Mark: The Utmost in Game Development

We recently talked to Lead Designer Mark about why Dungeon Runners is so funny. It didn't quite go as planned. Here's a transcript.

Question: One of the first things players mention when they talk about Dungeon Runners is the humor. What makes the development team so funny, and how do you incorporate your humor in making such a cool game?

Answer: We are not a group that likes to toot our own horn, I mean, we know we are the greatest game developers in the known Universe, but do we really need to tell everybody? I’m sure they can figure that out for themselves.

Q: Oh come on, surely you can tell us how you design Dungeon Runners while keeping your unique brand of humor in mind.

A: Since we are almost Gosh-like in our abilities, our game design philosophies and implementation processes are so refined and elaborate that it is difficult to put into small words, so I will use much bigger ones (those without degrees in literature or a PhD in anything, just skip to the next question).

Our intricate design philosophy revolves around the juxtaposition of the archetypical fantasy genre with the quintessential core of today’s mainstream popular cutlery. We feel that we need to paramountingly tap into the inner-psycho of our patrons and truly engage their innermost being through context and meaning via procedurally degenerated content, whether it be; visually, aurally, or even both. In order to achieve this unabashedingly magnanimous goal, we have constructed a process and methodology that relies heavily on attrition, an understanding of strict restraints, and lots of fine, hand-crafted libations. Furthermore, this methodology has permeated into not only our creative processes but our ability to plan, coordinate, and schedule out even the finest details of the implementation processes. Thus, with such a discerning process and our own high level of continence, we have been able to bequeath to you, the greatest (free) game known to Man, Beast, and Monster (this includes Karl).

Q: I think I get that, sort of… but what about the humor? In other words, what makes it so funny?

A: On the Dungeon Runners team, we have very stringent guidelines on what is, and is not, funny. For starters, all of us are classically trained clowns, with one exception, one of our team members was trained as a mime (he’s a programmer and doesn’t add much to the creative process). On top of that, every morsel of content created for the game must undergo a very strict “comedic assurance” process, which I would elaborate more on, but of course, company secrets are secrets for a reason.

Q: You can give us a little more than that.

A: Okay, fine, stop twisting my arm! Here’s what I can say: the process usually involves ten monkeys, a piece of cheese and a very large spade. It can get messy, and some animals do get hurt in the process, but it is a sacrifice I am sure we can all agree is worth it. We have found that monkeys tend to last longer in our testing processes than gerbils. However, gerbils were much easier to keep contained. “It was a zoo at the office today,” has a whole new meaning at our office.

Q: What about the randomization of the instanced dungeons and the sheer variety of loot that is available in Dungeon Runners?

A: We heard somewhere that randomly generated stuff is pretty cool to have in games, so we decided to put that into ours… on pretty much everything. That’s about enough on that topic.

Q: Gee... thanks.