Pirates, Monkeys and Rubber Chickens: How humour motivates player progression and exploration throughout The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

The seamless sewing of humour into almost every facet of the swashbuckling point-and-click adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) is the main motivating factor for players to sit through hours of dialogue trees, furiously combine inventory items and time their actions to solve puzzles. This analysis will describe and analyse the three forms of humour used to encourage player progression and exploration: narrative humour (used for exposition and plot progression), designer meta-humour (used to parody the adventure game genre) and action humour (used to include combat that contributes to the narrative instead of interfering with it).

Art Style: Killer 7 vs Braid

At first glance, Jonathan Blow’s time manipulation puzzle-platformer Braid (2008) and Suda51’s experimental action-adventure Killer 7 (2005) appear to have almost nothing in common, although both lead players down paths of reflection. Braid’s impressionist scenes are full of light, pastel colours and flowing detail, whereas Killer 7’s noir tales rely on shadows, bold colours and sharp minimalism. Yet both games are often named as supporting examples in the ‘games as art’ debate. According to Henry Jenkins (2005), it is the emotional impressions created by games that qualify them as art, in turn allowing them to be stylistically categorized. Thus, in order to decipher the intended message or purpose of games, both the aesthetics and mechanics of games must be taken into consideration. This is highlighted by Chris Crawford’s comment that cosmetic aspects of games are necessary but supporting elements, secondary to the dimension of interactivity (King, 2006, p. 125).

gamepost: You Game?

“I hate games”.

I admit I’ve uttered these three words several times in my life. For someone dating a student game designer, that’s pretty disgraceful. But with memories like my year 9 crush ditching me on Skype for two hours to play DOTA, a boyfriend missing our anniversary due to a LAN competition and me just being a complete noob when it comes to driving, aiming and shooting, is it any wonder that it wasn’t love at first sight?