How long would you play a satirical game for?

[Rendar-]

My friend and I began development of a satirical game today (in RPG Maker VX Ace no less), so I've been wondering: What's your limit when it comes to a satirical game?

How long can you stand something that is going to be so obviously in your face funny (hopefully) before you just move on to the next game?

I wouldn't want to make our game too long, but I would definitely want to provide as much fun to players as possible. My limit for a game like this would be about 6 hours. What about yours?

 

[Matseb2611]

It depends on whether I 'get' the humour. If the humour fails to make me laugh, I could stop the game after 20 minutes. If it succeeds, I'd play it to the end (unless something else stops me from playing, like too much grinding, etc). For a humourous game, I guess somewhere around 5 hours in length should be fine. Making it too long would make it hard to keep coming up with new, fresh jokes.

 

[Arin]

I agree with the above poster. It has to depend on how "dry" or "stale" the humour gets after a while. I wouldn't want to keep playing a game where I'm forcing myself to laugh at every joke that's getting thrown at me; it's already happened enough with some of the games that I've been playing/recording. It also has to really capture my attention for a long period of time before I can really say if it's "satirical" or not; a game can have a good joke every now and again, but doesn't really have to be "satirical" in order for it to be funny. 

 

[Rendar-]

I appreciate your responses. For the sake of things, we're going to assume that you are the target audience and "get" the humor. Of course, I expect anyone that doesn't get it to just not play the game.

 

[Oddball]

Of course, I expect anyone that doesn't get it to just not play the game.

how would they know if they Get it unless they played it?

 

[whitesphere]

Humor in a game can be great, but humor itself is very hit or miss.  What one person finds hysterical, another may find deeply offensive or just boring.

If you're making a satirical game, it gets tricky.  The Discworld novel series is completely satire of various things in our world, but it works because it has its own coherent narrative aside from the jokes.  

And satire isn't always funny.  One dramatic example is Johnathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," on how to deal with the Irish famine.  Basically, he satirically proposed people eat their babies.

So, I think a good humorous game has a coherent plot and coherent world logic, but adds in a lot of humor.  But that's hard to pull off throughout a game.  If the game becomes too serious, you lose the humor, but if you let the humor run the plot out the window, the game itself becomes nonsense.

One idea I'm kicking around, for example, is a King who basically complains "Where is my Dragon?"  You see, he has a retired Dragon who loves to start barbecues, but the Dragon has gone missing, along with a LOT of mead and a few items from the Dragon's horde...He finds the next 4 people to walk through the door and say "You all, work together and find him.  Please!"    This includes the Court Jester, a Boxer, a Barkeep and a Librarian...

So the plot actually should make sense but have absurd puzzles which make a strange sort of sense.    And that's a hard balancing act.

Sorry if I rambled on.  To answer your question:  If the game is humorous, it depends on how long I enjoy the jokes.  If the game has no internal logic (which is the key to good humor --- have an internal logic you play with), I won't enjoy the game part and will stop playing there.  If I don't care for the game's humor, I'll probably stop playing the game within 20 minutes.

 

[SquallStorm]

I dunno, depends on the game.  Esper Wing Chronicles by Chaos Avian is probably my favorite RPG Maker game so far, and I found the humor downright perfect.  The game itself is short, but some of the best lines I've ever heard in one game came from here.

Qwen:  I'm old AND black!  I have a double penalty.

I found it hilarious, but some might not.

 

[BlissAuthority]

There's a common bad way of doing satire games, which it to have the characters complain about bad game and level design choices.  Don't do this.  Don't ever, ever do this.  They're still bad game design choices that we, as players, have to endure.

Much better to have a better game design choice and have the characters crow about it, I.E.:

"At least we can save anywhere.  Imagine how much worse this would be if we needed to find some BS save point."

Just for a terrible example.

 

[Rendar-]

There's a common bad way of doing satire games, which it to have the characters complain about bad game and level design choices.  Don't do this.  Don't ever, ever do this.  They're still bad game design choices that we, as players, have to endure.

Much better to have a better game design choice and have the characters crow about it, I.E.:

"At least we can save anywhere.  Imagine how much worse this would be if we needed to find some BS save point."

Just for a terrible example.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely keep this in mind. I certainly won't purposefully be designing a bad game. I just want this to be fun to play!

 

[Mako Star]

I think every good character should have their own sense of humor, whether it's in a satire game or not. Final Fantasy 9, for example, has some really great dialogue that cracks me up, even in a serious situation...whether it's Steiner worrying about Zidane's influence on Garnet and his overall being waaay too frantic at times, Vivi's complete unsuredness(yes! I'm making up words now!), or Zidane's one track mind on saving hotties.

Every character shouldn't be making every kind of joke. It shows that all people are different.

It also doesn't always take jokes to make something funny. Alot of the time it's just how a character acts or how the character IS that can draw out more humor than one liners.

 

[BlackLiquidSorrow]

My game is a satire but not one of RPG Maker. It's a satire of internet culture. It takes place in a physical manifestation of the internet and the towns are websites. For example, Furaffinity is a forest village in the treetops.

 

[Rendar-]

My game is a satire but not one of RPG Maker. It's a satire of internet culture. It takes place in a physical manifestation of the internet and the towns are websites. For example, Furaffinity is a forest village in the treetops.

Mine is of RPGs, not really RPG Maker.

 

[Galenmereth]

If the only thing it has going for it is satire of other works, I'd quit very quickly, regardless of if I "got" it or not. The reason is simply that satire alone makes for uninteresting content; if all it does is riff off on existing works I'm familiar with, it might be slightly amusing for a while, but it doesn't provide me any new experiences. However, if -- like the aforementioned Discworld series of books -- it has its own narrative and coherent structure of ideas and concepts, it can be very good and I'd play that for as long as any other good game.

 

[Rendar-]

If the only thing it has going for it is satire of other works, I'd quit very quickly, regardless of if I "got" it or not. The reason is simply that satire alone makes for uninteresting content; if all it does is riff off on existing works I'm familiar with, it might be slightly amusing for a while, but it doesn't provide me any new experiences. However, if -- like the aforementioned Discworld series of books -- it has its own narrative and coherent structure of ideas and concepts, it can be very good and I'd play that for as long as any other good game.

Yep good point, we realized that quickly and do have our own "real" storyline for the game.