Comedy in the Ludonarrative of Video Games

Abstract

Although humor is a prevalent component of numerous video games, thus far it has not been recognized as an established genre of its own. Comedy—the deliberate act to harness and perform humor—represents one, but an important segment of the emotional range that video games should aspire to cover. The challenge, however, lies in attempting to analyse various elements contributing to comedy, particularly with the inclusion of interactively as a fundamental element of video games. In this paper, we propose using the concept of ludonarrative as the basis for analysing comedy in video games. We approach ludonarrative comedy through examples that illustrate trends which can be discerned from games that introduce humor through their narrative and ludic (gameplay-related) elements.