The Spectrum of States: Comedy, Humour and Engagement in Games

Hookham, G. and Meany, M.

In this paper, we offer a distinction between comedy and humour. This distinction is employed to examine the intentional, scripted comedy and the context-driven, ludic emergence of humour in the game Portal. The game is examined, through content analysis of the game‟s transcript, using Berger‟s categories and techniques of comedy and Apter and Martin‟s Reversal Theory of Humour. The results of this pairing of theoretical approaches suggest there is an oscillation in the affective state of the player between the telic and paratelic states defined in Reversal Theory. These shifts in affective state contribute to the engagement of the game play. The highly engaged autotelic state in which the player is fully immersed in the game environment, named Flow by Csikszentmihalyi, occurs in both the goal-oriented telic state and the playful paratelic state. Breaking down the perception of the telic and paratelic states as being a binary opposition allows for a fuller understanding of affective states, engagement and Flow.

Cite as: Hookham, G. and Meany, M. (2015). The Spectrum of States: Comedy, Humour and Engagement in Games. In Proc. 11th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE 2015) Sydney, Australia. CRPIT, 167. Pisan, Y., Nesbitt, K. and Blackmore, K. Eds., ACS. 25-34

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