This article is an extension of an old one, written for the Paper arcade fanzine.
I once argued to someone that comedy-games don't exist.
They do. I'm just a dumb person who likes to exagerate things a little.
But still, I think they don't exist in the way people think they do.
When I ask about comey games, people say Portal 2 is great. Yes Portal 2 is great. Lots of humor, lots of laugh. But I think a portal 2 movie would be nearly as funny as Portal 2 : Most of the fun comes from its dialogues. Same story for others famous comedy-games : Monkey island, ratchet and clank, even Stanley parable. All great games, but the funny part people remember about them is, most of the time, the dialogues.
And videogame dialogues are a good thing, they can be a great ingredient to add comedy to your videogame. But adding suggar to your meal won't make it a dessert.
I still feel weird about calling portal 2 a comedy game because it's not really about making people laugh. It's about making people solve puzzles and follow a (sometimes funny) story.
Of course, if you look for the « comedy game » tags in steam, you'll find some example of games that actually uses their gameplay to make players laugh.
Most of the time, it will be physics based games. Octodad and Human fall flat, for example, are well known to be funny because of their gameplay. You laugh at silly situations provoked by the weird way you manipulate physics in order to move your character around. I can't stand more than a few minute playing, or just watching my friends play Gang beast without laughing. Just seeing these not-gifted people fighting by pulling each other from the tie just makes me lose my mind. The gameplay just leads to silly and weird, funny situations. The physics mechanic in these games often just leads to laugh dynamics.
I’d like to see more of these games that actually use laugh as part of the game making process, rather than something that you just add to a game. Those are too rare, and I think they’re sometimes hidden by the so called "comedy games" people sometime talk about, that can pretty much be any game with a bit of humor in it. Today I wanna talk about those games that make jokes in playful ways.
You should definitely check out This article from Jazzpunk's devs as an example of what can be done. They made a gamedev-tool to make sure the comedy rythm of the game was alright. It's amazing. It counts the amount of jokes per minute the playtester has experienced. Game design tool for comedy game's rythm, amazing. Okay, they say it's really kind of a joke-tool and don't wanna brag about it but still, the tool exist and can be used to fix a none-joke aera situation. (Also, go play Jazzpunk, it's really funny.)
I've been looking at games that tries to create jokes using their game mechanics for a long time, it's pretty rare.
In MacGuffin, there's an incredible scene where you can buy some items. And of course, as you love buying useless stuff, you just do it. What the game doesn't say is that as you buy stuff, you gain weight. And without noticing it, you're now super slow and can't get rid of what you bought. The game got you. You laugh.
TRIAD is a small puzzlegame containing one puzzle only. Three lovers wanna sleep together. How can you make them fit in the bed, knowing that some will snore, some will roll around or move during their sleep ? Of course, the first time you try, they all end up on the floor or with a cat sitting on their face. You're bad : the game makes fun of you : you don't know the game rules, you had to try something. But as you try again and know the rules, you become the one that makes them fall, and it's not the game's fault anymore. You're the one setting up the joke. The frustrating joke that keep you away from solving the puzzle. The « haha, they just fell » joke. Until they successfully sleep together in the bed, of course.
Even the Witness, a game that everybody talked about but never mentionned it as something that can make you laugh, has, I think, a few jokes to tell. The game often makes fun of you as well. At some point when you're playing the witness, you're just expecting puzzles to be everywhere. Just looking for a circular form somewhere, to start solving a puzzle. Many times, the game just let you think there's gonna be a puzzle somewhere, you gonna know there's one. But there will be a tree, a shadow, just a small thing that tells you « hey you could solve this puzzle with the right point of view. Try a bit more on the right... Oh no there's a tiny piece of wood blocking your view ! Try on the left ? Oh, a wall ? WHO PUT THAT IN HERE ?! » The game just messes up with you, and sometime while I was playing it I could just see my partner laughing at me and I'm pretty sure I was able to hear Jonathan blow laughing in his chair somewhere in the world as well.
I'm sure those green things mean something.. This brush looks roundy somehow... Or am I just mad ?
All those games « jokes » has one thing in common : they let the player make the jokes. They let their player be a character in the joke. They let the player be the joke.
The player can be the one making fun of the videogame's AI or be the one fooled by the game, but they're not just listening to a joke recorded in advance. The joke will be different from player to player. Maybe the punchline is the same for everyone, maybe it's the premise that's gonna be the same for everyone, but there's a detail that will change from a player to another.
When I play a shooter game, I like to see people shoot stuff, but mainly, I really want to shoot stuff myself. When I play a Platformer, I don't mind seeing others jump, but mainly, I'd like to jump myself. If you're making a comedy game, please consider letting me make a few jokes.
I'm not saying that portal 2 is not funny, it is. Not even saying it's not a comedy game, let's call it like that if you want. But maybe we should consider making more interactive comedy in the future, just to see if it works. If we can use our medium to make people laugh like they never laugh before. Create new way of making people laugh. I'm sure we can do it.
