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Even the game's UI has a comedic personality, behaving with a mind all its own. Characters such as Freen the Felt Salesman and Eubrick the Retired (formally known as Eubrick the Bitter, Eubrick the Undefeated, Eubrick the Bastard of Hillhaven, Sally the Stable Girl, and Eubrick the Bed Wetter) are funny creations regardless of how many games you've played.īut if you happen to be a video game veteran, DeathSpank operates as an inspired parody, sending up RPG and adventure game chestnuts left and right. Nearly everything in DeathSpank is funny, and the comedy operates on two simultaneous levels. First glances can be deceiving, however, and DeathSpank brings far more cleverness and ingenuity to the table than " Diablo meets Monkey Island" (despite Gilbert's fondness for describing his new game as exactly that).ĭeathSpank extends its comedy through the player's experience, from its menu screens to its voice acting from its art style to its quest-giving system from its character animations to its wacky-answer puzzles. We're out of our league! DeathSpank makes good on the promise of the first claim and goes some way toward refuting the inevitability of the second.Īt first glance, DeathSpank appears to be Hothead Games' and Rob Gilbert's attempt to update the old LucasArts dial-a-joke adventure game formula, with lite-RPG and hack-and-slash mechanics stirred into the mix. In the same Bergson essay referenced above, he describes comedy as a "social gesture." Nearly all the 'funny' games we've seen are single-player affairs, lacking the spontaneous group-mind formed when we experience comedy in other media. We may play an interactive role watching a live stand-up comic, but we don't write the punchlines nor do we decide when to deliver them. When choice, pace, and timing are handed off to the player, the potential for comedy dissipates. Furthermore, player agency in an interactive world (a defining feature of modern games) is mostly antithetical to comedy. They may manage to deliver wordplay and 'wackiness,' but desperately trying to 'be funny' usually results in an outmoded brand of one-liner comedy that died with the Borscht Belt. We can do this! Claim 2: Video games are hopeless vehicles for comedy. Comedy is aimed at the intellect, and gamers are smart.
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Game developers understand how to build complex systems for interactive communication, and that's exactly what a successful comedy is. It relies on the precise execution of a final build, fine-tuned through iteration and feedback.Ĭomedy, as Henri Bergson observes in his seminal "Theory of Laughter," is "something mechanical encrusted on the living." One could easily apply the same phrase to describe games. Like a well-crafted game, a successful comedy is highly technical, based on a set of clearly-defined rules, and carefully engineered to trigger a calculated response.
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We can illustrate that tension with two apparently contradictory claims:Ĭlaim 1: Video games are well-suited to making us laugh. But I also think DeathSpank exemplifies the conundrum faced by video games that try to be funny. A game that wants to be a comedy must be a game directed through a comic vision that defines the whole project.Īs a comedic game, DeathSpank advances the ball down the field in some creative ways, and I'll discuss those in a moment. Comedy is a self-contained unified aesthetic. It can't be delivered on a separate channel or stirred into a recipe to add spice. As I've noted previously on my blog, fully-realized comedy is a system. Hothead and Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank has me thinking about humor in games and the challenge of creating an integrated design for comedy. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.