Indie designer Zoe Quinn to developers: You can code comedy, too

A joke is not that much different from a command prompt.

Video games are a chain of functions and systems into which we plug in variables and inputs. A programmer codes a character’s walk habits by expressing an “If statement” (e.g., “If right arrow or D key pushed, move character right”), which the player then triggers. That interaction forms the basis of the developer-player relationship. According to Depression Quest-designer Zoe Quinn, we as an industry should begin viewing comedy – or at least individual jokes – with the same mechanical mindset.