Ultimate Comedy VR Bundle Roundtable Questions

Making people laugh is hard.
Add in gameplay and it becomes REALLY hard.

We told you about the Ultimate Comedy VR Bundle last week, where you can get the best/funniest VR games in a killer bundle all together. We think you should also get to know the amazing people that brought you these amazing games, so we put out a call to the developers of the games in the bundle and put together a roundtable of their answers so we could talk about how exactly you make a funny video game. Now we have answers thanks to the following question-answerers right here:

• Andrew Eiche, COO - Chief Operating Owl - and Cable Slinger at Owlchemy Labs (Vacation Simulator)

• Dominik Johann, Co-Founder and Art Director at Crows Crows Crows (Accounting+)

• Christopher Kao, Director of Product at Adult Swim Games (Rick & Morty: Virtual Rick-ality)

• Erich Meyr, Design Director at Squanch Games (Trover Saves the Universe)

• Tender Claws (Virtual Virtual Reality)

What makes a video game funny?

Andrew Eiche: There are really two key elements you have to focus on for video games– the elements of the game and the actions. The more straightforward of the two is the emergents of the game. The developers work to create a funny and playful environment, one that puts the player in the headspace that play is encouraged. It is the setting, the dialog, cutscenes, environment, and situations. It is carefully crafted and workshopped like most good comedy is. When we think about “comedy” games this is usually where we focus.

But! To make a funny game none of that is necessary. The player as an active participant throws a wrench in everything. They screw up timings, miss lines of dialog, and generally are a nuisance to the traditional elements of comedy. The core of what makes a game funny is the player and how they engage with the game. The environment does a great job encouraging the player to be playful or take the world lightly. It’s the player themselves that creates great comedy.

We can see this time and time again. Some of the funniest moments in games are things that the designers never accounted for. Moonbase Alpha, Batman Arkham VR, the thousands of YouTube recap videos of Valorant, Overwatch, PUBG, and an entire genre of content creators on Minecraft are all fantastic examples of games not developed with comedy as the primary goal, but a large emerging fanbase using their play as the driving force behind humor.

Dominik Johann: Imagine in your mind’s eye: a huge throne room, gold and marble, a mighty and powerful king sitting on his rightfully claimed throne, ready to rule and not be reckoned with. Now imagine another very small throne next to the first one, with a little tiny king who’s exactly the same but smaller, and who maybe makes smaller decisions and solves smaller problems for his little tiny baby kingdom. That’s just one of many possible scale humor examples though. What I’m saying is that scale humor will always work 100% of the time.

Christopher Kao: When you’re invested enough in the game and you find yourself actually laughing out loud during gameplay, that’s when a game is funny.

Erich Meyr: The jokes.

Tender Claws: There is so much that goes into comedy: pacing, content, environments and even the experience of “play.” Have you ever watched someone in VR? The medium itself is delightfully funny. You strap yourself into this bulky piece of equipment that covers your face and wraps you up in cords . . . and somehow early hype positioned it as equivalent to “being really there.” We wanted to make a game that really drew attention to the beautiful absurdity of being in VR, (all the tech utopianism) while also showing off the early strengths of the medium and what makes it special. Many of our levels reference the actual technology: we have levels that try their hardest to convince you to take off your headset or put the controllers down and just relax.

How do you make a game both funny and fun?

Andrew Eiche: A game has to be fun above all else. If the game is frustrating or boring the player will not be in the right headspace to find anything funny.

Some of the best fun and funny games are the ones that have a mechanic that, at its core, is interesting and humorous. For instance, QWOP is a game where the bad controls are played for a laugh. It sets players expectations that they will not be successful, but the act of trying is playful and inherently funny.

At Owlchemy, we look at VR from the “child’s mind”. Players enter the world and immediately revert to a more juvenile and playful state. That’s not to say they aren’t able to engage with complex topics, but more that the general interactions with the world are as if they are children exploring the boundaries of what is possible without the boundaries of consequences. We double down on that state of play and combine it with the almost-precise but definitely-not-precise enough controls of VR to not just allow for chaos, but to delight in it.

Dominik Johann: From a player’s perspective, “The Funny” is in the surface-level text, characters and general vibe. FUN, on the other hand, is in the ways you interface with the game, how much you’re buying into the world that’s laid out in front of you, and how much you’ll get on board with playing along. I think the best way to achieve that is to create a game that encourages players to mess with it but is always one step ahead of them, like that guy in the Stephen King novel “The Gunslinger”. In this classic novel the Gunslinger character chases the Man in Black character through the desert forever and it just keeps going and going!!! I think he eventually catches up to him but that’s not the point.

Christopher Kao: Fun and funny are really two different things, as very intense dramatic games can be fun experiences, but they aren’t funny. To make games that are fun and funny you need that blend of engaging gameplay and comedic timing. Different games take different routes for this. There are a lot of funny adventure games that use strong narrative and dialogue to incorporate humor. Another way is to put players in absurd gameplay situations and use the game mechanics to make it funny like multiplayer party games.

Erich Meyr: We started by making some fun gameplay mechanics and then tried writing jokes around them until we were both having fun and laughing. You know you've got something funny if you're still laughing at the same thing after a year. Also if you put it in front of people and they laugh too. But real laughter, the kind that leaks out of their eyeballs.

Tender Claws: Part of comedy is playing with expectations. Early in the game . . . we set up one sort of play expectation/story experience of doing different “tasks” and then morph it into something “other” that hopefully unfolds in less expected ways. Comedy is the delivery mechanism that sheppards you on the journey of discovering what comes next. Comedy also contains a bit of self-reflection: meaning that it comes from that uncomfortable and absurd feeling that arises when we recognize the familiar, or what is expected, but then discover how that familiar is made strange. Virtual Virtual Reality (VVR) starts with a series of “familiar” tasks, like buttering toast, that is anything but. There’s also a meta layer to the game where the tasks it asks you to do are intentionally so mundane and stupid and commedically impossible to succeed…that when you are informed there is a way to destroy the whole system…you’re onboard with that. In order to make tasks you’re doomed to fail at entertaining, we had to make the characters and situations around the tasks funny enough that they kind of transcend boring and frustrating into a pleasurable absurdity.

How iterative is comedy when writing for a video game?

Andrew Eiche: For Owlchemy’s style of game, the comedy writing is incredibly iterative. It feels closest to stand-up then television. We pitch jokes, then watch them play out over the course of many play tests. We develop and tweak jokes, making them stronger, or we throw out the ones that just seem not to work.

The rule of thumb at Owlchemy is “comedy over canon”. We’re willing to bend or even change our own canon if it makes for stronger material. We want to create a funny game, even if the universe isn’t always internally consistent.

Dominik Johann: We usually get it right the first time by loosely pencilling in “The Funny” and filling it in as we go. Beyond that, every idea is worth giving a shot and it’s my strong conviction that there is a way to make anything funny if you introduce improvisation and look at it from the right angle or push it to the extreme.

Christopher Kao: It’s just as iterative as all comedy writing, maybe even more so now because of live events and updates in games.  When the game is being developed, dialogue and scenarios always have multiple passes, and people “punch” up the dialogue as the game develops. Unlike TV though, once the game is live, games can now update to add new scenarios, new levels, and new characters.   This can all add different layers into the comedy as the game goes on.  So it can be ever-expanding.

Erich Meyr: It really depends on how things pass the leaky eyeballs test. Sometimes the first idea is the best idea, even when it's not really a good idea but it made everyone laugh. Other times a joke just isn't landing or the story needs some work and you iterate a lot. On average it took about 3 iterations on any level in Trover before we had something genuinely good, but the best jokes often made it through all 3 passes and sometimes were unaltered.

Tender Claws: We iterated on gameplay and writing simultaneously and constantly throughout VVR’s development. One method is to provide scenes with tempting “possibilities'' other than the immediate win state and have responses ready to go to reward player curiosity. Another method we used in VVR was to directly tempt players to adverse actions by putting something shiny in front of them and telling them not to touch it…then, of course, we would yell at them when they did. These methods often take testing and experimentation to find the holes in the joke. We’d put builds in front of players, see what they’d do in different situations and make sure the game had appropriate responses to their actions.

Is it harder to create comedy for an interactive medium?

Andrew Eiche: Absolutely! Player agency is really difficult to account for. This is even more pronounced in VR where the player can look anywhere they want to. You can’t be sure that a player sees that really funny moment you spent weeks designing. It requires a more shotgun approach from the design standpoint. We don’t rely on hoping players catch a few big laughs in our writing. Instead we focus on creating many moments of comedy and letting the players drive the big laughs. Anywhere where we can get the player’s actions to be the key point of humor is much more likely to land.

Dominik Johann: Not necessarily harder but it certainly requires flexing different muscles. Players are part of the joke and your job is to make them feel like 1. they’re part of an improvisational comedy act and 2. whatever they do in the game is really funny. You can’t rely on timing or framing as much and you’ll have to write so much more dialogue if you want things to feel natural and organic. What a hassle!!!

Christopher Kao: It’s harder to create everything in an interactive medium!  Comedy is especially hard though. You have to strike that balance of giving players freedom but also getting them to see what you want them to see or hear what you want them to hear.  Older games had a lot more static cutscenes where most of the narrative lived, but modern games try to make the gaming worlds feel fully immersive by giving players control during the whole game.  This can also lead to players potentially missing the jokes.  So finding the balance between control and freedom is something every developer has to do.

Erich Meyr: Everything is harder in an interactive medium. People come into it expecting a riveting experience they could get from a movie or book and inevitably end up jumping around trying to break every pot in a room because they can. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's often the most fun they've had all year. Who wants to be locked down listening when they were given the ability to jump? Most of us really can't jump IRL even though we say we can.

Tender Claws: Not necessarily, perhaps the toolbox and room for audience agency is a bit different. Though, this does change comedic timing. Creators give up a degree of control in working with an interactive medium: less linear and more back and forth with a live participant. If one form of comedy is playing with expectations…then an essential tool is “priming the joke.” It’s like the pleasure of telling a knock knock joke when the player knows their expected role and answer…except a lot of pleasure (comedy) comes from when those answers we’ve been primed to expect, based on how we are trained to play, are subverted. Another variation of the knock-knock joke example is that both parties may know the answer…but in the end…the timing AND the answer itself is ultimately left to the player to complete. It is up to them whether or not they will answer “who’s there” or start doing something completely random like telling you about their day at work. You’re not alone in creating the outcome so how you set up the joke and account for it’s punchline necessarily has to change.

What comedic game or movie has inspired you?

Andrew Eiche: Personally and as a studio the “Michael Schur” TV comedies have had a huge influence on our work. You can see a lot of Parks and Rec, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and The Office in what we make.

From the games world the old LucasArts point and click adventures have been really influential. Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle are definitely deeply inspiring.

We also take inspiration from campy and even more “serious” media. In Rick and Morty, there are a ton of Time Cop references. For Vacation Simulator, we dug deep into how our Memories collectible would work, deeply debating if they should be like Mario Odyssey’s Moons or Mario 64’s Stars.

Dominik Johann: That scene in Army of Darkness where Ash jumps up to click his arm stump into a chainsaw. Also that scene in Army of Darkness where the skeletons from the Army of Darkness (that’s the name of the movie) beat their war drums and look at the camera and go chhhHHHHHHHHHHHhhh HEHEHEHEHE chhhHHHH. Grim Fandango is my favorite and probably most formative comedy game experience. He’s a skeleton too

Christopher Kao: I loved the Monkey Island series, especially the original trilogy. I remember laughing non-stop as I played those games. For shows, anything in the Rick & Morty universe always has me laughing.

Erich Meyr: It's impossible to just name one so I'll just go off about a bunch. I love any game that knows how to make fun of itself or its mechanics. Growing up I found this in old school adventure games and RPGs like Earthbound or even Chrono Trigger. In more recent times I think games like Undertale, Portal, and Stanley Parable have continued to shape what comedy games can look like. For Trover we drew inspiration from movies and shows as well - like Monty Python, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Seinfeld, The Office, and I'm sure plenty more top-notch comedies.

Where do you think funny games go from here?

Andrew Eiche: There is so much unexplored space for the genre. I think during the heyday of Flash Games we were really pushing what comedy in games could mean (my favorite of that era is Don’t Shit Your Pants). Since then it seems like the appetite from the development community slowed a bit, but now with the tools of development being more accessible than ever I’m starting to see the genre really expand.

I don’t think there is a single path for games in comedy and I think that’s fantastic! We can have satire, slapstick, standup, and sophomoric comedies in other media, and I cannot wait to see what new and creative things in the next wave of comedy games.

Dominik Johann: We’re seeing lots of good things in the funny games landscape, but I’m hoping to see more genre mixes and “The Funny” as an element of games that are otherwise not really that funny, or as an undercurrent that isn’t that loud. I’m excited about games that encourage funny moments through playing them with friends or on streams too. Overall, in my opinion, the best move is to stay popular with the kids and do whatever they do, no questions asked.

Christopher Kao: Humor is underrepresented in games because it’s hard to do, and I think we’ll see more developers noticing that it’s missing and try to step up. Comedy relies on not only the situation, timing, and the current environment, but also on shared cultural norms and understandings. For example, if you look at movies, comedies usually don’t do well globally versus action movies because a lot of comedies rely on understanding a certain culture, which people may or may not get. It’s also a product of the time, as a lot of old comedies don’t age as well versus other genres. This also leads to a lot of opportunity in games though. As gaming continues to grow I think we’ll see more games try to use humor to set themselves apart from others in the market.

Erich Meyr: Hopefully they continue being made and people keep buying them to show the world they want more. If that doesn't happen it's likely they'll experience a slow and barely noticeable decline, like retail stores and compact discs.

What’s your favorite (PG-13!) joke?

Andrew Eiche: I’m not really a “jokes” kind of person, but something I heard that made me laugh so hard I had to sit down during a walk and try not to throw up is this:

Dominik Johann: Doctor: Treatment is simple, go see Confuzo, the very funny clown
Pagliacci: What about Pagliacci?
Doctor: Pagliacci? I couldn't name a more suck-ass clown

Christopher Kao: Never criticize someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have their shoes.

Erich Meyr: "Or what, you'll release the dogs or the bees? or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark they shoot bees at you?" - Homer Simpson

The Ultimate Comedy Bundle goes on sale on Steam on November 25 (that’s today!). Get in before it’s too late!