Where has the humour gone ?

Yeah good ole Razzie awards are what comedy movies usually get.

I've seen plenty get worst movie of the year also.

Eh sorry should have consolidated my replies I know

But Silver made some good points as well and while more pessimistic in outlook on AAA games and the industry in general ... it makes sense (and trying to keep my own bias from influencing how I see things as well which tends to be difficult at times). Certainly the gaming industry has changed a great deal since the start.

I still think its pretty diverse, if you include AA and Indie, and having grown up on old games I find I still enjoy new games. I love Pathfinder, FO4, Skyrim, Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Numeria, and even the SIMS4.

Speaking of which SIMS4 is filled with warm heart filled moments, is very non-violent overall, I laugh a lot playing (yes I confess my deepest darkest RPG secret sin right now in public - I enjoy playing SIMS4). I play SIMS4 (importing my own lore and characters in RP style of course ... and the magic DLC helped a lot with that) to get away from reality in our world. SIMS4 is very light hearted, playful, and casual. Yes the game is a massive money sink and cash cow for EA - fully aware of that. But still up to each player to decided what they purchase, it is moddable, and it is fun. If it wasn't fun and enjoyable it wouldn't be so popular.

Anyhow once again going off on tangents. Only wanted to mention Silver had some good points even if my own "gameview" tends to be more optimistic and positive. I hate the microtransaction trend and loot boxes and so on ... but I still enjoy some AAA games. Even AA is good - I totally adored Greedfall and Pathfinder which I think fall under AA (?).

Old Grognard said:

I didn't forget/get anything wrong. Good luck getting a new comedy film funded.

It'll probably be another B-budget knock-off among countless others.

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Deadpool
& any Marvel movie generally uses more comedy than any other genre style
Likewise, most Wes Anderson movies are very whimsical and well funded
Tarantino movies are usually packed with dry humour
RomComs are one of the most prolific genres entirely

But out-and-out pure comedy films are lacking at the moment, which is a different topic completely, because the pure comedies come from people who's full time job is being a comedian and then they make a film, not because they are part of the regular routine of movie making.

The issue is a lack of high profile comedians getting to that point in their career where they can front an entire movie. Bill Burr's humour is great, but is it transferable to movies? Likewise Dave Chappelle. Their brand of humour fits our age perfectly, it just happens to not be a very cinematic style of humour.

And that's the issue, not generic 'Hollywood is crap' lazy complaints.

Laurel & Hardy/Marx Brothers - Stand-up comedians
Abbott & Costello - Stand-up comedians
Woody Allen - Stand-up comedian
Monty Python - Stand-up comedians/TV comedians
Eddie Murphy/Steve Martin et al - Stand-up comedians/TV comedians
Jim Carrey/Rowan Atkinson - Stand-up comedians

etc.

Sometimes a comedy film gets made, just for the sake of being a comedy, and they still do get made, and often with good budgets and publicity, such as Paul (2011) from the Cornetto trilogy guys, the Hangover movies (2009-2013), and all that kind of thing.

What you might be 'missing' is stuff from directors/writers who specialise in comedies, such as "who's the new Mel Brookes" or "Who's the new Sasha Baron Cohen" (who made a comedy movie in just 2016), but these kind of guys are rare talents, and that's, again, more the issue than any specifically industry-wide issue.

It's not an issue with 'Hollywood', it's an issue with talent getting stifled before they get there. As @joxer; points out, this isn't a problem with most other global cinema outlets where comedy is as rife and as forthcoming as ever.

I doubt it made the big bucks that get the executives excited.

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Bingo that is my point but seems other posters cant quite grasp it. It's the same reason why most pure action flicks are direct to video nowadays. They don't make the big bucks.

Old Grognard said:

Bingo that is my point but seems other posters cant quit grasp it. It's the same reason why most pure action flicks are direct to video nowadays. They don't make the big bucks.

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Deadpool made huge amounts of money...

Gee, who knows?

Reminds me of a joke, though.

An African, an Irishman and a Jew walk into a gaybar and the Jew says to.....

Sorry, I'll have to finish the joke later. SJWs just kicked in my door.

Whimsical games are still out there. There's just a LOT more games now, so you need to actively look for them.

Thimbleweed Park was a great recent comedy game. Comedy in games has always been niche even back in the 80's/90's. For every Monkey Island there was 100 shoot-em-up or fighting or flight sim or platformer or other genre.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Since months I am thinking of … where the humour might have gone.

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FYI, humor is all right: it is in a PolCorrect-proof shelter somewhere, deep under the ground. Once in a while it emerges for a quick lookaround in the forums... but got misunderstood, and accidentally starts a flame war -- so humor retreats to its underground lair.

Oh, and have you noticed this hidden message?
Humor = HUMan errOR

I’ve never most of the ’humour’ in computer games funny. It is, to me, too context dependant or making fun of racial stereotypes (dwarf tossing anyone). Like many others I have gamed for a while (colossal caves in mid 70s and on from there).
Sorry to speak heresy, but I've NEVER found Larian funny.
Last game in the last 20 years I have laughed at was the W3 expansion, Roaches quest.
I don't think there was any humour there to lose in 99.99% of games ever.

(Casts Quen and hunters down…….)

duerer said:

…
Oh, and have you noticed this hidden message?
Humor = HUMan errOR

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Sorry, but correct English spelling is humour.

pibbr who coldn't resist.

PS. Regarding the presence of humour - AFAIK there are a lot of stand-up comedians these days, lots humour shows on TV (On BBC, QI, Would I lie to you, 8 out of 10 cats and Live at the Apollo come to mind), and oodles of Sitcoms. So I can't see that humour has disappeared. DS.

Hurls said:

.
Sorry to speak heresy, but I've NEVER found Larian funny.

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Amen to that. It's as if they once saw a diagram of some humour, but didn't quite understand it.

Well I can guess were all the humor has gone on this forum.


Wait …not…funny…damn.

Humour IN games is tricky. If people find the humour in Divinity OS twee and jarring, they're sort of stuck with it throughout the game. (I really liked it but appreciate not everyone does). Humour ABOUT games can be fun, I like the fallout and skyrim parodies on youtube. I can turn it off if I don't, not feel held hostage to it.

Excuse me (I'm currently reading through your posts), but I had meant [i9not only[/i] humour in RPGs, but humour in games in general.
I get it that this is an RPG-specific site, so people will naturally focus on RPGs in general, but I had meant not only RPGs.

well, the joke is getting old already, I guess, but DOTT and MI 1 & 2 had a distinct design - which includes humour . that made some aspects of the game funny.

I admit that i can't remember any "funny moments" in RPGs - I think some parts of the original Divinity game had that - but I don't think that humour in RPGs should be totally ruled out. Like in Real Life, there should be "funny moments" as well - like Bioware's famous banter, or the infamous Mud. Or Parzalon the storyteller in Drakensang 2. Even an Arch-Mage can sometimes be a bit … lose in his head, like a certain one in Drakensang 2 showed, not to mention the overly dry coments of that passenger …

We do not live in Real Life in a world totally devoid of humour - like the ship I saw the other day on the river Rhine : It has the name of "Archipel", which means "Archipelago".

wolfgrimdark said:

Certainly the gaming industry has changed a great deal since the start.

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Looking at it, it seems to me like the "Cambrian Explosion". Since then, the diversity has declined, many branches have died out.

As I already wrote several times, the most notable branches that died out are the Jump & Run games (nowadays rather lasbelled as "Platformers", I think, but I always only knew them under the label of "Jump & Run) and Adventure Games.

I still think its pretty diverse, if you include AA and Indie, and having grown up on old games I find I still enjoy new games. I love Pathfinder, FO4, Skyrim, Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Numeria, and even the SIMS4.

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Yes, but I do NOT want to imclude the Indie scene for this particult analysis :
Looking at the Indie Scene is like showing me the diversity of life beneath the surface of a desert.

Yes, the Indie Scene currently has its own kind of "Cambrian Explosion" - but that's in my opinion only bcause the rest of the industry had specialized in far too few genres.

The Indies are merely filling the niches the bigger boys inthe industry have left behind in the search for money. It's like benthos feeders using that exact niche that none of the bigger animals can or want to exploit.

But - why did the games industry change that much ? What has the motivation behind the decision-makers to do so ?

Was it the exclusive focus on a certain, limited group of buyers ? To put it very cynically - on young, white males ?

That's for sure : Families were out at one point. They were not dsirfed as target groups anymore.
Whereas Sierra did advertise their (mostly adventure) games as "family games", the later "games industry" did very clearly not so.

In a way, the big boys were specializing more and more and more and more on certain target groups of buyers. The trail of money. The rule of the sequel (or even prequel).

Right now, the big boys are so much degenerated, so much extremely high specialized, that they cater only a fixd, clearly bordered target group. everything else outside of that does simnply not exist. And the most vocal gamer groups are making that absolutely sure by creating shitstorms if there is anything that is not pleasing them. Blackmailing via the threat of shitstorms. even personal attacks. Or like GamersGate style.

It's almost a locked situation. With both holding guns at each others.
And meanwhile they do so, looking at each others guns or/and faces, they cannot move their heads aside anymore. they have been fixed so much that they are unable to see what is going on besides of them.

Both sides, gamers and big boys, have become inflexible, it seems to me.

And that's why the highly flexible indies thrive.

But still : Where's the humour in all that ? The lightheartedness ? The colours ?
("Go play Hello Kitty !" has become the snarky remark of youngsters, essentially meaning : "You are unmanly. You are weak".
Meanwhile never actually playing Hello Kitty, but rather using this as a trope or as an image to bully others.)

<snip>

But still : Where's the humour in all that ? The lightheartedness ? The colours ?
("Go play Hello Kitty !" has become the snarky remark of youngsters, essentially meaning : "You are unmanly. You are weak".
Meanwhile never actually playing Hello Kitty, but rather using this as a trope or as an image to bully others.)

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This illustrates my point perfectly. Go Play Hello Kitty is NOT an insult or unmanly in Japan, so even as sarcasm is misses a min8mum of $125 million people. Context is king, not content.

Additionally japanese govt uses Hello Kitty as copyright (PR) ambassador.
https://torrentfreak.com/japanese-government-appoints-hello-kitty-as-copyright-ambassador-200801/

Basically, messaging "go play Hello Kitty" in nonpiracy context is meaningless. Or stupid.
The proper "insult" should have been: go open some lootboxes. But we have a problem there - the sender is addicted themselves. So they use whatever random cartoon character, in this case wrong one, showing only ignorance and stupidity.

It msut be a terrible world, that in which you are constantly afraid about doing unmanly things.

Nereida said:

unmanly things.

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You know, gave a second of thought and what are those things supposed to be?
Giving a birth? I mean… Can't do that for sure.
Now I'm confused.

"Go play Hello Kitty !" has become the snarky remark of youngsters, essentially meaning : "You are unmanly. You are weak".
Meanwhile never actually playing Hello Kitty, but rather using this as a trope or as an image to bully others.)

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Referring to that part of the previous post.

It must be so overwhelming to live, breathe, move around, play games or watch movies always under the scrutiny of your peers, the inbuilt fear that someone could qualify you as unmanly, hence weak.

I understand this person is surely speaking about being born as a male in Sparta a couple millennia ago, though. In my world, United Kingdom 2020, this is not a thing, and I'm sad for those who consider it to be, but even more sad for those that change the way they are or feel, or the activities they are allowed to enjoy because of how a two-millenia old Spartan would view them.