No Laughing Matter

[Dastardly]

sneep

Stand-up comics (the good ones) are a fantastic way to see the difference between the well-studied and the poorly-studied "funny people." The best ones? Well, for one, they're honest about their influences -- they won't pretend not to have any, and they'll list quality guys. Also, you'll be able to tell they were actually influenced by these guys, rather than just listing people they've heard others say are great.

Then you've got your Carlos Mencia's, who are so thoroughly unoriginal... but it's a sincere sort of unoriginality, in that they don't actually realize they're stealing...

 

[hooksashands]

sneep

(mention) stand up comics

Speaking of influences, I suppose you've watched Louie on FX? That show is great at portraying comedians offstage and on, even if it's acted.

I really wish this thread would get bumped to the top of the list to replace the gamegirlz-show-boobs article. It's a little more insightful.

 

[octafish]

Huh, I never knew that humour in games was thought of as primarily dick jokes. You see I played the LucasArts adventure games, Thief, NOLF, Psychonauts, and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. You know games that had genuinely clever and subtle humour in them. Humour that does seem to be lacking in the games I play today.

Also, I liked Duke 3D not because of the pop-culture references (god help those who thought those Duke "quotes" were at all original) or the boobs, but because it was a step up from Doom and ROTT in terms of gameplay. It had some cool weapons and tricks, the holo-duke being a deathmatch favourite.

 

[Derelict Frog]

Some of the best videogame humour is found in the GTA series. It provides a fantastic satire of contemporary American culture akin to "The Onion". Especially in GTA IV with its "Fox News" parody of "WEAZEL NEWS". The gags are smart, and although there is a lot of swearing and sexual content they just form part of the fabric of the game and the laughs come from the game world and character portrayal rather than from puerile shock humour.

 

[Rad Party God]

As much as the writer of the article likes to bash Duke Nukem and even mention Conker's Bad Fur Day at one point, he can't see beyond the cheap thrills of humor the industry has to offer.

Conker's Bad Fur Day has it's fair share of tasteless and sexual jokes, but it also has a good share of jokes satirizing lots of movies and even satirizing the glitchy nature of bad programming in games.

I mean, I don't completely agree with the author, but I can see it's points and I0d like to see the day when games get better at jokes, even if they're dick jokes.

Also, gotta love the GTA series for delivering truly great humor.

 

[Klepa]

I don't recall Lucasarts's SCUMM games being about dicks and farts. I think that legendary group of games annihilates this opinion. They had a whole different sense of humor, and games like Monkey Island 2 are still, in some circles, considered to be one of the best games ever made.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

The entire article can be negated by pointing out that humor is subjective not just in people but different moods that they're in.

To put it in game terms: Sometimes I'm in the mood for Psychonauts and sometimes I'm in the mood for Splatterhouse.

To put it in Escapist terms: This is a very odd column to hear on the Escapist considering that one of the most popular features on the site is an Australian man who delves heavily into dick jokes for his videos.

 

[Rabish Bini]

Evil Genius was a hilarious game.

Go play that.

In fact, I think I will.

 

[k-ossuburb]

Fallout 3 had some moments, so did New Vegas (if you chose the perk to have the humour at the beginning of the game). I definitely laughed at the super mutant who talked to a cow skull and the entire mission where I had to help euthanize a part-man/part-tree hybrid (or save him, which I thought was cruel).

Also, Blazblue Continuum Shift had some funny moments, pretty much anything with Ragna or Taokaka were funny in some way.

And the entire Oddworld series was hilarious, mostly in the cutscenes. But they had great slapstick humour as well as great dialogue based humour, too.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

The Escapists completely biased hatred of DNF has gone beyond funny and is now just sad. Duke wasn't that bad, Shadows of the Damned... is...

More OT though I didn't buy Bulletstorm because in the demo the main character goes "Hey dick-tits... pre-order this game" (or something like that). "Dick-tits"? That's the best they could do? Watch Full Metal Jacket and come up with something, anything, better than "Dick-tits".

Also more OT, Dragon Age had some awesome mixed in humour really, really, well. I know a lot of people would pay for DLC "banter" packs.

Escapisted, DNF wasn't that bad, just let it go and try to salvage your dignity while there's a chance you still can.

Clearly you missed some of the better dialogue of Bulletstorm then, at first I was completely turned off by the game's dialogue but I've warmed up to it after seeing some Youtube clips taken from later on in the game.

And DNF had humour? Sorry, I must've completely missed that. Last I checked it wasn't parody at all [http://www.destructoid.com/the-duke-delusion-why-duke-nukem-isn-t-a-parody-203745.phtml].

The difference between Bulletstorm and DNF is that Bulletstorm satires its protagonist, the world around him points out he's less than ideal. DNF plays it all straight, the very universe twists and bends itself to pander to Duke and to give him chances to prove how awesome he is when he really is a terrible scumbag. Making him some kind of Broussard's or Pitchford's sick male power fantasy. And when you see Randy Pitchford getting his knickers into a twist over the slightest criticism of DNF you can't help but see that he takes Duke more seriously than anyone ever should.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I always thought that the killing, overall joke of the Duke Nukem games was that people within the universe like him. He's a self-absorbed douche and yet people act like he's some sort of hero. Women flock to him like moths to a flame, despite being a chauvanist asshole. Children see him as a role model, and he uses his enemies neck cavities as toilets. The joke is that he's probably one of the biggest douchebags of all time, and everyone thinks he's God's gift to the human race. It's here where the real humor is, and all the stupid jokes only support this main idea. The only thing is that not many people recognize this, not even some of the developers.
It is because of this that I found Duke Nukem Forever to be amusing. The two weapon limit held it back a little, as well as the regenerating health and load times, and it really didn't live up to DN3D (did anyone expect it to?) but overall, I found it to be a genuinely fun game.
Now, look at Bulletstorm. This is what I don't get: I know the joke is that Grayson is a drunk pottymouth asshole and everyone but he knows it, which would be very funny if everyone else in the game wasn't that way. Everyone acts like Gray is a comlete jerk, even though they all act exactly the same. I did like the part when they recognize how stupid everything they say sounds, and I wish it had more moments like that, but then it just returned to pottymouthed nonsense.

 

[Reid McCarter]

The Escapists completely biased hatred of DNF has gone beyond funny and is now just sad. Duke wasn't that bad, Shadows of the Damned... is...

Escapisted, DNF wasn't that bad, just let it go and try to salvage your dignity while there's a chance you still can.

Thought it may be worth pointing out that The Escapist takes freelance article submissions so there's really no agenda being put forth by the site. I played Duke Nukem Forever, Shadows of the Damned and Portal 2 within a pretty short period of time from one another and got thinking about videogame humour because of it. There's no "site bias" that I know of. Maybe it's just that DNF wasn't all that good that people are so sore about it being criticized?

(And defending the game as being poorly received because of "PC bullshit" is a pretty rough thing to say. There's nothing "PC" about being put off by completely self-aware misogyny and the willful perpetuation of harmful stereotypes that affect attitudes toward real world people. Whether anyone finds it funny or not is up to them but it's not just political correctedness that determines a stance on the game's jokes.)

sneep

(mention) stand up comics

Speaking of influences, I suppose you've watched Louie on FX? That show is great at portraying comedians offstage and on, even if it's acted.

Louie is so great. I love what he's doing with the format and how willing he is to experiment with what's possible in a 20 min. TV show.

I don't recall Lucasarts's SCUMM games being about dicks and farts. I think that legendary group of games annihilates this opinion. They had a whole different sense of humor, and games like Monkey Island 2 are still, in some circles, considered to be one of the best games ever made.

I mentioned classic LucasArts adventure games in an earlier draft of the article but had to cut their listing. They (particularly the Monkey Islands and Grim Fandango) have some of my favourite game writing and character-based jokes.

Oh, and I think dick and fart jokes are funny. They just need to be one part of a balanced comedy diet.

 

[Luke Cartner]

three words, 'Sam and max'

 

[Bostur]

On microcomputers and PCs game humour was every bit as advanced, mature and sometimes subtle in the '80s and '90s as it is now. Probably even more so.

Lucasarts games is the obvious example, but Sierra adventures and text adventures in general rarely lacked humour.

Even 'normal' games that didn't have humour as their main selling point, often managed to squeeze in a lot of hidden references and funny details.


The humour of Fallout didn't appear out of nowhere, it was heavily inspired by the 1988 game Wasteland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_%28video_game%29


There was a rich tradition of humour in video games and I feel this article ignores most of it, to drive home a point that is misleading and plain wrong.

 

[Reid McCarter]

Sorry, this article does NOT serve gaming culture.

This is single sided propaganda on FOX NEWS level: Pulling out some nasties and totally overlooking the BIG AMOUNT of games featuring the finer shades of humour.

And if one is not mature enough to take a dick joke for what it is then he/she is the REAL immature.

Did it ever occure to some morality preachers writing articles to check the semantics of the verb "gaming"? I guess not.

Couldn't agree more. There are just as many tongue-in-cheek-humor games as there is dick-joke games.

by only focusing on the bad, and just slightly mention the few most well known "correct" humor games, makes the whole article seem like nerdrage-bait. Hadnt it been published on escapist and written by a gamer, raging wouldve been ensured.

What about the "tales"-games? Sitcom and slapstick humor.
what about hilarious discussion that we hear in L4D and Dragon Age?
Completely forgotten the old FF games? Laughed more than I was sad/angry in those.

And the list goes on. All in all, articles like this just fuel the "gamers are generally immature" bonfire, and makes those gamers that dont wanna be asociated with that crowd act even more like hipster douchebags. One step closer to splitting the gamer community completely... Good job!

EDIT: Saying DNF is bad has become the new "George Lucas is destroying Star Wars!"....

I'm a firm believer that, rather than disservice gaming as a medium/culture, criticism actually helps to promote growth and is more a labour of love than hate. Whether you disagree with my article or not is fine but I really don't believe that a piece like this should be able to "split the community completely". How else are we supposed to get more out of games if we can't talk about what they're doing right or wrong? Every fully formed artistic medium has evolved because of criticism and games shouldn't be any different.

On microcomputers and PCs game humour was every bit as advanced, mature and sometimes subtle in the '80s and '90s as it is now. Probably even more so.

Lucasarts games is the obvious example, but Sierra adventures and text adventures in general rarely lacked humour.

Even 'normal' games that didn't have humour as their main selling point, often managed to squeeze in a lot of hidden references and funny details.


The humour of Fallout didn't appear out of nowhere, it was heavily inspired by the 1988 game Wasteland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_%28video_game%29


There was a rich tradition of humour in video games and I feel this article ignores most of it, to drive home a point that is misleading and plain wrong.

I can see how you think the article ignores aspects of videogame humour but some examples had to sidelined or omitted in order to look mainly at prevailing trends. Missing out on seminal PC games from the late '80s and early '90s wasn't my intention but it's extremely difficult to try to name everything that has done a good job of advancing game humour while still writing something concise.

In an earlier draft I talked a lot about the good stuff going on in PC games (including some of your examples)in the introduction but, considering that much of this work was being drowned out by more mainstream (and of greater influence outside of gamer/dev. culture) games I had to cut these points.

It would be great to write a more exhaustive history of game humour that includes more titles but I think, ultimately, even with more detail (and absolutely everything considered that ought to be considered) we'd still see the same major trends in game comedy coming through. It's not misleading to concentrate on the most noteworthy examples in a shorter article.

 

[Delacqua]

No mention of Ratchet & Clank? For shame. Everything Captain Qwark says cracks me up, particularly, "Take that, culture!"

 

[Subatomic]

I can see how you think the article ignores aspects of videogame humour but some examples had to sidelined or omitted in order to look mainly at prevailing trends. Missing out on seminal PC games from the late '80s and early '90s wasn't my intention but it's extremely difficult to try to name everything that has done a good job of advancing game humour while still writing something concise.

In an earlier draft I talked a lot about the good stuff going on in PC games (including some of your examples)in the introduction but, considering that much of this work was being drowned out by more mainstream (and of greater influence outside of gamer/dev. culture) games I had to cut these points.

Maybe it's a matter of perspective, but I as an almost exclusively PC gamer consider games like Monkey Island 1 & 2, Baldurs Gate II, Day of the Tentacle (just to name a few) as pretty mainstream and influential, and those had some great jokes and funny dialogue.

 

[Reid McCarter]

Sorry, this article does NOT serve gaming culture.

This is single sided propaganda on FOX NEWS level: Pulling out some nasties and totally overlooking the BIG AMOUNT of games featuring the finer shades of humour.

And if one is not mature enough to take a dick joke for what it is then he/she is the REAL immature.

Did it ever occure to some morality preachers writing articles to check the semantics of the verb "gaming"? I guess not.

Couldn't agree more. There are just as many tongue-in-cheek-humor games as there is dick-joke games.

by only focusing on the bad, and just slightly mention the few most well known "correct" humor games, makes the whole article seem like nerdrage-bait. Hadnt it been published on escapist and written by a gamer, raging wouldve been ensured.

What about the "tales"-games? Sitcom and slapstick humor.
what about hilarious discussion that we hear in L4D and Dragon Age?
Completely forgotten the old FF games? Laughed more than I was sad/angry in those.

And the list goes on. All in all, articles like this just fuel the "gamers are generally immature" bonfire, and makes those gamers that dont wanna be asociated with that crowd act even more like hipster douchebags. One step closer to splitting the gamer community completely... Good job!

EDIT: Saying DNF is bad has become the new "George Lucas is destroying Star Wars!"....

I'm a firm believer that, rather than disservice gaming as a medium/culture, criticism actually helps to promote growth and is more a labour of love than hate. Whether you disagree with my article or not is fine but I really don't believe that a piece like this should be able to "split the community completely". How else are we supposed to get more out of games if we can't talk about what they're doing right or wrong? Every fully formed artistic medium has evolved because of criticism and games shouldn't be any different.

I also doubt that your article will bring forth a gaming revolution, but as I write: It HELPS splitting the community. You can spew out as much exagerated critisism of a fictional problem you want and think its for the good of gaming, but theres too many easily influential idiots out there thats just waiting to get their claws on "proof" like this. One article isnt gonna cause hysteria. 10 articles? Maybe. 100? Now people are really opening their eyes! Then every gamer gotta take a stand: The wannabe intellectuals that shun this kinda fun, or the raging jocks who just wanna blow off some nuts.

My point is, youre fueling the fire. If we keep spewing out about how immature/violent/sexist our hobby is (when its nothing close to the immaturity of certain music genres and films), people will start believing it. In the worst case, many gamers will stop playing games since they grow tired of the ridicule and weird looks.

All here share a hobby, and love it so much were willing to spend hours of our time debating around it! Just stop trying to demonize it. Claiming gaming humor is immature in general is rage-bait.

I'm definitely not saying that one piece of game criticism is going to start a revolution either -- I'm just saying that, like books, films, music, etc., beginning a dialogue is extremely important for helping to move things forward. If anyone putting forth any kind of critical questions has to worry about catering to "easily influential idiots" then criticism will always stay in a stasis and the medium won't move forward.

There's nothing wrong with immaturity in games (or any form of art/entertainment) but the point of the article was to look at how "immature" humour (and I realize that humour is very subjective and tried to maintain objectivity in the article for just that purpose) has typified some of the blockbuster games in the short history of videogames. Sure, that requires some level of generalization but nowhere does the article "demonize" games on a whole. It only points out that games are a medium in their infancy and that we owe it to the medium to maybe want its humour to "grow up" in a sense.

When setting out to write this I really thought hard (and had discussions with an editor) about how to approach this subject without it coming off as "trolling" or "baiting". It's unfortunate if you think that that's what the bottom line of the article is when there actually was some careful thought behind how to present a subject like this without unnecessarily provoking readers.

I also wish that I had asked for a 500 word extension to write solely about early adventure games and how important they've been for setting out a blueprint for successful videogame comedies. I'll still stand behind the fact that they are far less "generally" influential than louder, dumber examples of game humour though -- I think the non-gaming public are more likely to know what Doom or Mortal Kombat are than Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island.

 

[Subatomic]

I also wish that I had asked for a 500 word extension to write solely about early adventure games and how important they've been for setting out a blueprint for successful videogame comedies. I'll still stand behind the fact that they are far less "generally" influential than louder, dumber examples of game humour though -- I think the non-gaming public are more likely to know what Doom or Mortal Kombat are than Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island.

But is other form of media that much different from video games when it comes to comedy? For every genuinely funny and intelligent film, there are dozens of "comedies" which comedic depth doesn't go further than jokes about sex and bodily functions, and those aren't all box office flops either. The most financially successful comedy movies aren't the most sophisticated, and I'd say it's very similar when it comes to games.

 

[BSCCollateral]

Humor's almost as bad as porn. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, it's embarrassing.

I don't think this article's going to add much to anyone's understanding of humor and its use in games. I'm perfectly happy to believe that Duke Nukem Forever fails where other shooters succeed; but the suggestion that DNF is not satire in intent seems ludicrous.