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General: Column: Why Not A Comedy MMO?
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
In this week's edition of "Dana Massey Asks Why Not?" he explains why MMOs are the perfect place games to get into the funny.
With comedy comes liberty. What wouldnt work in a regular game is open season in a game that is totally hell bent on amusing players.
Cities in most MMOs are boring places. Buy stuff, talk to a buddy, visit the auction house and see your frame rate drop. Thats the city experience of every MMO.
Theyre there because real worlds have cities, thus our pixilated ones must too.
In a comedy MMO, new doors are opened. Grand Theft Four Horse Carriage, anyone? Id love to see high speed cart jacking for all to enjoy as people run amuck in the downtown of a medieval city. We know the dynamic of Grand Theft Auto style chaos is fun, especially in limited bursts. So the mechanics work, but no serious MMO could ever try it. In a world of comedy, it would be fair game.
Read it all here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
These could become the ultimate niche games.
So many MMOs are almost like a second job.....why not make them for complete entertainment with no expectations? That could be a real hoot.
Of course I could also point out that many of us get our full daily dose of comedy in these forums!
The most epic dungeon in the game would probably have to be the MMORPG.com Forums
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
If interviews to comedy guys have teach us something is that comedy is hard.
Or to use a grinded out joke:
Hard comedy is hard.
Jokes that are overused are overused.
(see what I did here?).
Also, what is fun to me, is not fun to other people. I love english comedy, like monty pyhton or IT Crown, but everything from USA, Spain or France left me cold (other than austin powers and torrente). Specially ... all hollywood humor is just... *bad*. (other than "something with mary"... that hilarious movie).
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but I have to admit that there are really hilarious Wow based movies.
any mmorpg gets to be a "comedy" or a joke after it is brought by a company like aeria or any other jokes like such, cuz every1 will laugh every single time when they will hear about it.
Dungeon Runners is semi-comedy. And most mmos released recently are jokes
I don't know, I thought The Bard's Tale was pretty funny... especially the back-and-forth between the bard and the narrator. Why not make it like that game? Self-referential humor of MMORPGs.
The downside is that it would be difficult to keep the humor up for that long, considering most MMOs require hundreds upon hundreds of hours sunk into them, and you'd be hard-pressed to keep the humor going in all aspects of the game, as would be expected from a comedy MMO.
There would probably be a time where it'd just go "Look, we don't have any clever jokes or puns for this quest, so just do it."
In other words... I highly doubt an MMORPG that is just "comedy" would be successful, since any humor they did use would get dry and tiring after a while. Best to contain it within other ways, like normal video games like The Bard's Tale.
Comedy is *so* subjective. More so than any other thing.
One man's belly-laugh is another man's cringe.
One man's hilarious parody is another man's ultimate insult.
One man's salacious chuckle is another woman's sexist sleight.
Secondly, jokes wear thin pretty fast. Your Grand Theft Carriage might be funny the first few minutes, but that would fade after any length of time. To keep the humour going for time after time would need a lot of content creation.
Personally, I think the humour "genre" (if we can use that term here) is the most difficult to do.
Watch out for quantum ducks: Quark quark.
In the Country of the Blind, the one-earred man gets the glasses.
Trying to keep an open mind, but not exactly sure how something like this would even work. I suppose anything is possible, but it might be difficult to find an audience for it.
I've always thought a Looney Tunes game would be cool. Think about it, combat weapons could be anvils, pies, seltzer bottles, pianos, slapsticks, and anything made by ACME. I think it could be a very funny game. Quests could be given out by the likes of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and other Looney Tunes characters. It would have to be just for kids either. Watch some of the old animated shorts they were quite violent, but funny. So the game could get say a E10+ or a T rating.
Edit: I also just thought a Three Stooges game would be funny too. Of course it would most likely play the same way as a Looney Tunes game. Both have similar comedy, which was the popular type of comedy of the time. I just don't see much modern comedy being used in a game.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
well everquest 2 have alot of small jokes through out the game, tho missing it abit in the current expansion - and yes love them, any MMO should have little jokes in them...but do not think I d want a "comedy" mmo
I always thought that a MMO based on the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett would be great. If their ever was a world that would be fun (and Funny) to explore it would be one that was traveling around the universe on the back of a Giant Turtle, has magic (of course!), and is flat also!
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
i always thought an MMO based on the old Pen & Paper RPG "Paranoia" would be awesome. Full of twisted humor, and endless flexability in content. A perfect way to explain why you keep coming back after you die as well. For those of you not familiar, here's the wiki on it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_rpg
Don't quite agree with your assessment of today's MMO cities (if you think they are all the same, I suggest taking a step away from the MMO universes for awhile, heh), but I do like the idea of a 'comedy' MMO.
Slapstick, obsurdity, oddities galore, count me in! I tend to be a 'serious' kind of guy anyway, could do me some good, lol.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Dungeon Runners
Next best thing - Discworld MUD
Hmm. Well, the kind of comedy I like is the not-so-PC (politically correct) type of comedy. I don't think a company could include material on par with the likes of Richard Pryor, old Eddie Murphy, the non-PC Robin Williams, George Carlin and Ron White. So...about the only other thing I could say about this article is thanks for the shot of Tina Fey!
She's a hottie!
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Next best thing - Discworld MUD
Your Clicky isn't working but Google is! Thanks for the tip, MUD's aren't my cup of tea but I may try this one.
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
I'm trying to picture an MMO with loads of comedy. Somehow I end up with a mix HHGTTG (BTW F-U Hollywood), some escape games (there are a few funny ones), Bard's Tale and the movie Airplane (the white zone...). 2 narrators, 1 to "sing your praises" (in a most over the top way) another to insult well everything (you great hero you, mightily killing 10 rats for people too stupid to own a cat), maybe they even switch roles once in a while (actual story advancing quests vs grind quests or something).
Darkfall is already filling the comedy niche for me.
A comedy MMO would e fantastic, but I think you have to have some sort of theme. For example, do you go the Dungeon Runners Route and do a satire on fantasy MMO names? Do you make a Toon Town which is just slapstick goofy for all ages?
As other have said, one mans joke is another mans outrage. No company wants to deal with legal suits from special interest groups because of some misinterpretation of a punchline or satircal scenario.
The easiest bet is to make a satire on games in general. A sim of sorts but make progression important so you keep subscribers. Tap the comic groups that advertise on this site. LFG, Paragon City Comics, etc.
rofl
Beat me to it.
Isnt Toon Town a comedy MMO?
There's already plenty of humour. It's in WoW. Its made by a machine. It works like this:
1. The machine googles "celebrity" and assesses the most common hits.
2. It takes the most popular hit that hasn't been used in the game yet, and swaps the first letters of its first name and surname around.
3. It creates an npc with this name and spawns it somewhere in the gameworld, sometimes allocating a proffession based on its real-world counterpart's own.
4. Haris Pilton! And she sells BAGS?? Oh Blizz's comedy machine, you should have your own show!
That's a kids MMO, and it's more a Disney style MMO. I wasn't picturing children's humor.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
As much as I enjoy a bit of comedy, basing an entire MMO on merely being funny above all else, or as a guiding principle, might eventually fall flat or come up short. As others have stated, comedy is difficult to do well, and different kinds of humor often don't strike others as funny. I am glad to see a bit of humor interjected into any kind of game, even survival horror, where a brief chuckle can relieve a bit of tension and prepare you for the next adrenaline rush. However, I would be surprised if a comedy MMO didn't eventually sink to the lowest denominator of comedy: body humor, slapstick/practical jokes.