Lunchtime Discussion: Comedy

Comedy in games always seem fairly hard to get spot on. Either you take it too far and the game is just a string of loosely connected jokes with a large helping of cheese, or you end up with something that just isn’t really funny aside from a few lame in-jokes. Sure some titles nail it spot on, the best example is the Monkey Island series, but in general they seem to flop in my opinion.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to see more people try. As noted above the Monkey Island series just shows you how good it can really be. Possibly those games work well because the comedy is so tongue in cheek and there’s so much conversation in the games.

Adventure games in general seem to be able to do comedy better than other genres, but I’ve never been quite sure why. It might have something to do with the genre having a tradition of being very heavily scripted in comparison to other styles, which is odd considering they have a more free flowing layout than some games. Sure they’re not sandboxes, but they’re hardly linear either.

As for in-jokes in games they’re like any in-joke; fun for those who get it, alienating for those who don’t. When you’re selling something it generally isn’t a good idea to try and alienate potential customers, ideally you should appeal to everyone that exists. The downside to that is you often end up producing something generic that doesn’t really have any merits.

What do you think about comedy in gaming? Do many games manage to pull it off or does it generally end up being cheesy?