Desperately seeking a sense of humour

Copyright (c) Noelle Adams. All Rights Reserved.

Why does it seem that all the laughs have been leeched from gaming? Lately everywhere you turn there’s just scowling marines, badass cops, ethereal elves, or bug-eyed anime characters. The Golden Age of LucasArts comedy adventures, in the early 1990s, is long gone.

So why aren’t video games funny anymore? How did we reach a stage where we’re actually surprised when humour surfaces in games – like the bright red Santa outfit in otherwise serious Titan Quest: Immortal Throne?

Humour’s in-game vanishing act could be related to the location-specific nature of comedy. Gaming has become a massive international industry with development houses worldwide. What designers in Denmark find hilarious won’t necessarily translate into belly aches anywhere else.

It’s easier to side-step humour than attempt something that could easily fall flat – particularly when you have 10 hours of gameplay to fill with amusing content. Bad Day LA was supposed to be a South Park-style social satire, commenting on America’s post-911 Fear Culture. Instead, the title, developed in China, was slammed for its over-reliance on fart and vomit gags. Trying too hard to be funny, the developers fell back on tasteless toilet humour.

The disappearance of game humour is also potentially a genre problem. Ask for a list of people’s favourite funny games and they tend to list classic comedy adventures like Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, the Monkey Island series, and, arguably the funniest game of all time, Day of the Tentacle. First person shooters can include little in-jokes and pop culture references but they’re rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Humour thrives in the adventure genre because the story-driven games rely on wacky, memorable characters and clever visual gags to maintain player interest between the puzzle solving. Unfortunately, the current Gaming Age is obsessed with graphic realism and instant player gratification. As a result, stylised-looking adventure games have dropped in popularity. Like flight sims, they now cater for a niche group of dedicated fans.

Adventures games that insist in competing on the sales charts have tended to grow all adult and serious. It’s a logical move when trying to secure an audience used to “hardcore” entertainment. The consequence is more games like Fahrenheit and In Memoriam, and fewer games like Ankh.

There is one high profile exception. August sees the release of Sam and Max: Season 1 collected as a single retail box set. The game, chronicling the furry detectives’ offbeat adventures, will be published in 5 languages, and made available worldwide simultaneously.

There’s no guarantee Sam and Max will sell, of course. Platformer Psychonauts was a critical smash hit but a complete sales disaster – winning many painfully sad Best Game No One Played awards. And Psychonauts had a healthy comedy pedigree. It’s the creative offspring of Tim Schafer, the genius behind 2 Monkey Islands, Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle.

Games are about having fun, about having a laugh. It’s disappointing that many developers, publishers and players seem to have forgotten that in the industry clutter of macho posturing fantasies and soulless, “safe” sequels.