Introduction to Interactive Comedy Gaming (0m00s)

Joe Hart introduces himself as a comedian who codes and explains that this is an interactive comedy show he took to the Edinburgh Fringe. He works at the BBC as a developer advocate during the day but clarifies he's here to play video games with the audience.

"I like to describe myself as a comedian who codes. Mainly because it sounds a lot better than a software engineer who pisses about too much."

Audience Participation: Flappy Bird (2m26s)

The first interactive game is a voice-controlled version of Flappy Bird where the audience must cheer to make the bird go up and stay quiet to let it fall down. The audience is split into two teams to compete, with Team A achieving an impressive score of 121.

"The highest score I ever got in Edinburgh, which was a 30 day run, was nine."

"You weren't meant to get this far."

Inverted Controls Challenge (7m57s)

A more difficult version of the game is introduced with inverted controls - clapping to go down and silence to go up. The audience manages to beat the previous Edinburgh record of three.

"These people are not to be trusted."

"The last seven times I've done this, they've got zero, so I think you can beat that."

Classic Games Reimagined (11m10s)

Joe presents his "realistic" versions of classic games. Pong is enhanced with tennis sound effects including John McEnroe's famous outburst. Space Invaders is made "realistic" by removing the aliens entirely since "aliens aren't real," leaving only the International Space Station to shoot at.

"You cannot be serious, man. You cannot be serious."

"Remmy just shot the International Space Station. All the astronauts, dead."

Gaming Bugs and Features (13m52s)

Discussion of famous video game bugs that became features, including Space Invaders' accidental difficulty curve and the controversial claim about Lara Croft's proportions in Tomb Raider. The highlight is the Gandhi bug in Civilization where an integer underflow made the peaceful leader extremely aggressive with nuclear weapons.

"Our words are backed with nuclear weapons."

"Right around the time that you discover nuclear missiles."

Communist Tetris (18m42s)

Joe presents his communist version of Tetris where all pieces are equal (squares only), explaining the game's origins in the USSR and how it was smuggled to the West. A two-player version is demonstrated where one player builds custom tetriminos for the other to use.

"We're all equal here."

"And it's double communist because we are, in fact, building a wall between us and West Tetris."

The Sims: Moral Playground (22m02s)

Extended discussion about The Sims and the cruel things players do to their virtual people, including the infamous swimming pool removal trick. Joe shares stories from audience members about creative torture methods and his own Sims Challenge experiment.

"And we used to do this for fun. Who says that western culture is decadent?"

"So what he would do is he would ship in families into this place, pop them all in, murder them, and then pop the gravestones in the graveyard."

The Sims Challenge (26m42s)

Joe describes creating a Sim version of himself and leaving it to run autonomously for two months. The Sim switched careers from comedy to finance, got married with children, and lived in a mansion - seemingly more successful but "living a lie" as Joe couldn't programme his sexuality into the game.

"So while he may be doing better in many more traditional senses, he is married with three children living a lie."

ET and Video Game Disasters (29m49s)

Discussion of ET for Atari 2600 as the worst video game ever made, including the urban legend (proved true) that unsold copies were buried in the desert. This leads to the idea that modern technology allows rapid game creation.

"They produced more versions of this game than there existed Atari 2600 consoles."

Collaborative Game Creation (31m53s)

The audience creates artwork for a new video game in real-time. They draw a heart with legs on a bicycle as the hero, a pile of top hats as the McGuffin, a "dickbutt" as the villain, and various other characters. Joe struggles to implement the game while the audience helps debug by shooting virtual bugs with their cheers.

"I don't know what I expected."

"Chrome sort of hides it away."

Final Game Attempt (40m25s)

The show concludes with attempts to play the hastily assembled game, featuring live debugging and variable adjustments. Despite technical difficulties, they manage to defeat the villain and recover the stolen hats.

"I changed the lateral velocity, not the gravity."

"To our villain, the giant dickbutt."