Why we are making a game about stand-up comedy

The first question we get about Stand Up is whether you have to write your own jokes. The answer is no — and the more interesting answer is that the game is not really about the jokes at all.

The week, not the set

Stand-up looks, from the outside, like five minutes on a stage. The game we are making is about everything that surrounds those five minutes: the bus rides, the half-edited notebook, the friend you keep cancelling on, the day job that pays the rent, the small confidences and small losses of confidence that build up over a week.

The performance is the surface of the iceberg. We want the player inside the rest of it.

Why this, why us

A lot of us grew up loving comedy specials that felt like short films. There is a particular vulnerability to the form — the comedian is alone, the room can turn — that maps surprisingly well onto a single-player game. You play one person, in one head, working through one specific thing.

We are not the first to make a game about a creative life. We are interested in what happens if you treat the small parts of that life with the same seriousness as the big ones.

Where we are with it

Early prototype. The systems we are confident about: a week loop, a notebook for collecting observations, a small map of venues. The systems we are still figuring out: how the actual sets feel, and how much of the audience’s reaction the player should see versus feel.

More on those as we get there.