Comedy

To guide our research and make sense of our findings we will lean onto a few relevant sources spanning philosophy, psychology and, improvisational theater, game design and pre-existing games. Some include claims fortunately backed by science and some do not. The existing literature on comedy arms us with a few key theories and therefore, a few aspects to focus on during development. Namely McGraw & Warren’s Benign Violation Theory and how they scientifically proved the importance of feeling a sense of safety when it comes to comedy and how comedy requires a specific amount of danger for maximal mirth, but running a risk of offending the subject with too much danger but being met with apathy if too little. This fits in with an older [paper] by Veatch which postulates that humor is the cause of some Normalcy called: (N), being Violated, called: (V) (1998, “Degrees of humor”). He also predicts that the humor’s intensity scales with the affective commitment to the Norm being violated, but again, running a risk of offending the subject. This clears up the role of safety and fear in comedy, orienting us towards creating a safe arena for experiencing and interacting with the game’s comedy (generous check-points, leniency in hit detection, velocity retention, etc) while maintaining some aspect of danger. But danger and safety isn’t the driving force itself. Looking at McGraw & Warren’s [subjects] you might say they were driven by fear of danger, but more accurately, they were driven by their commitment to life, which in Veatch’s terms is their affective commitment to the Norm. But in terms of games, this driving force doesn’t come for free. It needs to be established in some ways, like for instance, from engagement or immersion. Which leads us to Ermi and Mäyra’s sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion model (SCI-model)… next, excitation-transfer… then: baseline and number of prior normal judgments amplifies humor… (I think it’s also safe to extend this to a general extended exposure to normalcy not just a number of prior normal judgments) and lastly, crazy town…