the game rag

The Game Rag: Explain what A Special Thing is.

Matt Belknap: AST is an online community for fans of great comedy -- it focuses primarily on the Los Angeles alternative comedy scene, since that's where I'm based and where a lot of other people on the site live, but it shoots off in many different directions from there. We have members all over the world who congregate on the board to discuss what makes them laugh and why.

TGR: Why did you start it?

MB: I was procrastinating. I was avoiding a big project that I had started and couldn't bear to deal with, and in the midst of that I discovered two things: Tenacious D and message boards (which I started using when I got into the "All Your Base" Photoshop craze of 2000). When The D's official site launched in 2001, I felt the message board was severely lacking (it was hosted by Sony Music and not only looked generic and ugly, but was slow, messy and unmoderated), so I started my own using ezboard and invited people to join me there. It became pretty popular, at least in Tenacious D fan circles (which were very small circles at the time).

Then Mr. Show alum Scott Aukerman found the site and started posting in the "Mr. Show and Other Comedy" forum to promote a new weekly standup show called Comedy Death Ray that he and BJ Porter had started doing at M Bar in Hollywood. I had been writing recaps of Tenacious D concerts on the site, and when I started attending CDR regularly, I did the same thing -- mostly because I was excited by the stuff I was seeing and felt compelled to write about it -- I wanted to convey my excitement to others. By writing about comics like Patton Oswalt, Andy Kindler and Chris Hardwick (among many others), I inadvertently drew their attention to AST. They started reading my recaps and referencing me on stage. When that became hack, they started posting on the site and interacting with fans, which is roughly how we got to where we are today, with comics like Patton, Andy, Chris, Louis CK, Paul F. Tompkins and others posting on AST and answering questions.

TGR: What's your video game history?

MB: My first "system" was a Texas Instruments TI 99-4/A, which was a home computer with a cartridge slot. My dad took me to 47th St. in New York City and said, "Do you want this?" -- the TI -- "or this," and he pointed to this crazy Japanese box that came with a robot. I chose the TI and passed up the chance to be one of the first kids in America to own a Nintendo (I was hung up on the idea of having a real computer with a keyboard because I wanted to be like Matthew Broderick in "War Games"). Anyway, the TI was famous for having knockoffs of popular arcade games -- one was like Pac-Man, but instead of eating pellets, you were pooping out what looked like sausage links. I think it was called "Munch Man." But I loved it and played it for hours and hours. "Hunt The Wumpus" was another favorite. And I think they eventually had some real arcade games, like "Moon Patrol" (or was that a 99-4/A exclusive?). I never had an Atari, except at the very tail end of the 2600's life span (when they put out a small, cheap black/silver version of it).

I eventually got a Nintendo around when everyone else did, and went nuts for the Super Mario Bros series, the first Zelda, Kid Icarus, Metroid, etc. That was my jam from probably sixth to eighth grade.

Then I jumped on Genesis the year it came out and pretty much played it exclusively from 8th grade to college. I was very loyal to Sega, to the point that I never really played Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64 -- so I missed out on Mario Kart, Super Star Wars, Mario 64, Starfox and a bunch of other games that were probably great. I was a Sonic freak, but as I got older I got into games like NBA Jam, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, EA's NHL series ('93-'95) and PGA Pro Tour II (the ancestor of EA's Tiger Woods Golf). I also liked this really bad and simplistic Genesis soccer game that was top-down, so you only saw the players' heads (and the occasional leg).

Around '95 I replaced my Genesis with a CDX, which people probably don't remember, but it was a compact Genesis with a built-in CD-ROM drive for the few games they made for the Genesis "Sega CD" add-on. It was mostly worthless, but the music and sound in the EA Sports games were great. They put out one Sonic The Hedgehog game for this stopgap system, and it wasn't much different than the Genesis Sonic games (to which I was too loyal -- I even got Sonic Pinball, and immediately regretted it), but it featured a Sonic music video for a song called "Sonic Boom!" Great use of technology.

Then I got a Saturn, mostly to play Virtua Fighter. I didn't play games as much after college, but I got way into Tomb Raider, which I think was on Saturn at first, but maybe it was Dreamcast (which I got at some point). I only broke down and bought a used PlayStation to play whichever Tomb Raider game came out after the Dreamcast's demise -- I hated the PlayStation, I hated the controller (though it got much better when the analog sticks came in), and I hated the approach Sony took to get into gaming: just a bunch of loud, violent bullshit to grab their target demo's attention. Thank God nobody fell for it and the system was never heard from again.

So my video gaming life remained relatively dormant while the PS dominated, then led to the PS2. I really loved my Dreamcast, especially the springy triggers. Loved Crazy Taxi, loved Virtua Fighter II... I even loved Shenmue. I did get a PS2 at some point, but I can't remember which game made me break down and get it. Probably Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 or something, a game (and series) I absolutely loved (I skated as a kid, but was never very good, so it was amazing to finally be able to pull tricks like the pros). Having a PS2 led me to playing GTA3 and San Andreas, but not Vice City for some reason -- I only played GTA3 years after its release, and never really felt the urge to get into VC.

I got a GameCube on sale a couple of years after its release because I had heard good things and wanted to give Nintendo a belated second chance. Super Mario Sunshine blew me away, and I was back in the Nintendo camp. I suddenly realized that my favorite games weren't the ones with the best graphics, but the ones with the most creative and innovative gameplay, and Nintendo was doing a lot of cool stuff in that arena. For example, Pac Man Vs. (a game that I wish Nintendo would put on the DS with WFC functionality) -- Miyamoto reinterpreted his all-time favorite arcade game by finding a way to make it multiplayer (one person plays regular Pac Man on a GBA while up to three others play on the Game Cube as ghosts, with a limited 3rd person perspective of the maze; if you, as a ghost, catch Pac Man, you take over the GBA and play as Pac Man, and whoever gets a set number of points first wins).

Nowadays I mostly play my DS, which was mostly being used for Sudoku (in Brain Age) until I finished all the puzzles. I love my Wii, but after beating Zelda I needed a break. I also love Guitar Hero on PS2, which was in the regular rotation until I got sick of the songs -- but I can't wait for the '80s pack.

TGR: What would you like humor to do for video games that it hasn't done yet?

MB: Actually, my step-brother and I developed a game concept (which pitched to a few places) that we described as the first romantic comedy video game. It turns out the video game companies don't really want to operate like the film industry, with writers pitching ideas and writing scripts on spec -- they'd rather develop ideas internally and bring in writers as needed. But anyway, the idea was to build on some proven gameplay elements, but use them the way a director uses the elements of film: to tell a story. Obviously games are doing this now and have been here and there for a while, but I find that in many cases the writing feels like an afterthought, and I think there's a lot of potential for games as a narrative medium if you start with a story to tell and build the gameplay around a script. Of course, some of the best games leave the story to the player, but I think you can find a balance between the sandbox school of game design and a more structured and linear "story" game. GTA does an okay job of this, even though the writing is frequently clunky. Twilight Princess's narrative was incomprehensible to me a lot of the time, but I appreciated the attempt to tell a story. My brother and I really felt strongly that cut scenes are a drag, though, so we worked a lot on ways to integrate the story into the gameplay without interrupting the action.

So, to answer your question, I think if developers open themselves up to outside collaboration, the sky is the limit on comedy in video games, but they need to break out of the pattern of only inviting writers in at the end of the process (and some have, but probably not with the goal of making a comedy video game). Maybe it's going to take someone versed in both game design and comedy writing to make the leap, but I think it will happens someday. I'd love to see games become more like TV shows: instead of buying a game, you download new episodes to play every week. In that format, a game could be produced like a sitcom, with a staff of writers coming up with new scenarios and writing dialogue once the engine and the character designs are in place. That would allow for humor to be more integrated into the game.

Or, you know, someone could just make a "Laugh Factory" video game where you have to tap a button to deliver a punchline with the right timing and get big laughs. I know Dane Cook's a big gamer, maybe he can set this up.

TGR: Funniest game you've played?

MB: Tough question. I'm going to make it easier by eliminating unintentionally funny games off the top, because otherwise it's too hard -- things like Zero Wing (which gave us the "All Your Base" craze) are funny, but only because of poor translation. I know Earthworm Jim cracked me up when I was a kid -- I don't know if it holds up, but it was really absurd and totally original. And Parappa the Rapper was very funny to me, at least
initially (boy did it get old fast though). It's weird how all I can think of are failed attempts at humor in games -- like most of the radio chatter in GTA, the sophomoric sensibility of the Leisure Suit Larry series, the fart jokes in "Dog's Life" on PS2 (I'm probably the only person who ever played this game). In the end, although I might be forgetting something great from the past, I have to go with a recent game: WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii. Great use of perfectly timed comic reveals and sublime randomness. Even the writing and voice-over work on the form lessons are funny.

TGR: What's the goal of AST Records?

MB: It's sort of the same as the website: to spread great comedy far and wide and highlight the talents of comics who have yet to get their due. On the site, the way this works is that someone stumbles across AST by Googling Patton Oswalt and winds up discovering Jen Kirkman or Howard Kremer. With the label, we've just looked for comics we love who haven't done a CD yet and asked them if they want our help producing one. Our primary audience is the AST membership, but beyond that I believe there's a vast number of people who maybe gave up on stand-up when our culture became over-saturated with it following the club boom of the '80s -- they don't realize that there's something out there beyond the mainstream that they would really love if they heard or saw it. As performers make in-roads in show business and fanbases coalesce online, I see comedy having a renaissance similar to the independent film movement of the early 1990s, when the mainstream suddenly realized that there were good movies outside of what the studios were feeding them.

TGR: What's next?

MB: For the label, Paul F. Tompkins's debut CD "Impersonal" comes out on June 12th, and we will celebrate this occasion with a special CDR release party show that night. For the site, I'm working on something that will expand the AST experience beyond message board discussions -- more on that soon. For my game-playing, I don't know... Guitar Hero '80s pack and GHIII for Wii are on the horizon, and whenever they put out Mario Galaxy (or whatever it's called), I'm there. I might check out Puzzle Quest, though I'm not big on RPG and probably don't need that kind of time-killer in my life. I'm dying for more DS Sudoku, but from what I've read, no one has done it as well as Brain Age (interface-wise), so I'm holding off until those folks put out an all-Sudoku game (which they better!).

TGR: Why wasn't Andy Kindler Time's Man of the Year?

MB: He probably refused to sign the release.