[I've been saving up rants about the Orange Box for a while now. Pretty much all of them feature the word "Paradigm", so be warned: sit down, pour a drink, prepare your rotten vegetables to throw. This one's probably the most essential one, so it's going first, just to make sure I remember to do it.]
The Orange Box: Christ, it’s bloody funny, isn’t it?
Now, we, as PC Gamers, were kind of expecting bits of it to be funny. Team Fortress’ character shorts had prepared us a little for the tone of the game, and the graphic style was obviously a radical break from the Marines (Space, or otherwise) FPS monopoly. But when Portal was discussed, we tended to dwell upon it taking Narbacular Drop’s reality warping puzzle-play and bringing it to the people – that is, we were interested due to its mechanics rather than anything else. And as for Episode 2… Half-life’s Half-life. If it’s funny, it’s in a random character moment as a break from the normal Orwell-does-a-disaster-movie tension. We were expecting them to be GOOD. But we weren’t expecting Team Fortress 2 to be as rampantly hilarious, Portal to be so funny that it’s driven us all a little bit mad and even relative-straight man Episode 2 to play up its wit to an unprecedented level.
While we’ve a few months to go, it’s increasingly looking like the Orange Box will be the definitive PC “thing” of 2007. Absolutely the heart of the mainstream zeitgeist in the way that Doom or World of Warcraft or Starcraft or the original Half-life were in their respective years. And it’s funny. The heart of PC Gaming is funny.
This hasn’t been true since 1991.
(Monkey Island 2, if you’re scratching your head. Day of the Tentacle was arguably better, but had lost the zeitgeist to Doom.)
This line of thought was provoked from when I was passing through the PC gamer office last month. They’d done their cover on the Orange Box, which looked like this.
And I just sighed and said something along the lines of “That’s a really fun cover. That’s lovely.” I stopped and thought a little, before continuing, “And it’s good to see someone smiling on the cover of the mag. When was the last time someone was smiling on the cover of PCG?”. The rhetorical question was easily answered by turning to one of the office walls, where the last eighty or so covers are stuck up, a history of where a succession of editors thought the deepest affections of the Gaming Massive lay on a month-by-month basis. The only smiling thing on the lot of them wasn’t even human – it was Black & White 2’s happy cow. Other than that, an endless parade of people looking very serious indeed. Serious people holding space-guns. Serious people holding Enfield rifles. Serious people holding swords +3. Serious people looking serious even though they’re wearing tin-foil G-strings. Serious people, as far as the eye can see.
And after all those frowns, Heavy Weapon guy feels like sunlight.
(For the record, I can remember two covers featuring smiling just before they started the wall – a Lara Croft cover which had her smiling ruefully in half-profile and a Curse of Monkey Island Cover. Both are around 100 issues old, of course.)
No slight is meant to PC Gamer. It just reports on what people are interested in and (as often) what interesting people are doing. Now, anti-PC people make an awful lot of painful, inaccurate jokes about all PC games being various colours of brown. Which is ridiculous. Many are also Grey. The point being, while there’s always been funny stuff in PC Gaming around the edges, or buried inside more sombre games (RPGs of all sorts have always leavened the stats with a little light comedy), in a teenager’s lifetime it’s never been so directly, so bold, so mainstream as it is with The Orange Box. And, since it’s terrain we’ve stayed away from for so long, it feels shockingly fresh. As good as – say – Enemy Territory is, it doesn’t feel like the Next Big Thing in the way Team Fortress 2 does (i.e. “Christ, people are going to rip this off”). It may even be the old-seriousness’ Day of the Tentacle to the new-unseriousness’ Doom of Orange Box.
(It’s also worth noting despite being comic, it still feels typically PC – dark, satirical, bloody, quasi-adult. When I showed the TF2 shorts to an ex-director now-comic-writer friend of mine, entirely smitten, he described them as, “What would happen if the Columbine kids were given a free rein at Pixar”.)
Why have Valve gone in this direction? I have no idea. It’s possible it could be idle whim or crafty populism. It could be because of the many strong design techniques which humour and a more cartoon approach allow – like in Team Fortress 2 things like the Spy’s mask conveying information efficiently in a way that any more realistic rendering wouldn’t, or how Portal – being an intrinsically alienating and mind-fucking concept – requires a lot of sugar to make people swallow, so GlaDOS and the turrets and that song ease people in. I prefer to think that everyone at Valve is having really awesome sex or realised exactly how rich they are, and started laughing and never stopped.
So – the heart of the zeitgeist is funny again.
What happens now?
It’s videogames. Rampant Plagarism.
Valve, being the most constantly successful independent PC developer in the world, by their actions and successes change the way other developers (and publishers – follow the money) act. That earlier “plagarism” is in jest, as this is both natural and fine. All forms of creation are a dialogue between creators, watching what others are doing – so realising what’s possible – and being inspired in kind. That said, Creators are only half the equation. The Orange Box has reintroduced the idea of pure joy for the audience, warping their expectations and preparing them for what may follow. People who once rolled their eyes at “cartoon graphics” or whatever, have – unless they’re terminally aesthetically hampered – had their horizons forcibly widened by a Scout Rush or seven.
Between these two factors, it’s entirely possible there could be a paradigm (I warned you!) shift towards games which don’t take themselves so seriously. At the least, Valve has opened up a space in PC games’ ecosphere and I eagerly await to see what brave new quick-witted mammals will rush to populate it. And, yes, like all movements, if it takes off it’ll eventually lead to over-saturation and a rictus of grins… but then the pendulum can swing back to the dour.
C’est la vie. For now, we should laugh and be glad we’re (still) alive.
Related Stories:
The increase of cakes-in-games rant is coming up next.
(More seriously, as I said in the intro, there’s much more to talk about the Orange Box. This is one slice through the thing, but since it’s one no-one else has picked up on, I wanted to get it out there.)
KG
“And I tended to get lost a lot in Half Life. Maybe it was because I was younger, but being stuck and wondering where to go was a common occurrence, whereas in Half Life 2 it was pretty much straight forward.”
I’m replaying HL right now for the first time since it came out, and I’m spending quite a bit of time being aimless too. Valve have certainty gotten a lot better at signposting exactly the right way to go.
Aye, I also replayed HL these past weeks and it’s bloody confusing a lot of the time.
NOLF and NOLF2 do deserve more mention. NOLF2 is still one of my favourite FPS games – I remember replaying it the week before I got HL2, as an example of one of the best FPSes I had already, then I played it again a year later and enjoyed it just as much.
Let’s not forget he’s cackling with glee at the fact that he’s tearing bodies apart with high velocity bullets. I mean, it’s colourful and jolly, but it’s pretty dark when you look at what’s actually being depicted.
A thorough good read!
I am glad for once that gaming will take a turn to be more light-hearted. That is what I try to do in my own games too.
Laughter is the best medicine after all.
I’m really glad people are mentioning NOLF2, I was disappointed that very little of the TF2 coverage around the intarwebs cited it’s obvious influence in both style and humour.
NOLF2 is still one of my favourite shooters to date.
Never use the word paradigm again please, it should not be used in Business (lest you are willing to be laughed at until your face bleeds) and it should never be used in relation to games.
Just a personal bug bear.
But how could I talk about the makers of the new Stuntcar: Ignition?
KG
Clearly you would have to come up with some new, innovative means of name-dropping, possibly in so doing creating a fresh perspective on the mentioning of companies which cannot be named. Your technique could be so innovative and refreshing that future authors could not ignore it and come to use the technique, excluding the older techniques?
Perhaps this “shift” could be given some catchy name?
Like New Games Jou-
Ahem.
“Don’t Mention The War”
KG
More funny to enjoy:
Giants had good cut-scenes, Sacrifice constantly told me that all my manhoars had been destroyed, and Die by the Sword had an official Cuss Pack addon.
My, what a good article.
And an EXCELLENT set of comments.
Well said Kieron.
Well I must take exception to the claim that PC games haven’t been funny since 1991.
Doom, Duke Nukem, Carmageddon, Serious Sam, Blood, and Fallout all come to mind immediately (though admittedly, all of these save for Fallout rely on a particular sort of macabre violent humor.)
I can’t believe Fallout wasn’t mentioned until just this very moment (way to steal my thunder, L). Both Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 were loaded with tongue-in-cheek humor. Fallout set the standard (in my mind) for branching plotline and humor in games, and I look forward to Fallout 3, which will probably retain the same flippant attitude–otherwise fans of the series will probably riot.
To say that PC games haven’t been funny since the 90’s i feel is a bit unjustified. Take DOOM 3 for example albeit scary as “Hell(hahaha)” it did attempt at humor through its DataPad entries. The entries mainly consisted of the Martian Buddy packages and how arduous it was to store them, but i fondly remember the entry concerning the miss shipment of Chainsaws to the space facility and chuckling about it.
However I also believe that if Id Software had thrown in a few slap stick gags, a grinning imp, and Dr. Betruger passing gas during one of his “hope crushing” speeches to you as you progressed through the game would have ruined the atmosphere that the game tried so hard to immerse you in.
I, like anyone, like a good laugh and all games should have a sense of humor. But do to the breath of fresh air that the Orange Box delivered be it the dark comedy of the Mechanical Voice in Portal, the Cartoon aspect of TF2, or the witty remarks shared by Alex and her fathers constant push for grandkids. Let us not leap forward in an attempt to make every game a gut busting laughathon. I would be saddened if the part where Alex is stabbed and almost dies, or where her father is killed were to be replaced with happy times and a good gag. It’s scenes like those i believe that make games like Half-Life2 feel real and are something that at least i can connect with as a person.
This is my 1st time here, I went through about 6 blog pages, all of it seems to be some sexual fascination with this portal game, and endless homoerotic Valve worship.
Is this place sponsored by Valve, and do other games actually exist?
If you look back further, you could have said the same about RPS and BioShock. They post more about what they’re interested in / excited about. It’s not really any big conspiracy.
Hey saus,
If you apply a smidgen of objectivity, you’ll notice that while we’ve had lots of fun with Portal, there are vast numbers of other posts about all manner of games, dwarfing the Valve coverage.
…and it’s not like the Orange Box or Valve are undeserving of attention or praise.
I was just thinking about the claim that for the first time since the early nineties the icon of a year has been funny.
Wasn’t WoW released in 2005? I can’t think of any other game that would dwarf that in terms of being iconic? And couldn’t that be labelled as funny?
Wow certainly had funny stuff in it, sure, but its detail (like the RPG examples I gave) rather than core. Cartoony isn’t the same thing as being funny either. And it certainly wasn’t *sold* as being funny.
KG
I would say Wow was chuckleworthy but certainly not bwahahaha
“However, the whole stereotyping thing is, for better or worse, a prime aspect of gender studies and feminism.”
Okay Thelps,
One thing. Stereotyping is only an aspect of feminism in that feminists seek to get rid of it.
I was about to type a little more about that, but then I remembered that I’m not on a feminist website and you guys would probably think I’m crazy!
Which I’m not… honest… :S
Aaaaaaanyway! Good article, and I heartily agree. Gaming feels so GOOD when it’s actually fun!
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