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