Why Are Games So Unfunny?

thegamer.com:

In recent previews, High on Life painted a target on its back then commented on the target on its back repeatedly until players either laughed or picked up a dart. Given that developer Squanch Games is headed up by Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick & Morty, and that many of the characters are voiced by Roiland, the game will definitely have a built-in audience. But, a gameplay trailer shown at Gamescom Opening Night Live and a clip shared by IGN have revealed that High on Life, like many games, just doesn't know when to stop joking.

Roiland’s shooter is just the latest game to attempt to strike a zany fourth wall breaking tone. Advertising for the Borderlands games has often boasted about the series' "billions of guns," but each game has just as many subpar zingers. Characters like Claptrap, Handsome Jack, and Tiny Tina talk and talk and talk in the hopes that something will make players laugh. Rage 2, the Far Cry series, Grand Theft Auto 5, and the Saints Row games all take a similar approach, throwing a pot of joke spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Why are games so bad at comedy? I have a few theories.

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Chief among them is the issue that comedy is a medium that tends to thrive on brevity. Though Judd Apatow's supersized and slow-paced slacker comedies are an exception, most great comedies clock in around 90 minutes. Though Doctor Strangelove, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Spaceballs, Legally Blonde, Rushmore, The Naked Gun, and A Night at the Opera don't have much in common, they do share a commitment to getting audiences in and out in roughly the time it takes to wash and dry a load of laundry. In TV, too, comedies are almost universally shorter