I’ve seen a lot of polarizing results towards this “holiday.”
And in honesty, I think I also finally find myself on the fence. It’s hard to consider a day such as this as a proper holiday when the enforcement for it is simply “being silly,” but I’ve seen many issues with the day creating turmoil in how it functions. For those who don’t know the meaning of April 1st, I’m so sorry because you must have been horribly confused many times over in your life. But for context, I’m referring to the “April Fools” tradition of pranks and mischief that takes a normal day and fills it with doubt. That’s especially true as larger corporations take to the stage as well as gaming news, something that can bring about a lot of distrust during the day.
I wanted to note this as a feature within the world because of how different various reactions to things done for “April Fools” are, especially considering the form in which it manifests within the gaming world. Because even when I’m radicalized by a particularly devious mention of a long awaited game being “confirmed,” I can’t bring myself to wish for the holiday to be retired. This is due to a large portion of interesting themes and ideas that spawned from the idea of jokes made for April 1st, including the large volume of games produced by Landfall including Totally Accurate Battlegrounds (which was originally released as an April Fool’s day exclusive) as well as Content Warning, games that became beloved due to how playable and fun they ended up.
Before I get into that, I want to write about how important it is that an April Fool’s day joke is obvious to the audience. A good prank does not hurt the target in any way, and that includes not giving them false emotional turmoil for something that isn’t real. The reason that false promises come off as mean rather than a prank is because it inflicts that annoyance and pain on someone, and this should be considered for larger scale operations such as with corporations discussing game details under the holiday’s umbrella. A game promising requested features of sequels that are consistent, or discussing an end of service for a game can be reasonable enough that a large portion of readers will believe it. When the “joke” is then revealed, there is no nuance. It simply functions as “you believed a thing that was reasonable but it was a lie.” To avoid this, making creations that are obviously within the April Fool’s day umbrella are recognizable to the audience in a way that makes the absurdity the reason for laughter.
For example, the Dead Meat youtube channel from James A. Janisse and his crew pulled their April Fool’s joke which involved a logo change with the text, “After much consideration, we’ve decided counting kills is just too depressing. SO we’re replacing The Kill Count with The Kiss Count: tallying up the kisses in all your favorite romances!” For those unaware, Dead Meat’s Kill Count is their signature show going over the kills within horror media and showing off the behind the scenes of how visual effects were achieved. With a passionate host like Janisse running the show and constantly showing how happy and excited he is for horror movies and media, this description comes as a major change in tone that can only be attributed to a joke. The fun in this is the audience getting to laugh at the “what if” for if he were to make this change, allowing everyone to be in on the joke and nobody to be led to believe this is real. In order to achieve that, while Dead Meat does change the color of its logo away from blood red to a loving pink, they don’t change their name or any of their previous content in a way that could make it impossible for a new person to approach and understand that this is indeed a joke.
I want to use this to circle back to a previous point, mentioning how powerful and memorable the Landfall entries to April 1st have been. While I believe the obviousness of a joke is what makes the prank go from bad to good, the defining way something during this day goes from good to great is from the effort put into it. While Dead Meat’s community post and mockup schedule were cute and fun to see, it also would have been enhanced by a video showcasing how it would have manifested by showing an example Kiss Count in order to allow for the comedy to shine with Janisse and his team playing up the comedy aspects. This is why Landfall makes such a lasting impact on me—The playable state of the games, especially considering how well put together they are, makes the silly jokes of them even more fun to experience. Another great example is Lovers of Aether, the dating simulator made by Dan Fornace about his characters from the platform fighter Rivals of Aether. These playable aspects of one-shot games make for a fun spin that brings the “what if” into reality.
And if you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m doing writing a sporadic article for April 1st. I’m sure some of you might have thought this in itself was a prank, but this is indeed a real thing. However, I’ll forgo a proper conclusion to instead explain what it is I’m doing.
My university ends this quarter with my degree in June and the world opening up, and my direction to find work is currently leaning towards journalism. With the wishes to get into the game journalism world, I wanted to put myself through some challenges to see how well I could adapt to the working style and find ways to show my skills off in a portfolio style format. For that reason, I’ll be attempting to write an article style piece every day from the beginning to the end of April.
Please keep in mind that I just started a quarter of uni work as well as having plenty of other things on my plate, so I do plan to skip various days or put in lower amounts of effort for times when I have more things to focus on. This article was rather rushed on my end—I realized I needed to start on my way back from class and rushed to finish this before my homework (which is not the right order of operations). I also have to figure out linking and pictures for my higher quality articles that I will eventually make over days where I have less to do. But for now, enjoy the thoughts I put into words over the next month.
And if you’re an interviewer or someone at a journalist publishing place that I’m applying to, I hope you’ll consider me as a passionate addition to your team!