Power Button - Episode 87: Going Inside The Jokes Of Borderlands 2 And Retro City Rampage
October 15, 2012
Video games these days love to include self-referential humor and industry in-jokes as part of their narratives or even as quick throwaway gags. On this episode of the Power Button podcast, Brad Hilderbrand and I explore the use of this sort of humor in two recent but very different games: Borderlands 2 from Gearbox Software and Retro City Rampage from Vblank Entertainment. One is a big budget on-disc release while the other is a small downloadable game developed by just a handful of people, yet both rely on jokes that dip into nostalgia and current gaming events. We get to the bottom of whether or not the use of these kinds of gags helps or harms a game and determine when too much self-referencing becomes too much. How many "arrow to the knee" jokes can we take? Join us for forty minutes of discussion to find out. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, or subscribe via iTunes, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach all three of us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow all of us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons, @aubradley84, and @JoeyDavidson or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton.