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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

#161

Post by estebank »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #145
MrJohz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Blo…

The Witness is a 3d engine made from scratch. Not all AAA companies use Unreal or Unity.

Having a 3D engine does not a AAA make. The Witness is a beautiful looking game, but the amount of state and interactions it has to deal with is orders of magnitude less than GTA: San Andreas. It is closer to the complexity a Myst remake would have.

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

#162

Post by ookdatnog »

armitron wrote: post #137
perching_aix wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a basic biological fact > looks inside > opinion He literally tells you that it's his bellyfeel: "I believe it is likely that (...)". Come on...

[flagged]

> one that every practicing biologist would agree with

Where are you getting this from? As far as I'm aware biologists, practicing or not, are not particularly concerned with the study of human behavior.

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

#163

Post by __alexs »

mariusor wrote: post #158
__alexs wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in participation within STEM between men and women is not well explained by biological differences. Blow has repeatedly claimed that it is actually the primary factor and seems actively disinterested in other explanations. This is "controversial" in that it's a position that is not well supported by evidence and he has repeatedly used his platform in the past to make unsupported claims to the contrary.

OK, he's wrong. But is that enough to state that he "doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession"?

I don't think he's said exactly that in his own words but I think on balance it's fair to say he doesn't seem welcoming about it.

He clearly has right leaning and libertarian views, and seems to be not very articulate or sensitive in how he discusses them so I can see why people might read into that more than they should maybe.

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

#164

Post by harperlee »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #126
valiant55 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Whether one is allowed to pose some particular questions is a political topic though!

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

#165

Post by latexr »

incrudible wrote: post #140
latexr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these are not fringe opinions Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. > throwing around certain bad words like fascist Fascism has a very clear definition. It describes a particular set of behaviours and actions, all of which you can compare to reality and determine if it’s happening or not. It’s an objective word. If anyone is trying…

> Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky. > Fascism has a very clear definition. First of all, that isn't true. Secondly, even if it was true, it wouldn't matter. You are…

> From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was

I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK.

> but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

Again, I doubt the slaves would agree with you.

> Consider yourself lucky.

That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean?

> First of all, that isn't true.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

Seems pretty clear to me.

> You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché.

Of course I’m not, I barely use the word. Pay attention to the person you’re replying to. What you’re doing is putting me in a box of other people you’ve seen online and making a bunch of wrong assumptions. You’re not engaging with the arguments, you’re fighting against a straw man in your imagination.

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

#167

Post by Hammershaft »

saberience wrote: post #111
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)…

C++ & Linux are world-changing tools, but C++ & Linux really do suck in ways that become more offensive with taste. Rust makes very different tradeoffs than ones gamedevs want.

Regardless, if arrogance drives people to make new tools then we should be grateful for that arrogance.

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

#168

Post by klausa »

kibwen wrote: post #147
klausa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you not consider Braid to have put writing front and center?

It's been about 15 years since I played it, but I recall the writing in Braid being memorably shallow, clumsy, and pretentious (with the grand twist at the end being that they guy who spent the whole game acting like a clingy stalker was actually a clingy stalker this whole time).

I very deliberately did not say anything about my opinion about the quality of writing in Braid (and I think replaying it again wouldn’t do it any favors) ;)

But I do think that the writing was fairly central to the intended experience and design of the game.

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

#169

Post by ragazzina »

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…

>a relatively benign conservative

Can it really be considered “relatively benign” when an extremely famous public figure is calling for people who disagree with them to be shot?

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

#170

Post by tialaramex »

klausa wrote: post #124
bzzzt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea you have to pick between reasonable engineering and fun is a false dichotomy. Of course not every game will have the time budget to fix every unintended feature but your example game would have been more enjoyable (especially for the mentioned Playstation users) if the code had been written a bit better.

I think for games like Blue Prince, specifically, it’s not a false dichotomy. Those are made in tiny teams. You can either spend more time tinkering with the gameplay mechanics and experimenting with the game parts; or you can put on your software engineer hat and make the code better (or, spend even more time to learn how to make the code better in the first place!). This gets less true with scale of a team, and wit…

A lot of core game logic is presumably Tonda's work. He's a director, not a software engineer. He came into this, many years ago, wondering if the "easy" tools to make a video game meant he could just make the video game he was imagining, and of course the answer is "Yes, but..."

Blue Prince is (an extrapolation of) that first game, but it looks and sounds like competent people worked on it, not like something slapped together by a non-engineer in a week. However while you can hire experts to make "You know, like cool jazz for a mysterious underground area" or "Art that looks thematically like it was sketched, but also feels solid enough that you could lean on it" it's very difficult for software engineers to "just" fix the software to get rid of bugs because what's a bug? Only the puzzle designer knows for sure what they intended.

[[Spoilers! Do not read if you are still playing or might play]]

Is it a bug that "Swimming Trunks" don't let you swim? No! That's a Dad Joke. They're Trunks. Large locked wooden boxes. They're in the swimming pool, and if your pool has water in it, that means they're swimming.

When I picked a time from my near future in Shelter, it didn't work, that's a bug right? Nope. The Shelter cares about game time, not real world time. Make sure you know the date in game.

OK but is it a bug that being in Clock Tower at the Sacred Hour doesn't have any effect? Um, maybe? It seems as though the software doesn't believe clocks repeat, so only the first time will actually work. Or, maybe the second does too? It's hard to say. Try again?

I need food but somehow I keep digging up keys and money. That's a bug right? Nope, probably means you have made a Contraption which changed your dig probabilities.

OK, so that's also why my Door facings are weird even though I put my Compass-based Contraption in a Cloak Room? That one's probably a bug.

Still, "If you draft it quite late" ought to mean my Music Room has the key right? Well, maybe, what did you think "Quite late" meant?

"I thought after a few hours would do it". Huh. Well, maybe. "OK, what about Rank 7?". Rank Nine would be better, but it might be enough, depends. "I still get no key, are you sure this isn't a bug?". The most likely problem is that you've done Music Room. If so the most likely key to wrongly believe you did instead is Vault, although Station is also possible. Check the other locations.

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