Then I must be a real connoisseur. 
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Dropping in super late, but I’ve also tried my hand at a very personal game with This Person is Not My Father.
I found it very cathartic if difficult to write, and people seemed to like it. Just another data point.
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I think all of my games pull on intense, deep emotions I’ve had myself. Write about what you know and all that.
I made succor for a jam and tried to focus specifically on depression and abusive relationships. The player has no choice about that backstory, but I think the details are generic enough to allow self-insertion. It’s a very targeted game. People who have had abusive parents have given me very good feedback on how it’s cathartic, but most people find the game off-putting because of how specific it is. Some friends going through depression have found it too close to home, while people who haven’t struggled with that stuff have asked me if I’m ok or found it off-putting.
I’m fine with that - sometimes we make art for a specific audience, but they feel it much more deeply than something made to appeal to everyone.
I’m currently working on removing all pronouns and generalizing some of the text to make it easier to self-insert (current uses she/her as the abuser since we thought it up as an abusive mother).
Another game I’ve made, Manu , is about grief and depression in general while also being more uplifting and seems to have better reception while still being focused on emotional content.
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Absolutely it’s a good idea. Maybe even an especially good idea if it’s a story about things you’ve not seen depicted in a parser game before. I get super excited when I discover something fresh and new (which is honestly most of the parser games I’ve played as I’ve only been regularly playing them for a few years).
And here’s a thought: maybe it will start out more autobiographical and become less so as you imagine different possibilities?
I really, really relate to this, and I relate to your dilemma too. I’m currently working on a piece of IF for IF Comp that’s either going to go one of two ways:
- A whimsical puzzler about a (Greek) Sphinx.
- A whimsical puzzler about a Sphinx that also gradually reveals a backstory that’s got gender feels and that will hopefully be entertaining and engaging but also might slightly break your heart in places.
Either way there will be things in it that (I think) speak to my lived experiences, as well as the lived experiences of a lot of people in my life… But I also don’t want to make people so sad that they don’t get to the end of the story. And yet… I kinda do want to make something intensely emotional (perhaps maybe just not for IF Comp, maybe a later re-imaging of the game).
I like games that make me feel seen. I like games that just make me feel. And if your game is sincere and authentic to you, bring it into the world! But also try to exercise self care. It could be a great game, and maybe making it will help you process stuff. Great art often does that.
Please make your game. I want to play it and at least see if it makes me feel seen 
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Speaking of course only for myself, I hope it will be 2 (if you have the time and energy to pull it off). I have a heart that is eager to be slightly broken.
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This has more to do with writing in general, rather than games, but thought to share it anyway:
Have spent most of my life portraying realistic and often difficult topics. Although some came from the inherent paradigm of being a self-proclaimed writer, most were the result of the sheer curiosity of finding a deeper meaning for life and what lied beyond it: Life is more colorful than black and white, and there are topics that people often shy away from (like poverty, corruption, abuse, etc.) but shouldn’t as it is a vital part of the experience and worth exploring.
There was always this disconnect, between my experiences and what the story was about; because when read, if not conveyed in a proper fashion, the reader could not have the same associations as the writer (this is a universal rule for writing). The problem usually occurred when a lot of information (experiences) were needed in order to understand the gravitas of a particular situation; which was difficult to translate and scribe (especially in a digestible format, which is also entertaining). Let alone deal with the emotional burden of negativity. All could be fine, in smaller doses, but when you are exploring a topic, you inadvertently stumble upon more than what one might wish for: Which is what could and should deter people away from reading, if executed in the wrong.
Have tried different methods of concealing emotional “burden” of misery before: Writing in obscure ways, where the reader would be tricked into thinking that they were in a kitchen, looking out onto a street, describing events as they were, only to realize at the very end that the story was told by the perspective of a homeless person (overseeing it all), who was told to move.
Even after several decades, being able to express overly emotional and difficult situations, are still proving to be a challenge: You can’t just throw in words and hope that people will understand, would care and have the stomach to digest. [Plus the target audience might not be there (1)]
This is an ongoing dilemma, as of recent, after picking up an old book project, where one of the main protagonists are facing a sort-of life threatening situation, which is solely/mostly built on negative experiences and ill fortune alone (life, work, family, etc.). The compounded events that fuel their story are so “toxic” that it’s giving me a difficult time to find a way to translate it into something that’s “fun” to read (the notes that inspired this are unreadable, because they “reek”, so much so that it literally upsets my stomach). Even finding a moment to “breathe” (for the reader) requires careful planning, because how the experiences are fueling the story.
And at this point, having a hard time convincing myself that if it can be done (especially only having time for working on the solution every now and then). Not just done, but be able to “tick” all the boxes (e.g., readable, fun, engaging). Which is now has been taken several months.
That being said, still a strong believer that there shouldn’t be a topic holding you back, to express yourself, because one way or another, anything could make it to the page. It only needs time, not just to “compose”, but to give time and space for the reader to get somewhat comfortable and let them care about the story. At least this is what is fueling my current dilemma for now; finding a definite answer to one of my biggest challenges so far.
(1) took years to realize this, discovering that sometimes the quality of writing has nothing to do with engagement, the topic alone can deter people first and foremost, before even giving the story a chance. In a similar note, there was this one instance, where someone admitted (after reading a short story about woodworking) that they too were skeptical at first, because they thought how boring the story might turn out to be. That being said, this has more to do with being unknown, rather than craft.
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Here’s my personal take on “realism vs escapism”:
I believe there are only two ways of writing a novel… one is mine, making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right down deep into life, and not caring a damn.
– P. G. Wodehouse
Wodehouse is one of my favourite authors. My 2018 game Alias ‘The Magpie’ was partly inspired by his work, and partly by the equally silly Pink Panther series of films. While I was writing ATM, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer, and both of them died. I carried on writing the game, determined to follow Wodehouse’s example and keep the pain and the grief out of the game. Some of it did creep in - one character is driven mad with grief after losing his boyfriend, and another is forced to confront some childhood trauma, but on the whole the tone is light and comical.
This thread is all about the dichotomy Wodehouse identifies. Authors who err on the side of the going right down deep into life and not caring a damn, are rightly applauded for doing so and these sorts of games are often the recipients of XYZZY Best Game awards and so on. Games that are “pure escapism” tend to do well in competitions because people love to play them, but they’re usually quickly forgotten.
But my point is that everyone suffers, to a greater or lesser extent, and everyone has different ways of dealing with suffering. Escapist games might not necessarily draw on the emotions we feel as authors, but they can equally well be a way of dealing with those emotions. I write to escape. I love to create silly, cartoonish worlds in which real-life, everyday problems don’t exist, and lose myself in them. Like many, I struggle with loneliness, anxiety and depression, but when I’m writing IF all of that gets pushed to one side. If I were to bring all of that pain into my games with me, I’d have nowhere left to escape to. My imagination is my safe space.
Having said that, in the last few years I’m noticing that some of the sadness is creeping into my games, and possibly they’re a little better for it. But for me personally, the sadness must always be tempered with humour. Games, films and stories without any humour at all don’t really resonate with me, because life is fundamentally absurd, and even darkest times have moments of silliness and comedy. My parents were stoics, and stoics tend to have a very dark sense of humour. Some of the jokes they made in their last few days on Earth shocked even people who knew them well, but they didn’t shock me. Black humour is just how my family deals with life’s blows, and I feel lucky to have it in my armoury.
Wodehouse presents these two approaches as mutually exclusive opposites, but in reality it’s more of a spectrum. Regardless of which style you opt for, your games will always be personal to you. Despite consciously choosing option A, I’ve noticed that certain themes keep cropping up again and again in my games. My protagonists are often versions of the trickster archetype, because that’s what I identify with. There are a few instances of cross-dressing. Bullies often get their comeuppance, because I’ve been bullied and I loathe bullies. Greedy materialists, in particular, fare badly in my games, because I’m anti-Captitalist and anti-materialist. There are themes of wistfulness and longing, of characters not being quite able to find what they’re looking for, because that’s how I feel a lot of the time. And there are characters who are unable to let go of the past, because that’s what I need to do, and I can’t. The weighty themes are in there, somewhere, they’re just heavily sugar-coated. So it doesn’t really matter whether or not you decide to deal directly with personal events, your truth will out, and your games will always be something only you could have written. Do what feels right to you, and whatever you come up with, I’m sure you’ll find an audience here.
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From my experience–speaking of book publishing–this usually falls into the category of “1 in a million”, and requires a lot more than just “sharing” your experiences: If you’re not a hot-shot, than nobody will care about your sap story.
But for me personally, the sadness must always be tempered with humour.
Never understood the need for any forms of comic releases in situations where they clearly didn’t belong to (have yet to see a heated argument play out, where someone mid aggression, with their heads about to explode, casually dropping a skit or a one liner, just to ease the tension; there is no space for that in real life, in real situations, mostly).
IMHO, this just screams bad writing, and questions the maturity/seriousness of the material from the get-go: The inability to carry through with the emotional ride, having to resort to cheap tricks and gimmicks (generally speaking of lazy writers), to somehow compensate for all. If you’re not into this “approach”, it could quickly break your illusion (that 4th wall), and ruin your involvement altogether. This is also more in the territory of dealing with feelings and emotions, how to be able to digest them, and so forth… because unresolved traumas can cause serious issues down the road, and influence one’s mental health and actions more ways then one could count.
Realism shouldn’t be daunting to the point of it being unbearable and off putting, because every situation resolves itself somehow, and carries on in one shape or another (even the darkest of ones). There’s always more to explore and look forward to.
But this isn’t the world of book publishing. The IF community is much more receptive to a heartfelt, personal story.
It’s not usually the angry person who makes a joke to diffuse the situation, but it does work and I’m known for it. I was once dubbed “the fool” as in court fool, because of my ability to burst people’s pomposity and pig-headedness with a joke. I tend to ameliorate my own temper by lapsing into self-parody too.
Is Kurt Vonnegut a bad writer? Is Slaughterhouse Five a bad book? Are Shakespeare’s plays gimmicky because they follow tragic scenes with bawdy comedy? Or are they richer for it? And what about the films of Stanley Kubrick or David Lynch? I’m not saying that a story has to have a touch of humour, simply that I find it much more relatable if it does.
If you regard humour as “cheap”, “gimmicky” and “lazy” then we probably don’t have a lot in common.
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That’s the beauty of life, celebrating the differences that is! That being said, am not opposed to humor (hope not, because that’s some of the last things I get these days), but have seen it be used over and over (out in the wild, in media), and just be a tool for pleasing the mass because that’s what has been established (from the “list”, which includes the most broad-essentials a story must have, to be the safest of bets, and highest of income, playing the game of optimization).
My overall grime with this is consistency: Rules are there to be broken, but not for the sake of breaking them. It’s a matter of (artisan) taste, as much as everything else. If the story is set up like that (giving room for such things, say a comedy), than sure, but otherwise no. Maybe it’s just me (could be telling), but shoving that poor bull into the china shop, at the wrong moment… just feels out of place.
Obviously, this should mostly apply for certain situations, as said before; excluding moments where it could be used as a shock factor, or whatever else.
But this isn’t the world of book publishing. The IF community is much more receptive to a heartfelt, personal story.
Publishing isn’t that bad… You see, you just need to jump over some hoops and loops that’s it: Perhaps win some awards or local, perhaps international competitions, be printed in a newspaper or some other outlet, be educated preferably with a diploma from somewhere prestigious, perhaps know someone here and there, be a celebrity or have a deep pocket to be able to find and convince a literary agent to take you in, then have the patience and power to convince a publisher to print your book, and perhaps be versed in the dark arts of popular genres, have the skills and expertise to write that’s a safe bet and marketable to the mass for the lowest of prices. I’d say, it’s all reasonable. No?
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Oh, humour can can certainly be over-used, and indeed misused. If used inappropriately it can completely undermine a story. I personally am sick of the kind of snarky, self-referential humour, full of cultural references, that’s common to Hollywood movies. It just feels so tired, and it dates very quickly. Personally I’m less about making jokes and more about creating comic situations. I’m not an absurdist in the strict philosophical sense, but life is full of absurd situations and I love it when art reflects that. Satire is my favourite type of humour and I don’t believe we’ll ever reach the stage in society where we’ve had too much of that.
I don’t doubt you. But for the purposes of this discussion, in which the OP was concerned about whether or not their work would be well received by this community, I don’t think it much matters. We love a personal story. If they do want to be published eventually and one of their games garners a XYZZY award or two, it might just help them on their way. 
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Your claim seems to be “mixing serious themes with humour is a sign of bad writing.” Surely the truth is that mixing serious themes with humour is something that can be done well but also easily be done badly, and so there is bad writing that mixes serious themes with humour. But then there is also transcendent writing that mixes serious themes with humour. Just two examples that come to mind immediately:
- Shakespeare, in Cleopatra’s death scene, has a ‘clown’ enter and make dubious jokes as he provides her with the deadly snake. As J. J. Guest pointed out, the mixing of comedy, even bawdy, with serious themes is a trademark Shakespeare move.
- In Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day there’s a long sequence set in Belgium just before World War 1. The character’s don’t know about this, of course, but we do, and the atmosphere is very oppressive. Then, instead of describing the horrors of trench warfare directly, Pynchon has one of the main characters go to a secret rendezvous in a mayonnaise factory (made with the best mustard in the world!) where the evil opponent has set a trap to suffocate him in a gigantic amount of mayonnaise. This is a pure slapstick take on a terrible tragedy, and yet it somehow works… because Pynchon is one of the greatest writers out there, of course.
Can it work in interactive fiction? Well, I’m not putting myself anywhere near Pynchon and Shakespeare, but my game Turandot did achieve second place in the IF Competition and it is all about mixing serious themes (death, trust, betrayal, sexism, sexual violence) with jokes and other forms of comedy. These jokes are not there because of inability to carry through with the emotional ride; they are part of the ride. You could not tell this story without them, although of course you could address the same themes in a different story without humour.
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This is a beautiful take, thank you. I definitely appreciate your words!
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It’s certainly true that folks’ taste can vary quite a lot, and that a good writer can make even seemingly-terrible ideas sublime while a bad one can make a hash even of a seemingly can’t-fail formula. But with all that subjective stuff out of the way, I’m also firmly of the belief that putting comedy into “serious” works doesn’t undercut them at all - pretty much all my favorite authors do this to one degree or other (I was starting to list specific writers here but it got too long. But really, pretty much every “great” writer does this to one degree or other). And I also think interjecting humor into the middle of tense sequences or arguments can be realistic - heck, I do that all the time (in my experience it as often annoys the other person more, though; I’m not saying it’s a good idea!)
To give an IF-specific example, my first game was also a Wodehouse pastiche, and also written as a conscious escape from a family member’s decline and death from cancer; I tried to be rigorous about making sure that nothing really bad happened to anybody, with every reverse or bit of bad luck greeted with a shrug and a wisecrack. It did amazingly well in the Comp, but I don’t hear folks talking about it that much except when the question of Wodehouse-influenced games came up.
My second game was a memoir directly about said loved one’s death; it also has a few jokes that I think are funnier than anything in the first game (since it’s a memoir, it would have felt bizarre and dishonest to me not to include humor). It did pretty well but not amazing in the Comp, but it also won a couple XYZZY’s and I feel like I see it come up in conversation reasonably often.
So I think that’s an indication that both game 1 and game 2 can work, but 2 might have more legs.
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I think the issue I have with this claim is the idea that humor in dark, tragic, or serious situations isn’t realistic or doesn’t belong. In the dark and sad situation I referred to in my original post, there was a strong absurdity that I joked about repeatedly at the time. To put lightly here - it turns out that when you don’t opt into pretend trauma it turns into real trauma! Wild, huh?
I’ve been in quite a few other instances of absurdity in the horrifying experiences of my life, the list could go on but I’ll spare you. Humor can be , and is, present in these situations as a way to understand, to process, to cope. People respond with jokes as a defense mechanism or manifestation of panic or triggers; to defuse situations or de-escalate; to escalate or mock; to comfort and commiserate. That is all stuff that happens in reality. Why would it be bad fiction to represent it?
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Dr. Strangelove; or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb!
How could I not mention that movie, one of the most perfect examples of the form.
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I’d also suggest Lore Distance Relationship which generally masquerades as a game about NeoPets, but contains some surprisingly personal content I would venture is autobiographical or based on real events, and includes some stellar voice acting by Bez. (While the scenes in question might be troubling, the general tone of the piece is positive and one of my favorites.)
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This is an incredibly reductive view of humor. Humor isn’t just sugar to make the medicine go down or a stop-gap in an emotionally draining work (although it can be those things); well-placed humor can actually intensify a scene and even lead to greater pathos. And as Victor said, it’s been used by some of the greatest authors of all time.
Kubrick was a master of this sort of thing, and I’d add to the list The Cohen brothers, PT Anderson, Terry Gilliam, Robert Altman…
I love art that has different moods and even mood swings; it makes for work that feels real and alive and convincing at a deep subconscious level.
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I am late to this thread, and have attempted to check that my 2019 entry “Roads not Taken” has not been mentioned. As many reviewers surmised, it was close to autobiographical, TWINE adaptation of a static memoir I had written earlier. It finished near the middle of the competition. The consensus among reviewers was that although my story telling was generally strong, the mechanic I had chosen to adapt it to an interactive narrative fell flat, boring even. I don’t disagree. It was better as a static memoir. But had I not adapted it and entered in the competition, I would have missed reading those reviews and the glory of donating my $36 prize back to the pool. It was a win for me.
Some authors have been more successful at adapting their personal experiences to interactive fiction, and indeed all great fiction is at some level inspired by “that which the author knows well”. An earlier game of mine about vampires taking over a filthy dive bar was also largely nonfiction (everything except the vampirism). The game map, descriptions, and characters were all from my own experiences working at that place in my 20s. That game came in 4th place. Not suggesting you should turn your ex into a vampire, but there can be a lot of catharsis in that.
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I’m sure there is! I found there was also a lot of catharsis in taking your story out of your head and seeing how you need to transform it to make a good story/game, in general.
I think everyone else has covered what I have to say about humor vs depressing stuff in fiction, but I’ll also add that real life doesn’t have the decency to separate the two either. There’s a lot of irrational things my dad did that were actually pretty funny – but they were due to his worsening dementia, so instead it was funny and sad and surreal. I didn’t include most of that in This Person Is Not My Father since it was all really fresh, but if I tackle the subject again I would want to. Avoiding it would be inauthentic.
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