How the Joke has Changed | Comedy in Games 2026 | Extra Credits Gaming

Oh man, Zoe, has it really been over a decade since Extra Credits published a video about humor in video games? That is bonkers. Because for one, comedies are my favorite genre across a myriad of other mediums. But also, since last time, we've seen an explosion in the indie game scene, which has offered an incredible variety in the size, content, and style of wackiness that video games can enable. But does that mean that it's easier to pull off comedy in games these days than it was back then? And have we found a way to make the laughs that video games deliver driven by the players themselves? Well, no joke. We're going to dive into this. Want to support our shows, but like in the most capitalist way possible? Then why not snag a shirt, mug, puzzle, or plushy from our merch store. Though, full disclosure, Zoe plushy might privatize nap production. Once again, please welcome back video essaist, streamer, and one of the most knowledgeable and funny folks I've had the pleasure to be on panels with, Jenna Steber, for guest writing this episode.

Thank you, Jenna. Okay, so one of the core arguments in the original 2014 EC essay is that comedy is all about timing. But that makes comedy and games really hard since the player controls the timing, not the funny person making the thing. But outside of the joke that comedy is all about timing. It kind of is one of those vague statements that I've heard a lot, but nobody has really explained, right? Kind of like when someone says you'll understand when you're older. Well, I got to tell you, I am old as heck and I still don't understand anything. So, let's take a step back and talk about what comedy does before we pin down how to set it up for success in video games or really anywhere. Laughter is the best medicine because it releases tension. Stress is bad for your body and laughter helps counteract it, which leads to a bunch of positive short-term and long-term health benefits. Now, on a very basic physical level, comedy is all about creating tension and then resolving it to provoke laughter. If you've ever had a moment in your life where you almost got hurt, but like then at the last minute didn't. Think about how you felt just afterward.

A little heady, a little elated. Comedy has a similar effect. It's like uh micro doing a sense of relief. And it does that by creating expectations, then satisfying them in creative and unexpected ways. One great shortcut to create and manage said expectations is by using commonly understood structure. If someone walks up to you and says, "Knock knock." And then you say, "Who's there?" And then they say, "Pre-established structure." And then you say, "Restablished structure who?" And then they say the pre-established structure I'm using to start creating expectations which I'll then build upon with the setup and complete slash derail with the punch line. Heyo. The structure is where you begin to create tension in your audience. The tension that will be released when the expectation is satisfied. Though the best comedy does come from twisting the expectations into something you didn't see coming, right? A good pun will twist a word to realign the meaning of a sentence. After all, two men walk into a bar. The third one,

ducks. The structure of that last sentence sets you up to expect it's going to be a joke about talking to a bartender, but then bam. Just like the first two men, you're struck with the pun instead. Something that both Jenna and I have learned from our time in writer rooms is also that sometimes you pitch a joke setup just to hear everyone's immediate punchlines. This, of course, doesn't mean you're going to use like the first option that's thrown out, but rather discard the early ones in favor of something more surprising or unexpected that gets tossed out later in the discussion because that is usually more funny. For example, let's go with this setup. Ah, games are so expensive these days. HOW EXPENSIVE ARE THEY? They're so expensive I can only afford a new release if it's half off. I just can't decide if I want the first half or the last half. Not bad, but also not totally unexpected because if you were going to split something in two, that's an obvious way to do it. Instead, you could say, "Games are so expensive these days." How

expensive are they? THEY'RE SO EXPENSIVE, I CAN only afford to buy Peak at half off, but now it won't let me go higher than 500 m. Of course, that's not the funniest joke, but it is an unexpected way to split up a game by height. So comedy is about using structure to create expectations which cause tension and then satisfy them which releases stress. With that framing, it's easier to conceive of how to make comedy in games since structure is something that game devs have full control over. The most common method a decade ago was to use the comedy framework from other mediums in games like clever writing or voice acting. Our original comedy and games video touches on titles like Portal and The Stanley Parable as standouts, and this list has only gotten longer with the rise of small indie studios. The teams behind The Frog Detective series and Turnup Boy Commits Tax Evasion are still doing this kind of comedy with great success. But indie studios often bring in creators

from different art disciplines, and they arrive with expertise in comedy stylings unique to the mediums they came from. For instance, the art for later alligator was done by animation studio Small Boo, known for their web series Ba Man Piderman and their work on Adventure Time and The Owl House. This game is just packed with visual gags and a variety of mini games that set up jokes or just sheer wackiness. In one sequence, an alligator that looks suspiciously like Majima from the Yakuza series asks for your help in romance. Then the art style smash cuts to look like a visual novel style game for this section. Again using a previously understood structure what these kind of games look like but this time used as the punchline which in and of itself subverts expectations a second time. Expectation. Similarly punchy writing and intricate hand animated sequences by Pip Williamson made Thank goodness you're Here one of the most densely packed

comedy games of all time. James Carbut and Will Todd, the devs at Cole Supper, drew on a sketch comedy framework to think up gags and then built gameplay around them. Like the only interaction you get is a slap. And the game uses that limitation to set the player up to pull off slapsprung jokes. Combined with the fixed camera angles, they create absurd and sometimes surreal bits that pay off with the player's help. Like the scene in which a little businessman is mowing a lawn. Each sweep of the grass takes him closer and closer to some very lovey flowers when suddenly oh job done. Although you know it's coming, the sudden leap to its arrival is surprising and hilarious. Actually hearkening back to that timing thing we were talking about. The devs at Cole Supper have said that the key to making comedy in games is knowing quote when to give your players control and when to take it away from them and know when their input makes it funny and when their input won't. That's true for that style of game comedy, which relies mostly on the devs themselves being

smart and funny people on top of being great game makers. But since games are fundamentally a medium of interaction, and devs aren't always going to have that control, how do you make a comedy game that gives up control but is still funny? On the most fundamental level, games are about creating structures and rules and communicating them to the player. The player then takes that information and tries to complete challenges within the bounds of those limitations. So, it's easy to create audience expectations of how gameplay mechanics work and then undercut them because it's built right into the structure of games themselves. Triple structureception. No, wait. I kind of lost count. Anyway, the devs at Triband, the makers of What the Golf and What the Car have mastered this particular kind of in-game comedy of using gameplay for the setup and twist. They understand that a player's expectation for a golf game is that they're trying to hit a ball into a hole. The opening tutorial

levels then cement three additional expectations. Your UI is an arrow to show direction and intensity. You're moving an object from the start to a goal, and a phrase will pop up to indicate success. Once this pattern is established, they immediately begin playing with it. What's being hit, for instance? What phrase is the punch line? Also, each level adds new rules. There will now be obstacles. The hole might move. Things may explode. It's building tension by putting you on edge, but not on a cliff side. More like the edge of a dunk tank waiting to be dropped. However, should be noted that anyone who has played games knows it is precarious to mess with an established rule set. It can certainly cause tension and stress, but maybe not the kind that can be satisfied. So perhaps the most important design choice in Triband's games is the mercifully quick restart, so players know it's safe to goof around. In the right structure, where stakes aren't too high and failures aren't punishing, it

can be very rewarding to be laughing at the puzzle you have to solve while you try to solve it. Also, in Triband's games, the player triggers jokes through their gameplay. So, it's like a Rube Goldberg machine. The devs set up the structure of the joke and the players just tipping over the domino. It's a bridge between developer controlled comedy and player controlled comedy. And this is sort of where most games live anyway, right? Once a dev hands the game to the players, it's inevitable that all sorts of unexpected things will happen. Players won't play or react as expected, and the game won't always perform how it was intended to perform, which can also make for really funny games. See, basically Bethesda's entire catalog. Actually, another perfect example of this happened just months after our last comedy video came out when we gamers were blessed with an all-time great video game meme. Okay, let me set this up. [clears throat] You're playing a game and in [music] it, your character is attending a funeral. Moment of serious contemplation and

thought, you walk up to the casket and as you're going through all of your emotions, you are confronted with this. It is really unexpected. So, it is really, really funny. Even today, the self-s serious tone of Call of Duty Advanced Warfare is highlighted when juxtaposed against the awkward gamification of grief. This tone-deaf moment is similar to glitch humor. It's funny because it's not meant to be. It calls attention to the artificial nature of games, after all. So, the bigger the gulf between the seriousness of the object or moment and the absurdity of the disruption really determines how funny it is. This kind of humor used to be almost exclusively, but some games have begun taking advantage of this dissonance. The Yakuza series, for example, has gotten particularly great at this, matching the earnestness of Yakuza films with, you know, whatever's happening with Majima. The seriousness of Hitman's framing

makes any intense kill sequence or wacky ragdoll way funnier than it would be otherwise. Other games lean fully into the absurd artificiality of their medium. And this is where comedy games I think have really taken off in the past decade. As some games doubled down on things like the most realistic physics simulations possible, other games dared to ask. Why bother? Why not go the other direction? Games like Octoad, Dadliest Catch and Surgeon Simulator focus on basic movement and simple goals in a world where nothing reacts like you would expect it to. They are often labeled physics sims, although they're kind of sort of the opposite. After all, they have more in common with the unrestrained physics of cartoons than reality, which is where a lot of the comedy comes from. You have an expectation of how gravity works, so what if it worked a different way? Then the more people you add to wibbledy setups like this, the more opportunities you get for it to all go hilariously wrong, which is where bouncy, stretchy, jello- games like Fall Guys, Gang

Beasts, and Human Fall Flat come into play. Its absurdest humor coupled with the surprising difficulty of operating a body in a weird physics universe. 2025's Surprise Blockbuster Peak, which I did buy the second half of as I was recording this episode, built on this multiplayer physics sim model. Its premise is basically a schoolyard game you'd make up during recess. You and your best friends crash land on a desert island, and you've got to climb to the top of a mountain to be rescued, but all you've got is trail mix and berries and a giant lollipop to eat. Ooh, and a cannon that shoots you up the side of the mountain. This structure is made to encourage playtime. The wacky premise, the goofy faces, the slippery banana peels, bing bong. The game then encourages experimentation by giving items names but not descriptions. So, like the only way to learn what a berry does is to eat it. Then your multiplayer game has a built-in audience for your cries of anguish as you discover that the berry is poisonous. Like in Triband's games, the stakes are low, so players are free to experiment and suffer the mild consequences. And in

Peak, said silly consequences are enhanced by its use of proximity chat, creating a sense of space and distance. Now, proximity chat is most often deployed in horror or hidden role games to create a sense of space and distance, but more so to instill a sense of paranoia and loneliness as your friends get picked off one by one and your headphones start to go quiet, which does make it a surprising choice for a comedy game. But in Peak, if your friends get too far away, all you'll hear is the choppy echoes of their voices, or if you're lucky, the plantative cry of the trumpet. And if someone above you falls tragically to their death, you are treated to one of the most reliably funny sound effects of all time. A built-in Doppler effect. Proximity chat in action. And players really enjoy playing out the physical experiences they're having on the mic. If they get poisoned, they'll often moan and at woozy. If they slip down a wall and have a rough landing, most times they'll CRY OUT, "OW!" HECK, I KNOW IF I'M FALLING

to my death, you better believe I'll be screaming the whole way down. And that is really where Peak shines. The devs designed it as both a game and a platform for player performances, encouraging climbers to goof around and laugh with each other. The comedy comes most of all from the players playing in the sandbox the designers gave them. And they aren't triggering that comedy in the traditional sense with the game. Rather, they're performing it. Art, music, and writing continue to be vehicles for jokes. But in the past decade, we've seen an incredible expansion in the ways gameplay can carry humor. Games have moved from just comedy as control to comedy as lack of control. It is inevitable that things will go wrong. So, some comedy games are built on the premise that it will just be really, really funny when they do. They allow players to participate in the comedy by being subject to the ridiculousness of the universe or setting up a space to perform it with some old-fashioned clowning around. And

while we can't imagine what the next decade of comedy games will bring, I do know that we're all going to be laughing and playing and talking about them together. So, what do you say, Jenna? You want to check back in in like 2035? See how we're doing? Nice. All right, let me just check here. I got a trapper keeper full of appointments. Uh, no. You know, I can't do it. I already have something then and I already moved this one twice. If you're loving the return of EC, then a great way to support us is by picking something up in our merch store. We've got mugs, calendars, pins, plushies, even a new Zoey puzzle. You can check it all out by clicking or scanning here. And then once you've, you know, checked out, you can check out our next video here. That sounded better in my head. Say, Zelad's Architectures, Piro, Vermel, Lotus Wolf, Joseph Flame, Hunter Z, Friso Van Santon, Dominic Valenciana, and Angelo Valenciana. Can I just say that you are the best legendary patrons? I'm going to say it. You're the best legendary patrons. I said it. It's recorded for all time.