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Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#111

Post by saberience »

gortok wrote: post #99

The folks that dismiss JB’s work by saying “this could have been done in ” are missing the point of why anything is done. If you are entirely utilitarian in how you approach making a game (as in this case) then you’ll want to create as little as possible to make the game. An existing game engine, an existing programming language, existing libraries, etc. If your goal is the economic return that making a game will (ho…

Blow made his own language because he's so eye-wateringly arrogant and thinks every language (that he didn't make) sucks, and only he is smart enough to design a better language for programming games.

Seriously, this is why he did it. His ego and arrogance is off the charts and if it wasn't made by him, he thinks it sucks (e.g. he doesn't like Linux, probably because he realizes Torvalds is actually smarter than him). He also doesn't like C++ or Rust, again, it's probably a good indicator he has a deep inferiority complex and so he has to prove he's the smartest person in the world by writing his own, "better" language.

I.e. I don't think he's making a programming language for some "love of creating", I think he's doing it because he has a deep psychological issue/insecurity, which drives his need to always be the "smartest person in the room", his arrogance, the way he dismisses others who don't agree with his viewpoints etc.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#112

Post by __alexs »

jsheard wrote: post #13
__alexs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate it but also it's a deeply flawed game. It walked so that Talos Principle could run.

The Talos Principle came out a few years before The Witness though.

I guess I am just entirely wrong on that front. 10 years is a long time ago :)

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#113

Post by breppp »

mariusor wrote: post #25
jstimpfle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't played any of these games, but "explains otherwise" seems to be a misrepresentation given that the commenter you linked is saying himself that Blow's game combines ideas and rulesets from several other previous games. Elsewhere in the arstechnica comments you linked > But, uh... this isn't a "Linus Torvalds is a jerk" sort of situation. "Controversial" undersells just how outlandish and inappropriate Blow's…

I've been watching Blow work on his compiler and game for many years. He has gone the deep end in his sympathies for Trump and Trump adjacents, but misogyny I've never witnessed from him. I think he is the latest victim of the Notch-Rowling slide into rightism. It happens when a relatively benign conservatives have opinions that get the internet mob riled up, bullies them, cancels them and thus makes them dig deeper…

I think you identify the cycle of radicalization correctly but only on a specific side.

There are people in this thread comparing Trump to Hitler. I don't think Trump is the US finest president but those of my family who weren't slaves for the Germans were slaughtered.

The fact that people throw comparisons that are false on some massive scale around and it's completely normalized is an example why losing touch with reality is not only a problem of the right

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#114

Post by valiant55 »

torginus wrote: post #78
piker wrote: post #10

I always find Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori to be great educators and advocates on the “simplicity” end of the spectrum. Jonathan can be super abrasive and comes with some political baggage, but does a good job advocating against what he perceives as unnecessary complexity in software. Opponents would suggest his domain and cherry-picked examples create the perfect environment for his positions and that he does ta…

Political? The most political I've seen him get was when he spoke out against the idea of accepting technical compromises for the sake of not hurting people's feelings and being PC. As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution

One example is linked in the article where he expressed women are biologically less interested in tech.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#115

Post by tialaramex »

coldtea wrote: post #81
ido wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I too was wondering about that comparison...Programming in TS is more pleasant (to me) than JS.

Still, could that be because you're more of a C++ type personality code than a JS one?x

It's easy for both C++ and Javascript to be horrible languages. Dislike for one doesn't have to result in fondness for the other.

Brendan Eich at least has the excuse for Javascript that there was a tight deadline. What's Bjarne's excuse for C++?

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#116

Post by jna_sh »

jabbywocker wrote: post #108
simonask wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wonder how readily people would defend this viewpoint if they belonged to any of those groups whose "feelings" are typically being "hurt". I don't know about you, but there does not exist any amount of technical achievement that will make me brush off sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or anything else. If you are going to be disrespectful to me or people I care about, we cannot work together, period. By…

Don’t follow him much but do you got any links discussing Blow being sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic?

The second paragraph of the linked article?

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#117

Post by __alexs »

Laremere wrote: post #32
actionfromafar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna buy it for Christmas!

The Witness is, in my opinion, simply one of the best games ever made. There are many layers to the game, and moments of insight that the game leads you to, but also trusts for you to make the final connections. However, I do understand why some consider it a slog. There are many puzzles in the game that people will dislike, indeed many puzzles that I disliked. It seems Jon prioritized finding all of the interesting…

The Witness would have been better if it was half as long definitely, but the problem was not that it was long, it was that it didn't have enough interesting content to fill the time. The puzzles are not mechanically interesting enough to enjoy repeating to the level the game forces you to and the variations are explored so slowly it's just tedious.

I think Blow achieved what he wanted, which I guess makes it a good game in a sense but also it wasn't an experience I enjoyed or can easily recommend to others.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#118

Post by mariusor »

martin_balsam wrote: post #30

This interplay between different worlds reminded me of Enigmash, by Jack Lance [1] [1] https://jacklance.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=cfdcc6e...

When Lance passed, it was one of the only times when I heard Blow be actually effusive about a person and their accomplishments.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#119

Post by MrJohz »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #92
tialaramex wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if you look at say, Blue Prince, one of the most important "out of nowhere" type video game releases of 2025, the actual software engineering is trash . I'd fail code reviews for a lot of what was done, and there are cracks in the façade where a player will hurt themselves as a result - e.g. there's a bug where animations overwrite so you get short changed on the resources you were gathering when you go "too f…

That's true, a game like Blue Prince doesn't suffer from bad engineering because of the type of game it is. There are plenty of other games, like Cyberpunk 2077, where the lack of engineering made an otherwise good game unplayable and unenjoyable. The fact remains that Blue Prince would have been more enjoyable for those people who did see those bugs had some time been spent on better engineering.

I think the question is whether Cyberpunk 2077 would ever have been made under the constraints that Blow and Muratori talk about. Like, Order of the Sinking Star looks pretty impressive, but from what I can tell it's basically just a bunch of Sokoban-style games operating on a fixed grid. You don't need anywhere near as complex an engine for that as you do for a game like Cyberpunk 2077.

My impression is that the Blow/Muratori style works well if you're the only person working on a game, or part of a very limited team, which is fair enough, but it naturally limits the scope of what you can achieve.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#120

Post by __alexs »

wongarsu wrote: post #38
swiftcoder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a nice collation of his greatest hits over on Reddit[1] [1]: https://www.redditmedia.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1jh275...

Ok, I can see the "fascist sympathizer" (though the fascist is Trump, not Mussolini or Hitler, so it's presumably not such a minority opinion in the US overall). But "doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession" doesn't seem substantiated from those links, unless I'm missing something here? Women being less interested in programming according to him is completely orthogonal to whether he…

Old tweet screenshots are the best I can do:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg

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