The Culture: Funny Games For Funny Day

Yes, it's April Fool's Day.

First, let's get the obligatory joke out of the way.

Yep, OG Rickroll. (Go ahead, enjoy. Astley doesn't hate the royalty checks this garnered.)

Despite the long history of player reports being more like dark comedies than anything else (or Knights of the Dinner Table, Dork Tower, What's New With Phil & Dixie etc. would have no audience), sometimes some mad lad decides to try to make an explicit comedy game. Here they are.

• Toon by Steve Jackson Games ("I can't believe it's not Looney Tunes!")
• Teenagers From Outerspace by R. Talsorian Games ("I can't believe it's not Urusei Yatsura!")
• Star Riders by Dream Pod 9 ("I can't believe it's not Space Dandy!")
• Paranoia ("I can't believe it's not English Dystopian SF!")

I'm omitting so-bad-it's-(darkly)funny stuff like Senzar/Synnibarr, non-games pretending to be real games, and hit-pieces pretending to be games.

Yeah, that culls a lot from an already small number. As is routinely the case, the first mover is the go-to and there's then a few also-rans. That's how the list above shakes out and by now I'm not surprised that games going back decades remain on top; turns out that the Network Effect (once established) invokes the Lindy Effect.

(Yes, know what being Lindy is; it explains so much that just Network Effects do not.)

Turns out that most people don't want Funny as an explicit design goal. The joke, therefore, is on those who do.