Making Fun of Tetris

I am very happy to announce that my chapter “Making fun of Tetris: Humour in parodies of a computer game classic” has just been published. It was fun to write since it is about playable and non-playable parodies of Tetris that take the form of cartoons, meta-games, Youtube videos etc. I enjoyed the most that this allowed me to investigate parts of my favorite webcomics (https://xkcd.com) in my work. Drawing on humor theories, game studies and media studies, the chapter argues:

• These parodies reflect the gameplay logic of Tetris (more than Tetris itself).
• Parodies of Tetris are often funny and creative, and they provide a novel gameplay concept at the same time.
• They continue a tradition of paradoxical interventions from art history.
• And they provide a form of cultural critique concerning neoliberal game design.

Möring, Sebastian (2022): “Making Fun of Tetris: Humour in Parodies of a Computer Game Classic,” in: Video Games and Comedy, edited by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, and Jaroslav Švelch, 191–213, Cham: Springer International Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6_10.

Please get in touch if you experience difficulties in getting hold of a copy.

A long time in the making

I am very happy that it has finally been published because the chapter has been in the making for a really long time. I presented the first version in 2011 in Hilversum, near Utrecht. There I attended the conference of the Digital Games Research Association for the first time. I wrote this during my Ph.D. When I was still figuring out if humor should play a part in it or not.

Video Games and Comedy

The chapter is part of the fantastic volume Video Games and Comedy. It was edited by my great colleagues Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, and Jaroslav Švelch. The book’s introduction:

Video Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games.

You find the table of content as soon as you follow this link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6.

Bonello Rutter Giappone, Krista, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, and Jaroslav Švelch, eds. 2022. Video Games and Comedy. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6.