Jokes are funny, not fun
Time for a rant about game design. Every once in a while, someone in a game development team jokes about adding something silly to the game. Maybe a unit with an unpronounceable name, or a gun that fires teapots, or an enemy that kills you and deletes your saved game. That's funny! It's a joke. A funny proposition. And yet far too often, someone adds "you know, we should actually put that into the game." and the designer says "yeah, this isn't a serious game, it'll be a joke". There's something profoundly wrong here. Having a game that doesn't take itself seriously and has less-than-serious dialog in it is perfectly fine. But those games are designed in an extremely serious and rigorous fashion. Take Plants vs Zombies, whose premise is fairly ridiculous and has you planting exploding potatoes. It's a silly game. But its design isn't silly - a ton of work has gone into making every plant interesting and unique in their own way, with th...