We’re taking a break from our genre studies this week, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon it completely. No, I’m not going to look at RPG’s or the first-person shooter. Rather, I’d like to take a look at a genre that doesn’t really exist. It goes back to a discussion we had before, when Aaron brought up defining genres based on gameplay and not story. Branching off of that, I ask one simple question: Why aren’t games funny?
Comedy dates back to the invention of literature. It’s one of the original four genres for crying out loud. Theater, books, film, they all have comedies. Comedy has such a wide range. Even before the advent of sound in cinema, Buster Keaton was making audiences laugh with his physical shenanigans. Now, great characters like Michael Scott, of The Office, make us laugh and cringe at the same time with their awkwardness. Comedy is definitely not easy, but we see it time and time again through other mediums. So again, why don’t we have games that are funny?
I know that some of you, Fish, are yelling right now for me to go play early LucasArts PC games of the 90’s. I’ll give you that those have their fair share of laughs, but it’s a genre that is all but dead, and it’s kind of a one trick pony. There isn’t much difference from reading a funny book or hearing a funny line in a movie. Comedy, like many genres, should exploit the uniqueness of the medium that it exists in. For example, funny movies aren’t just people sitting around reading funny lines. They include great looks from the actors as well as great physical bits. These are things that are made funnier by the medium itself. It’s discouraging that the only moments of humor we get out of our beloved video games is nothing that couldn’t be done in any other medium. As another example, Psychonauts is a game that can have you waking up your significant other with laughter. However, I’d much rather watch this as a cartoon, and often I was. The funny parts were pretty much relegated to cut scenes that I could sit back and enjoy.
So, why don’t we see funny games? I think that we can point to something that we’ve blamed for countless problems before. Video games are interactive. That’s it. Okay, it’s more complex than that, but that’s what it boils down to. So much of comedy is timing. In fact, you could say that timing is everything. This is easy to do on the stage or in film. Even if something doesn’t work out during a shoot, the filmmaker gets a second chance in the editing room. On the other hand, gamemakers have to deal with the millions of variables that can occur because a human player is in control of the scene. It can be very discouraging for a gag to happen in real time only to have the player not even see it because they were busy scouring for health and ammo.
Interactivity also comes into play because of something that we have talked to death here. Players want to do do do. They don’t want to have a funny conversation or allow a joke to be set up and unfold slowly. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just so happens to be a fact of the medium. Working within these confines, it’s hard to throw a funny line on top of Marcus Fenix chainsawing some poor alien’s head off.
I’ve done a lot of complaining, and you’re probably saying to yourself that I have no real solution. Well you’d be wrong. And an asshole. It’s always a funny gag in movies when somebody tells a character NOT to do something and then tells them to try it out, only to yell at them when they give it a try. This is something that is tailor-made for video games. Imagine some wacky professor telling you to never fire a certain weapon and then letting you fire it at a shooting range. The laughter that would ensue when he yells at you the first time you actually pull the trigger would probably be loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops on you. It’s something that is almost completely unique to video games as well, because not only was the character the brunt of the joke, the player is also being made a mockery of.
Another great opportunity, and one that fits in with the more awkward-funny style of comedy, would be forcing your character to do some completely ridiculous through a quick time event that had to be completed. The act of not only seeing your character embarrass himself, but actually forcing him to do it, would surely be good for a laugh or two.
Comedy definitely is not easy. If it were, everybody would do it, and in turn, nobody would be funny because what we find funny would be the norm, and that’s not a future world that I want to live in. Back on track. Comedy isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t easy in video games. However, I’d love to see developers give it a shot. Hire some good writers, think of ways to create comedy through the uniqueness of the medium, and give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Maybe it’ll be so bad that it actually ends up being funny.