Part 1.Scaffolding and how to fall off it: Theories and concepts.-1. Ludo-Comedic Consonance: An Introduction to Video Games and Comedy.-2. Comedy and the Dual Position of the Player.-3. Press X to Punch(line): The Design and Cognition of Interactive Gags.-4. The Rubber Chicken’s Ergodicity: On Puzzle Punchlines in The Secret of Monkey Island.-5. On Nintendo’s Visual Humour: Slapstick Cinema and Comic Theatre in Super Smash Bros.-6. Benign Trials, Vexing Violations: Reading Humour in Puzzle Games
Part 2.Clowning Around: Contexts, Cultures,and Communities
7. The Illuminatus Space Game: From an April Fools’ Joke to Digital Cultural Heritage.-8. Red Comrades Save the Galaxy: Early Russian Adventure Games and the Tradition of Anecdote.-9. “Sorry, You Had Won”: Satirical French Digital Games Responding to National Sociopolitical Crisis (1984–1986).-10. Making Fun of Tetris: Humour in Parodies of a Computer Game Classic.-11. Ridiculing the Player: Live-Action Visualisations of Game Experience in YouTube Parody Videos as an Ambivalent Strategy of Self-Fashioning.-12. Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events
Part 3. Five Ways to Spoil A Joke: Case Studies
13. Cybernetic Irony: Racial Humour from Mecha-Hitler to Nuclear Gandhi.-14. “Mark Matthews Stars in ‘Anatomy is Hard!’ A Struggling Student Tries to Make the Grade with His Professor”: Sexual Humour and Queer Space in Coming Out on Top.-15. “A Tool of Efficiency and Consumption to Destroy Man”: Irony and Sincerity in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.-16. Humour in Pornographic Browser Games: From Undertale to Uddertale, a Case Study.-17. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore (Or Is It?): On Hitman and Gamer Humour(lessness).