What does it take to make you laugh?

My guest for this issue of Multiplier is Ruby Innes. Innes is a cohost and community manager for the Australian video game variety show Back Pocket. She’s also covered the gaming space via her roles in radio and as a writer for Kotaku Australia (RIP). You can find and follow Ruby on Bluesky. Meanwhile, you can support Back Pocket via Patreon and watch the show when it airs via Twitch.

Fergus: It often feels like everyone in the gaming community is obsessed with genre. Whether it's arguing over the usefulness of terms like Metroidvania, the validity of categorisations like ‘Souls-like’ and what the definition of what a role-playing game even is, gamers on the internet love to police the language used to describe games and argue about where the lines lie.

Funnily enough though, games that deliberately try and explore comedy complicate and expose how nonsensical all this angst about genres really is. It’s hard to describe something like 420BLAZEIT 2: GAME OF THE YEAR -=Dank Dreams and Goated Memes=- [#wow/11 Like and Subscribe] Poggerz Edition as anything other than a comedy game.

At the same time, the gameplay involved has little in common with other comedy-slanted releases like Untitled Goose Game or Thank Goodness You’re Here. Even so-called ‘friendslop’ games like Lethal Company and Peak probably fit into the comedy-in-games conversation somewhere. Ruby, as someone who is a) pretty embedded in gaming communities via your work at Back Pocket and b) IMO also quite funny, what does the term ‘comedy game’ mean to you?

Ruby: Well, first of all, thank you for referring to me as funny. It means a lot that I could be your preferred clown at what I assume was a productive trip to the circus. The term 'comedy game' can very much be interpreted in a few different ways, but I've found that titles looking to fall under the 'comedy' tag tend to infuse comedy elements into both gameplay and writing. Games like 420BLAZEIT 2 and Thank Goodness You're Here are actually a lot alike in this way, as both the way you play and the way the game communicates with the player have comedic elements (albiet in very different ways). On the other hand, a game like Untitled Goose Game relies more on the gameplay to evoke its humour, due to a lack of dialogue in the game.

To me, the term 'comedy game' relates to games that use both or one of these elements to make you laugh. While a game won't always make somebody laugh due to the subjectivity of comedy, you can always tell when a game is trying to make you laugh. The mention of 'friend-slop' games is interesting though, as it brings a whole new element into the mix: the player. While the game may not purposely be trying to be comedic in its gameplay or writing, it might be a space that encourages the player(s) to interact with the game or other players in a comedic way.

Kinda makes you wonder: is it better to laugh alone at a funny thing on the screen that's trying to make you chuckle, or to laugh at your friend slipping on a banana peel and then falling to their untimely demise?

Fergus: I don’t know one is necessarily better than the other and I’m not entirely certain if this analogy holds much weight but my brain goes straight to how I think about comedy in movies. There’s some kind of symmetry between games and movies that are funny in that they are written in a way that makes you laugh versus games and movies that you experience them in a social setting and can’t help but laugh.

Megalopolis is not a comedy but you would not know it based on the uproarious experience I had seeing it with a crowd in IMAX and I’d say the similar things about the likes of Left 4 Dead or Deep Rock Galactic. Sure, the first few runs might be more scrappy but the ease with which a tentatively co-op experience can slide into comedy feels distinct from games that have more clear-cut comedy going on in them.

I suspect a lot of it has to do with that element of interactivity you touched on. Player behavior can be famously hard to predict However, when the setup for something like Gary’s Mod or Among Us is as goofy as it is, I can’t really say there’s a great shock that players try to match that tone rather than run against it. As someone who is increasingly 'Dungeons & Dragons-pilled' nowadays, I also can't help but think about how common it is for players in the TTRPG space to hedge towards comedy because of how much more comfortable that is in a social environment.

Games like Lethal Company or Peak or Helldivers 2 might be built around systems that slant the odds towards producing comedic outcomes but I don’t know if it would work if players were actively pushing the experience in a more serious direction rather than following the direction that the game's broader comedic vibes points them in.

Ruby: Some people tend to group movies and games together in a way that often doesn't really take interactivity into account on the side of video games, but it's even more rare for people to consider the interactivity of the film-viewing experience in the way you've described. And in saying that, I entirely agree!

It's really interesting to think about the way comedies in film are written with comedic intention and comparing that to how we might turn the viewing of some films into a comedic experience a la so-bad-its-good or gamified viewing parties. The broader comparison of that to how we play games makes total sense.

Also, it's funny you mention Megalopolis because I actually tried to watch it the other night with my partner and as funny as we tried to make it in order to get through it, unfortunately we only got about halfway before realising there was still another hour. You could say it was like trying to play a bad game for a laugh and realising you're still in the tutorial level by the time you realise there are more fulfilling things you could be doing with your life, like breathing in the fresh air of a beautiful tree, making a random baby on the street laugh, or even lying flat on the floor and staring at the ceiling for an unidentified period of time.

Nothing but love to the Megalopolis beliebers though.