece or be interwoven with more subtlety.
For example, games can seize some much needed levity with a moment of self-aware realisation or a witty prod at the more ludicrous elements of gaming. One of the strongest moments in Brutal Legend isn’t some incredibly sharp Schaferism or a painstakingly crafted recurring gag, but Eddie Riggs coming across the umpteenth handful of hooded enemies and saying: “Oh come on! I’m fucking sick of you guys!” That moment of flippancy in an otherwise action-heavy segment lends so much to Brutal Legend’s charm, seeing as most other protagonists would choose “Bring it on!” or “Raargh!” instead.
And, if you’re feeling very clever, there’s straight parody too. Games like Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard make jokes by lampooning genre conventions and poking fun at game mechanics. But while Matt Hazard means well, its jokes fall flat, its caricatures are outdated and it’s generally poorly written. Rhianna Pratchett is equally unimpressed by such attempts. “We’ve seen games, that I won’t name, which were taking the piss out of the genre that they essentially are, and they become what they’re mocking.” Games like The Bard’s Tale and The Simpsons Game have seen slightly more success with satire.
With action orientated games, “the vast majority of the gameplay is non-verbal,” says Zombiecow’s Dan Marshall. Which brings up another challenge: “the humour has to come largely from the situation, or the visuals.” Action games like No One Lives Forever and Brutal Legend use more than Schwarzenegger-esque one liners and non-interactive cut-scenes to deliver gags – the designs and ideas behind the locations, characters and objects are inherently more amusing than drab space stations and war-torn cities.
[Continues...]
[...] Because thinking about comedy never kills a joke. Er… joking apart, it’s a biggie. Where Now For Comedy In Games, basically? He interviews Zombie Cow’s Dan Marshall, Rhianna Pratchett, Twisted Pixel’s CCO [...]
Oh come on: No mention of Portal? Portal is important for a few reasons:
1) Like the original Secret of Monkey Island, it began as a relatively straight-faced game about puzzle solving. The humor first emerged when someone on the team was messing around and decided to give the character(s) some funny lines.
2) Not including the humor would not have affected the basic gameplay of puzzle-solving, flinging, and dealing with turrets. In fact, the humor needed the foundation of the rest of the game-in-progress to exist in the first place. If the team had started with “make this funny” it would have been very different. Compare the first two Secret of Monkey Island games to every Monkey Island that came after.
3) Rather than just adding distracting “funny” lines, the humor is used to enhance the game in many ways: justifying the ridiculous situation the main character is in by having the computer be an (entertaining) sadistic loony, hinting at the back-story, driving the current story forward, expanding GLaDOS’s character, and rewarding the player for progress made (the *player* doesn’t care about the cake, but might chuckle at a cake-based joke). The funny makes the player care, and if a line doesn’t work they got rid of it in playtesting.
4) In addition to the scripted funny, there’s plenty of opportunities for (a phrase I just came up with) Dynamic Slapstick. There are plenty of opportunities to drop cubes, accidentally misdirect a lethal energy ball into yourself, fall into a toxic pit, be shot by a turret, not quite dodge a rocket in time, and so forth. The scripted humor puts the player in a mood to chuckle at their own pratfalls and try again instead of just being frustrated and giving up.
There’s also the satisfaction of sabotaging cameras, violently dispatching turrets via high speed objects and other means, finding creative ways to dispose of the radios and other “little victories” that can happen any time the right props are available. In the case of the cameras and the turrets there are several randomly-determined lines that reinforce the behavior by rewarding the player with a spoken punchline; so there is some reliance on the script but the timing is player driven.
Great article. Comedy is an interesting subject in games, for exactly the reasons outlined here. Thoroughly engaging read.
To the poster above: I think you’ve misunderstood the intention of the article slightly. It is not trying to list funny games, but is exploring why comedy does and does not work within games, supporting this with views from industry professionals. I don’t think that there is any implication that Portal, specifically, is an unworthy comedy game. Also, all the reasons you have outlined suggest portal is a well-balanced and “comic” game, but in no way groundbreaking or defining. You have simply reiterated some of the points in the main article, citing Portal as an example.
Interesting post, i really enjoyed it =D reason face