Comedy in Gaming - The Ultimate Balancing Act

[Laughter] [Music] comedy and gaming is really interesting to me if all those a lot of different roles than comedy does in other mediums ghostbusters Flight of the Conchords and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy all have their jokes directly shown to you sure some joke can be more subtle than others but the fact of the matter is that in linear media jokes are fed to you on a conveyor belt this isn't a bad thing at all it's just the nature of the beast if you see a joke that really makes you laugh and Ghostbusters it's just a reward that you get for picking a funny movie and gaming however the comedy works a bit differently the kind of comedy that's unique to games ask you to put in a little bit more effort to get your comedic payoff let's start with what is probably the first thing that jumps in your head when I talk about funny things happening in games ragdoll physics this stuff is just plain great my first memories of really laughing at a game we're playing Grand Theft Auto 4 at sleepovers as a kid like most people who had played that game we'd intentionally drive right down the sidewalks plowing into tons of pedestrians sure the wanton disregard for social norms is a lot of the fun of that game but I was always more interested in those rag dolls the game had a mode where you could plop the camera right onto the hood of your car and watch pedestrians roll off of your windshield one after the other and the amount of humor that can be extracted from this is just insane it's just one great slapstick moment after the other and you never know how the next one is gonna be subtly different the amount of pure joy that can be extracted from the endless buggy ragdoll physics of the later 2000s need not be explained to anyone who's played Garry's Mod but speaking of slapstick and Grand Theft Auto it'd be crazy of me not to mention postal to postal to is a great intersection between slapstick and a lot of my other points that I'll cover up next it's a game whose actual writing basically never gets a laugh out of me is safe for the postal dude himself but it's still one of the funniest games I've ever played the mechanics encouraged players to create their own slapstick comedy in a way that's a hundred percent unique to gaming the dismemberment system is incredibly liberal the NPCs are designed to make you want to attack them and a little bit of crack can fuel an entire evenings worth of cartoony violence it's a picture perfect example of true sandbox game a game with practically no ambitions outside of giving you a box of toys and reasons to play with them so the over-the-top gore and the ridiculously powerful weapons make for some great slapstick but what else does this game do to create some comedy well it's a perfect example of simulation driven comedy for this let's look at the ever famous petition mission one of your goals on Tuesday is to get 10 signatures for a petition and the only way to do this is go up to random people and ask them to sign 90% of the time the NPC's say no and then saw you in some annoying way by this point you've realized that the game really doesn't punish you at all for just gunning down 50 people so you get moments like this - please sign my petition you gotta be [ __ ] kidding that's the ticket look just sign the stupid petition I've got stuff to do with the very simple narrative trick of making every NBC annoying and forcing you to interact with them the game encourages you to play the role of the postal dude that is to say an absolute psychopath on this ridiculously violent cartoon so that's all just an example of prompting the player to create their own chaos the simulation is motivating the comedy however once that chaos has started the simulation starts to create its own comedy independent of the player may be a cop accidentally shoots an armed NPC while trying to hit you and that NPC pulls out their gun and a shootout stars maybe someone flees from the gunfire into someone's backyard and gets mauled by their dog maybe you bring the cops down on you while trying to complete an objective and so the only way to finish that objective is the horribly violent way it really does feel like anything can happen in this game and because it's so dynamic and unpredictable it always catches you off guard and it's always funny my personal favorite moment of this game was on Friday I had just ran through a scrap yard full of angry dogs and befriended all of them with dog biscuits they followed me through the level transition and an NPC with a rocket launcher shot directly at us sending 20 dogs flying into this in all directions what makes it even better is that it always feels like you're the one who's responsible for whatever funny thing happened after all it's not like you had to shoot that guy who called you an [ __ ] prompting all of this chaos so now we're getting onto the feeling like you earned a joke well since a game tends to take much more time to get through than a film album or even some books we've got the added investment it takes to feel like you've earned a different type of joke a long seemingly mundane setup that pays off with a smack in the face by a blunt uncaring comedy brick my personal favorite example of this and my personal funniest moment in gaming is a typically quiet reserved moment in the first portal for about three hours we've just been slowly making our way through this incredibly lonely slightly horrifying testing facility with only the company of the infinitely apathetic GLaDOS keeping us motivated well when we get to test chamber 17 GLaDOS does our best to try and understand human emotions for the sake of science here's your new friend it's a box this box has a heart on it humans associate hearts with love love has been dispensed please continue testing in my eye there's never been a better example of blunt comedy sure there are a handful of other jokes at the expense of GLaDOS as apatheia for humans before this point but the last three or so hours we've spent with this game were more or less all set up for this joke and it's a joke that's delivered with 14 cold emotionless words and a one-second animation and it may very well be my favorite joke in any media this is another sort of joke the gaming is the absolute best at the whole thing is perfectly utilitarian the Box serves the puzzle in the same way that a line of dialogue in a film could just be there to serve the plot however an expository line could easily have a joke put into it as an example let's look at my favorite line from one of my favorite comedies ghostbusters dropping off of picking up dropping off just a moment it's just a great simple line that shows how casually the ghostbusters have started accepting presumed crazy people from the police the bluntness of the comedy and Janine's no [ __ ] temperament are the first things to spring to mind when you watch the scene and then the purpose that the line serves to the plot comes a moment after this is great for a film like Ghostbusters and comedy films in general I want to have it any other way but in a game like portal where the quote unquote plot the puzzle is progressed by this cube the cubes function to the puzzle is the first thing that comes to mind then over the next few moments you think more and more about what just happened and that's when the comedy of the situation sneaks up on you while that line in Ghostbusters is immediately funny the companion cubes introduction there's the sort of comedy that just gets funnier and funnier the more you think about it which is fitting considering how much slower longer and quieter a game typically is compared to a film or a book you get stuck in games from time to time and you stop seeing new things every now and then them and this just gives you time to dwell on the jokes whereas in linear media there aren't any brakes on the train and the joke only has so much time to be dwelled on before the next joke comes in again I'm not saying that one sort of comedy is better than the other but this sort of joke is something that I think games have the power to pull off with a lot more grace than other media usually does a good example of this sort of comedy being used in a film is dr. Strangelove a film that feels like it has practically zero punchlines until you finish it realize what it was all about and then come to laugh your ass off about it in retrospect or on repeat viewings dr. Strangelove and the companion cube introduction are both the sort of joke that's funnier in retrospect but a game can afford to give you quiet time to dwell on the joke while the film like dr. Strangelove has to keep the plot moving so you don't have ample time to consider the humor and what you've seen until the film's over let me pitch in another fantastic example of this sort of humor in a game as it'll give me a chance to examine the most unique part of the companion cube joke the setup that takes place over the entire runtime of the game up to that point prey like portal is a quiet mysterious and unsettling game it's got a lot of quiet time in which you can reflect on your character's situation and it has a more overtly horrific atmosphere than portal creeping suspicions over the majority of your playthrough something like 20 hours for a thorough first-timer you'll occasionally read emails about a cargo handler named Grant Lockwood are you at the control station look at the container grant it's stenciled on the outside once you enter the number you should see some options pop-up select dock that's it container just docks itself right yes grant it docks itself they're all self piloting and I guess open open container yes but both ends can never be open at the same time that way the interior loading zone stays pressurized even when the cargo bay doors are open okay thanks Jess okay over your entire playthrough you'll occasionally once every two hours or so read about how this guy annoyed his manager over and over miss training sessions forgot how to run the cargo retriever system ask stupid questions and eventually you find out that he was fired and his tracking bracelet was disabled which is why you could never find the guy's body on my playthrough I heard that this guy was meant to be on a shuttle ride back home but he went missing sometime between his tracker deactivation and the shuttles planned launch time I went on an Eevee a mission to check out the remains of that shuttle and sure enough grant was nowhere to be found much later in the game I got access to the chief of Security's computer and found the code for Grant Lockwood's bracelet allowing me to reactivate it now that I was able to track him again I realized that his body was way out in space probably half a klick away from the station well all that was left to do was to use my Eevee a pack to fly out there and see if I could get some answers the long flight out gave me plenty of time to come up with theories as to what the hell this guy was doing so far away from the station and why you missed the shuttle and by the time I was nearing his corpse I started to take radiation damage and that's when it occurred to me with the big metal ring around Talos one was for it was a part of the magnetosphere that kept radiation away from the Talos crew this guy must have been cooked by the radiation because I couldn't survive out here for more than a few minutes at a time well thanks to the increase TVA speed for my artax propulsion system Jen to upgrade I made it to Grant's body before too long and you know what I found on him the artax propulsion Ginn 3 this dude was so utterly fantastically incompetent and that so little understanding of space travel that he said screw trans star and screw their shuttle I'm gonna fly back to earth myself not once did this man consider fuel oxygen radiation starvation complicated flight trajectories heat from the Earth's atmosphere or even just how the hell he was supposed to land on earth once he got back into its atmosphere and he didn't even make it a mile away from Talos 1 before he was cooked in his EBA suit like a hot pocket while the companion cube intro has to be my favorite joke in gaming when I found Grant Lockwood's body with absolutely zero fanfare and figured out what his so-called plan was my jaw hit the floor like it never has before and is slowly morphed into a huge grin over the 10-minute DVA flight back to the nearest airlock that is a hell of a joke some 20 hours of setup and three words in a numeral for the punchline that is masterful comedy right there and the fact that it was my own curiosity that brought me here and basically zero provocation from the game's plot whatsoever made the joke all the sweeter I just discovered what may very well be the stupidest character in any fiction I've ever encountered and I did it all on my own I don't think I've ever laughed that hard in my life half the reason I'm even making this video is so that I can share that story with you environmental storytelling is something that people are constantly praising games for that sense of discovery just makes places like rapture or Talos one feels so real but environmental comedy like the sudden radiation damage leading to the revelation of Grant Lockwood's idiocy is just such an awesome facet of environmental storytelling as I said environmental storytelling makes the world feel so real and when you discover a joke amongst all of that it's just such a great contrast between your expectations and your eventual discovery that it's impossible not to laugh when it's done right the contrast between the realism of good environmental storytelling and the silliness of a nice bluntly stupid environmental detail is just a perfect recipe for comedy one good example of this sort of thing is The Crying couple in half-life 2 you first see this crying couple in the beginning of the game as you make your way through the apartment complex it's a good piece of world-building really sells the whole downtrodden thing it isn't funny whatsoever a bit later during the uprising you find another couple playing out that same animation and if you're like me you just assume that valve was reusing the animation well then in half-life 2 episode 1 you see this crying couple again only this time they're just having a casual and slightly silly conversation and you start to get suspicious so much for better living through science dr. kleiner says we can make now not that I needed his permission what idiot put kleiner in charge after taking out the auto gun in episode 2 and seeing this it becomes clear that valve wasn't just lazily reusing this very distinct animation over and over it was all just a running gag with games that have great environmental storytelling like half-life 2 discovering a fourth wall break amongst all of that realism just gives even more surrealism than a fourth wall break in a less believable setting it's really fun stuff so now we can get to that last type of comedy that I'll cover for today surrealism specifically surrealism from mods there's nothing quite as jarring or funny as the first time you boot up Garry's Mod and see something like this g-man may very well be the most mysterious character in any game everybody who grew up with these games has gone crazy at one point or another just trying to figure out what his motivations are but thanks to the fun of comedy mods you can just utterly take the piss out of characters like g-man and the once horrifying zombies of Ravenholm which aren't scary at all anymore now that most of us have seen these models hundreds of times on GM construct or other context avoid settings the fun of these sorts of mods that don't take themselves seriously whatsoever such as Garry's Mod is to see things that we've got massive emotional investment and just completely bastardized and turned upside down it's like watching an elementary school play of the shining or taxi driver it would be utterly hilarious to anyone who loved those films well that brings me to the half-life 2 beta minimalist mod this is a mod that aims to recreate a very early beta of half-life 2 it's super bare-bones but it's an interesting chance to look at how the vision perhaps life 2 changed over it's developed let's play a scene from the final half-life to release and compared to its counterpart from the beta rise and shine mr. Freeman rise and shine not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job no one is more deserving of a rest and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until well let's just say your hour has come again [Music] the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world so we got mr. Freeman wake up and smell the ashes you or did you need to wake up and see city 17 so yeah this thing is a big joke this is a mod that does technically recreate almost everything we know about the original story of half-life 2 before the 2003 leak that caused drastic changes to the final game everything and I mean everything is done about as poorly as it possibly can be done and it's pure gold for instance here's captain Vance's tragic death scene this mod probably took a month tops to make but even in a world with cry of fear research and development maneuver metastasis deaths cold embrace and thief 2x half-life 2 beta minimalist might be my very favorite mod I've ever played this thing sense of humor is so in line of my own it's not that the bad mic quality in the utterly stupid dialogue is all that funny it's that this mod is one of the best games of all time if it were made by absolute morons who lack even the most basic of talents that's a recipe for absolute perfection parodies tend to be pretty lame in the world of film at least for my taste but in the world of gaming there's a whole lot going on behind the scenes to make something good things you take for granted in a good game you just don't see things like this scene where I have to take tones of damage for 10 seconds to get past a sniper you don't see ten minutes of elevator rides with absolutely nothing to look at or listen to and you especially don't see this this is yet another type of comedy that's more or less exclusive to gaming the closest analogue I can think of and another medium would be YouTube poops or film edits like home Stallone taking something we're familiar with then changing it in just a few key ways to make it absolutely ridiculous well done there's something that all these types of comedy have in common some more than others surrealism and a longer set up with a shorter payoff a contrast between the inherent immersion of games particularly a first-person one and a completely silly moment is pure surrealism games even as old as System Shock thief and Resident Evil are fantastic at immersion and as graphics get more realistic the ceiling for how immersive a game can get just gets higher and higher when stupid silly or video game II things happen and the setting that feels so real it's such a great form of comedy just look at Resident Evil 7 a game that has absolutely zero punchlines that I can recall it has fantastically realistic graphics and it's mostly grounded in reality at least more than something like quake 3 or Team Fortress 2 and that realism is constantly fighting against the absolute kam penis of everything that happens to Ethan over the course of the game it's like Evil Dead 2 but if that film had incredible special effects that were indistinguishable from reality sure the bad special effects are part of the fun of that film but that cam penis turns into fantastic surrealism when you combine it with such believable visuals that surrealism is all over the place in game comedy and it's just beautiful film music and gaming or more or less equal when it comes to their potential for comedy they all have their own tools but creating good comedy in the game requires so much finer a balance than simply having good writers good delivery and good comedic timing comedy and gaming is the ultimate balancing act between immersion and the intentional undermining of immersion it's rare to see game comedy done perfectly but when it is it's some of my favorite comedy of all time [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 546,266

Keywords: portal, prey, resident, evil, postal, postal 2, running, with, scissors, comedy, joke, slapstick, gta, grand, theft, auto, essay, ragdoll, physics, violent, gib, explained, half, life, beta, minimalist, mod, hl2, companion, cube, glados

Id: TC9L9ucf40g

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020