Exploring Humor in Games
Often time players describe games as “fun”. “What a fun game!”
Whereas fewer games are described as “funny” or “hilarious”. I don’t hear people describing games as “funny” as frequently as “fun”. As game designers, if we can create experiences that are both fun AND funny, wouldn’t that be awesome? Unless… you want to feel serious while playing games…
There are plenty of "funny" games out there. For example, Daddy Long Legs is a game that cracked me up so hard. It’s a simple touchscreen mobile game where the player just taps to take one step forward. In this game, the timing of the tapping is everything. This simple mechanic achieves something that’s not only “fun” but “funny” as well — a wobbly long-legged character, weak yet courageous, steps forward in an utterly miserable manner.
Naturally, “fun” ≠ “funny”.
What makes a game fun? The brain likes interesting surprises. A fun game must create an experience that’s full of challenging decisions and interesting surprises. OK so challenging decision + benevolent surprises => fun.
Then what makes a game funny? Good humor is funny. But what is humor and how can humor be represented in games?
What is humor?
Matthew Hurly, a researcher at the Indiana University suggests that humor is a way to present an alternative understanding of the reality, that bridges the gap between the mental model and the real world. Peter McGraw, a professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado defined humor as a benign violation of the expectation. A benign violation of the expectation sounds very similar to the concept of benevolent surprises. But good humor in games can not only tickle the brain in a good way, but also put a smile on the player’s face.
OK I understand now. A fun game is one that’s full of “A-ha” moments. A funny game that’s full of “A-ha-ha” moments.
How to integrate humor into games?
Through an “A-ha” moment for a fun game, the game brings new ideas to the players — a new piece of a puzzle, new ways to think about the game and etc. With an “A-ha-ha” moment, the game presents surprises as well as humor. Humor could be integrated in a few ways — narrative, mechanics, and other players. In fact, the actions of other players account for a great portion of enjoyable funny gameplay. However, let’s focus on the narrative and mechanics since these are the most direct applications to most games, not just the multiplayer ones.
Humor through narrative.
Storytelling is a good way to add in humor. Portal 2 features a robot assistant Wheatley, who adds great funny moments to the game. Here’s a monologue by the incompetent robot Wheatley. An absolutely adorable… moron. Having funny monologues or dialogues between characters not only help build game characters, but also give the players a moment to decompress from puzzle solving.
Wheatley from Portal 2 (jump to 33')
“Most test subjects do experience some cognitive deterioration after a few months of suspension. Now you’ve been under for quite a lot longer and it’s not out of the question that you might have a very minor case of serious brain damage… but don’t be alarmed alright… if you do feel alarmed try to hold on to that feeling because that’s the proper reaction to being told that you’ve got brain damage. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s all what I’m saying make any sense just tell me just say yes.”
The Secret of Monkey Island is a 1990 point-and-click early adventure game. The player guides a young man to follow the dream of becoming a pirate and solves puzzles. The game incorporates a dialogue tree that allows the player to choose between topics for discussion. The game is full of funny dialogues that convey pieces of the puzzles and the character personalities.
What is good about adding humor through narrative?
Integrating humor through the narrative is technically easier and more flexible than creating a new game mechanic. During the game development, the narrative content is more adaptive than game mechanics.
But what are something that we should be concerned about?
Since one of the reasons why we like good humor is that it “violates” our expectation in a good way. But it also means that the replayability is low. If we laugh when hearing a joke for the first time, we might not for the second time. Therefore, adding humor through narrative cannot guarantee the replayability of a game. Also, humor is highly subjective. No one can be certain if a joke is universal, even though same could be said about mechanics.
Humor through mechanics.
If the core mechanics of a game is funny, basically the entire game is inherently funny. One game from last year’s Building Virtual Worlds festival has unique and funny mechanics. Unfortunately I do not have a video. It is a Kinect 2-player game where each person holds a giant physical “fork”, and force feeds each other with virtual food items falling from the sky. It has a funny mechanic that fosters enjoyable player actions. This angel “force feeding” game integrates humor through game mechanics successfully. Moreover, the game mechanics manifest in the physical world so well that the players physically feel like they were acting upon each other.
Daddy Long Legs (jump to 11’)
Daddy Long Legs is an easy-to-pickup-hard-to-master mobile game that exemplifies a good implementation of humor through mechanics. The player taps the screen to allow a long-leg spider to take one step forward. Simple enough, but as soon as one starts to play, the challenge appears. This game challenges hand-eye coordination — the player needs to be very exact at the timing of each step, because if the step is taken a bit too early, the character will fall miserably backward, and if too late, it falls forward. This unique and straightforward mechanics makes this game funny. It is surprisingly fun to control this miserable wobbly spider.
What makes it a good idea to add humor through mechanics?
Inherently funny mechanics make inherently funny games. Games that are funny because of their stories might not be funny when played the second time. However, funny mechanics may have higher replayability than a static narrative content.
Why is implementing humor through mechanics hard?
Humor is highly subjective. If the game is based on one core mechanic, it might restrict itself to one specific group of players who appreciate the humor.
Compare to integrating humor through storytelling, it’s harder through mechanics. While the narrative is relatively adaptive, mechanics is harder to redesign once the development is started.
Humor is a tricky thing to integrate into a game. However, if good humor is well integrated, it could double the fun, making a game both fun and funny — turning “A-ha” moments into “A-ha-ha” moments that create memorable experiences. Who wouldn’t want to play a game that’s fun AND funny at the same time?