COMEDY GAMES

A "joke game" on this site is generally taken to mean a troll game, one that is intentionally horrible or just frustrating to play. Not usually meant to be funny (although some people find them to be.)

A comedy game is a game that is meant to be funny, and may or may not be a good game on top of it. Most games fail horribly at being either. I have no idea where you're coming from in saying that the majority of games here are meant to be jokes.

Sweet, I no longer have to elaborate. Thanks guys! I totally agree.

author=Drifloon
The Sword and the Fish is pretty good too. I can't really think of any other humour games that were actually funny (Final Fallacy was simply embarassing).

I agree.

author=Yellow Magic
Apologies if this topic's been done before, but I'm planning on working on this idea I've had for a couple of months now but thought I should get some sort of feedback before going forth.

What does RMN think of amateur games designed purely for comedic value? Do you frown upon them universally? If not, can you think of any examples of geniunely funny games?

Also, what types of humour do you think amateur game developers should stay well clear of? For example, black comedy, slapstick, etc.

This is the first time I've ever looked at these forums, so I can't speak very knowledgeably on this particular "community."

Regardless, I have a pretty informed perspective on how people in various communities respond to comedy games, and I might as well contribute to the subject to see if you can at least come away from this thread with a shred of positive reinforcement.

The fact is, there are thousands of indie RPGs. Some of them are so good, they rival (or even surpass!) a hefty portion of mainstream commercial games, and gain some accolades here and there from indie communities worldwide. Even so, given the choice, very few people would rather play the best RPG Maker games over something like Diablo III or Elder Scrolls V, and what's more, only a handful of people even acknowledge the choice due to the indie developer's comparatively negligible advertising capacity. More often than not, your audience will be other RPG Makers, and they may not appreciate someone making light of the things that they take seriously--that they spend hours or weeks or months pouring their hearts and souls into.

Often, the result is that if you make a comedy game, the more serious pockets of your largest communities of support will recoil and hiss. And it sucks, because nobody wants to be hissed at. And that's only from the handful of people who bother to play the game at all--early on in my project's release, it was frequently overlooked as something which, by its comedic nature, could not offer the satisfying experience people look for in a game. People in the thread have already made the distinction between games that do not take themselves seriously and games which do not take creating the game seriously. It is an important distinction; if you want to succeed in any field, you have to work hard and accept criticism. Humor or no humor, you have to take creating a game seriously.

I have offered you this dark cloud... but there is, believe it or not, a silver lining. If you work hard, people will acknowledge it. Comedy games are still a niche--people get tired of playing the Skyrims of the world and seek out something more lighthearted to fill their time. If you take your project seriously and make it as good as you can (there are no finished projects--only abandoned projects), then it will be played, talked about, and like an infection, it will creep through the veins of the internet getting always larger... And as its popularity grows, so too will the resentment of people who haven't put as much time and effort in as you have.

Good luck!