They will take it ”as far as it possibly could go.” The humour is ”more subjective” and it’s difficult gauging reactions. No Portal 2 tester ”cracked a smile”.
“Now that some of Valve’s most popular protagonists are silent, there’s no turning back. At this point we’re fully committed to it and taking it as far as it possibly could go,” said Valve’s Mark Laidlaw at GDC Online.
Fellow writer Eric Wolpaw joked about Team Fortress 2: ”That whole game is us desperately trying to keep our jobs.” Testers don’t help figuring out if something is funny.
“We definitely do playtest. We’ll ask people after they play to recount the story to us and gauge their comprehension of their experience…”
”Comedy stuff is tougher because it’s more subjective and it’s really hard to gauge peoples’ reaction,” said Wolpaw.
“Pretty much no one that played Portal 2 cracked a smile,” added Wolpaw, but they still said the game was funny. “It’s hard to tell if a joke is failing or not.”
“We fail all the time, we just don’t advertise it too much…we always want to feel like we’re on the edge and challenging ourselves and growing all the time,” continued Laidlaw.
Do you enjoy silent protagonists? Does Valve’s humour rub you the right way? Below is perhaps one of the funniest moments in Portal 2 - it does contain a spoiler.