Humor 101

It's much easier to be on the judging side than on the creative side, in game development or anything else. To truly know how to tell the funny games from the not-so-funny ones, a critic should understand what kind of effort goes into making a game funny in the first place.

Grim Fandango is one of many funny, excellent games on Tim Schafer's resume.

GameSpot spoke with Tim Schafer, the much-lauded game designer and founder of Double Fine Productions, on the subject of humor. Schafer is well known for having created or collaborated on many games that are regarded as the funniest in the biz--Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Sam & Max among them. Shafer says that by anticipating a gamer's moves, motivation, and emotional state, a developer can do his or her best to make the game react in a way that is satisfying to the player. "To me, since so many of the players' possible moves are ridiculous, it only makes sense that the game's reactions are ridiculous," he says. "If the player chooses to ask the same question of a character over and over, eventually, that guy's gotta say, 'What, are you deaf?' "

Shafer points out that games are a fantasy world where the player can do things that are not entirely possible in the so-called real world. "Yes, in some games you can beat up hookers, but sometimes you can also try to hand the hooker a stack of pancakes or jump on her head," he says. "If the player is being funny, the game should be funny right back at them. If the gnarled wizard asks you to bring him a sacred amulet, and you hand him a harmonica instead--well, you just have to have a funny response for that or you're not doing your job."

Matt Soell, a writer for Wideload Games, says that "the funniest gags are a jarring leap into the unexpected," and calls the fad-driven humor construct of "relying on the familiar"--using catch phrases, movie parodies, and bound-to-expire pop-culture references--one of the biggest mistakes game developers make in trying to create a funny game. Soell does not believe it is possible, as a game designer, to anticipate "every possible way a player can approach a situation and craft a perfect response for each." There's only so much time, money, and disc space, he says, and "[it's] hard enough to design satisfying gameplay--making it funny adds another layer of difficulty."

Trying to "squeeze" humor into games that are primarily genres other than comedy is the key problem, according to Rory Root, the owner of the Berkeley, California-based comic shop Comic Relief, and an icon in the comics business. "Working through a level, solving a puzzle, or defeating an opponent," Root says, "when you are rewarded with a joke or, often as not, a bad pun, it just doesn't work. It's as if someone handed you a bag of phrases--a priest, a rabbi, and a nun, a box of condoms, a hot tub, a bar, and four fifths of Irish whisky--and then told you to assemble your own joke. Even if it's funny, the effort versus reward seems out of scale."

Constant repetition can make the funniest jokes hackneyed in a hurry.

Another problem is repetition. Many things can be funny once, but few can be funny twice, let alone three or more times. "When a joke in a movie falls flat, the movie keeps on going and in a few minutes you're probably laughing at another joke down the line and have forgotten all about the dud," Shafer says. "But in a game, you might be stuck on that joke until you can get past it. Like that hilarious boss monster who has four taunts he yells at you over and over, each of which is funny approximately one time, if you're lucky." Shafer notes that if the boss is difficult to beat, "you can die 20 times and hear each of those taunts over and over and over until you're ready to kill somebody."

Root agrees that repetition, while a "mainstay" of comedians, is the bane of video game humor. "Surprise is one of the keys to comedy, and it's difficult to pull off in a game with repeat plays," he says. "Also, the [cutscenes], which could provide a setting for humorous interludes...are generally skipped when pressing on to finish the game is uppermost in mind."

Another game developer to concur on the repetition point is Sylvan Clebsch, founder, game creator, and lead programmer for Targetware, which is developing the Targetware flight simulator system. Clebsch believes that game designers err in the humor department when they forget they are game developers and not scriptwriters, and that unnecessary repetition is one of the bad habits novice scriptwriters are likely to fall into. "A joke that's funny once is very likely to be flat the second time, grating the third, and enough to make you never play the game again the fourth," he says.

It's not just rough humor--it's not even original.

Holly Geithman has run a small game studio, worked at Sony Online, and been a senior producer at SCEA. She now works as a "game agent" (a liaison between Hollywood and the games industry) for Endeavor LA. Geithman struggled to think of good examples of "funny" games, but cited Shafer's work with LucasArts as the best. She agrees repetition is a danger in attempting to make humor-driven games. "Most games are all about action, with a few stabs at humor," she says. "I'm thinking of Duke Nukem, but it was all ripped off from Evil Dead. You smiled the first time you heard a few lines, but then it got really old."

Shafer says game makers must be hypersensitive about repetition. "There is an old expression that goes, 'Don't put humor on the inner loop," he says. "Nothing is funny that many times in a row.'" "OK, I just made that up," he continues, "but it's true. Characters need to change up what they say, not just to keep the humor fresh, but to make the character seem more real."