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

arstechnica.com

171–180 of 654 posts

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

#171
post #135

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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

He streams on Twitch and often talks about politics. He's a big Trump fan for example.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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Defending misogyny via biology. Nice.

Who could have guessed a site composed nearly of techie guys would have problems identifying misogyny. This website is trash.

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

#174
post #109

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> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?

With Blow the devil is simultaneously in the details and at the meta level. For example in the Witness, which I consider one of the best puzzle games ever made, you get a fairly simple core mechanic, but the game builds upon it in very interesting ways. It feels like a journey of learning and always challenges you in some novel way at each step. There are also several revelations along the way, where you discover new…

To each their own. I found the Witness to be excruciatingly monotonous, forced and, ultimately, boring.

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

#175
post #116

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The second paragraph of the linked article?

The Reddit link didn’t load for some reason and the other day be didn’t include anything racist, homophobic or transphobic. What it did cover is definitely a simplistic view ignoring the cultural nuances that might lower women’s participation in stem, but I’m not sure I’d classify it as sexist.

He suggests women are biologically less capable than men in STEM. But I note you didn't include misogyny as a problematic belief.

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

#176
post #125
post #18

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Yeah it's a real step backwards from how The Witness was presented: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul7kNFD6noU This looks to be the first of Jon Blows games to put writing front and center, so I wonder if the clunkiness goes beyond the trailer. That's not really his forte.

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

Not really, the writing is sectioned away from the gameplay and easy to skip over unread without missing anything relevant to the main event, the puzzles. It's not good but its unobtrusiveness made it easy to forgive. Judging from this trailer the characters will be yapping to themselves and each other during gameplay though, so it had better be well executed, especially if they end up talking a lot.

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

#177
Interesting read. As an indie puzzle dev (shameless plug: https://thinky.gg), I find the biggest leap happens when a system’s rules are rich enough that solving becomes about understanding the space and recombining elements, not memorizing solutions. Games with extensible grids and turn mechanics reward that kind of play and creation much better than static collections of challenges

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

#178

Okay, but are the puzzles fun?

Depends on your definition of fun. In both Braid and the Witness, eventually you come across a puzzle you cannot solve and have to use Google to find the answer, because the game never bothered to even hint at how it could be solved. That's pretty much the opposite of fun. Just pretentious; I would expect more of the same.

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

#179
post #61

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I don't know why you just handpicked the covid trutherism without quoting the full thing, here the full quote from the link above: > Additionally, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that Jon’s beliefs/priorities and mine are not aligned. He’s adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in covid trutherism, and is pro-MAGA. Here the po…

I left a link to the exact post I'm referring to with the whole thread available for context.

And I didn't include the whole thing, because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. A game is released (which in part includes their work if I understand it right) and they can't help themselves and make this about Trump.

I'm sure I'd have the same opinion if I saw what's happening in Truth Social. These echo chambers are not good.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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The idea that there could be biological dispositions to using a computer, the least natural thing I could think off, is well and truly absurd. Anyone still "interested" in this topic is coming from a place of unsubstantiated vice signalling, and completely uninterested in hearing any actual biologist's take on the subject, in my experience.

Let's not forget that the first generation of programmers was mostly women, until the job became high-status enough that men could take over. Takeaway: it's all bullshit.

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