"Knew a bloke who got vaccinated. Died 50 years on." 

"Oh you've been to Australia? Must be a government paid actor."

"Been up all night watching my shoes so they didn't run away."

The above three lines are taken from our upcoming point-and-click corporate espionage game, Fire Me, I Insist. They are quite obviously intended to be ironic, at least, to us they are. But it occurred to me after receiving this comment on a recent YouTube video of ours, that the irony might not be obvious to others...

The thumbnail in questions:

So, either this commentor is pro-Trump or anti-Trump - we'll never know. What's funny is, that the above thumbnail doesn't actually give a clear indication as to our politics as game developers. In fact, it intentionally shows two opinions: 1) that Donald Trump is a good president 2) That he isn't. Unsurprisingly, in 2025, it seems the subtleties of political satire are lost on many. Worse still, this thumbnail is pretty on the nose.

So, why even bother with such a commentary in a world that's so polarised? Because the characters in Fire Me, I Insist are designed to embody the most unreasonable and absurd facets of human nature. Take, for example, Tin Foil Rodger (the guy in green with the tin foil hat): he is a radical conspiracy theorist who questions the existence of the first moon-landing and Australia. Meanwhile, the skinless lizard man pictured in the top left, is very obviously a non-human entity who is possibly an agent of the illuminati. 

What's the common factor that ties the two characters together? The absurdity. Obviously, the moon-landing wasn't faked and Australia is real, but the fact of the matter is that there are people who believe both things to be fictitious.

This is what made writing the dialogue for Fire Me, I Insist so fun. We were able to imbue each character with absurd irony. While you have the two characters mentioned above, you also have Frank Floater whose contradictory personality and germophobic guise make his old-world, masculine views appear utterly unfounded. Meanwhile, the Head Honcho of the office believes the best way to improve inefficiency is to fire all his workers, but how can office be efficient without anyone to do the work?

Hopefully, we're able to find an audience who understands the absurd irony of this game. More likely, we'll encounter may individuals similar to the YouTube commentor who struggle to read between the lines and understand that we're trying to satirise hypocritical modern attitudes. 

All the same, it's possible that we've over intellectualised a game rampant with toilet humour. Still, at least we're laughing.