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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

#381

Post by Capricorn2481 »

Johanx64 wrote: post #321
AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people actually have mouths to feed. Some people don't have the luxury of preaching for whatever ideals they have without a need to release anything in 10 years; that doesn't make their products "garbage".

> Some people don't have the luxury of preaching for whatever ideals they have without a need to release anything in 10 years Wait, how did they gain this "luxury"? Are they trust fund babies or something? Or did they earn their big stash of money by producing "garbage" and now retroactively are preaching ideals that they themselves didn't follow or what? This line of "criticism" doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Af…

Just to be clear, your comments are implying everyone who doesn't write everything from scratch is shipping garbage.

Ignoring how misinformed that opinion is, I would say The Witness is a very compromised game. Maybe if less focus went into the technical aspect, it could've been better.

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

#382

Post by shwaj »

embedding-shape wrote: post #23
tormeh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the original puzzles were licensed for this game, in which case why not?

> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together. > I made two free games which were later licensed to be used and remixed in this project. Seems indeed to be the case. Blow designed (I guess) the mashup and "composition" if you will, but the puzzles themselves have all been designed and licensed by others, so seems the title of the HN sub…

We don’t know that, AFAICT (after reading the Ars article and the Bluesky post). Some of the puzzles are probably reused, and other new ones using the same mechanics may have been written. I’m not sure why you’d so confidently state “Blow didn’t design these puzzles at all”… do you have something against him personally?

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

#383

Post by thenoblesunfish »

andersa wrote: post #267

I'm always a bit baffled by this project. While it's cool that he can create hundreds of hours of content for his puzzle game, does anyone actually want to play a single puzzle game for this long? Would it not be better to make a few different, shorter, higher quality experiences?

People do the New York Times crossword every day for years..

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

#384

Post by ragazzina »

mariusor wrote: post #322
ragazzina wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not missing their point at all, you are missing mine. >drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have. The view I mentioned was the one that got Notch (one of the public figures mentioned by GP) the reaction from the internet in the first place. A bit disingenuous to say this was a moderate conservative talking point before he got sent spiraling i…

I am not an expert on Notch's slide into craziness, but I'd argue that the episode you mention it might not be the start. His start was as a "anti-SJW" game developer which got him hated and vilified by his former fans. I'm not saying these people were rays of sunshine before, I'm saying they could be talked to without them foaming at the mouth and you face palming at how unhinged they were. I was using the meaning o…

>an expert on Notch's slide into craziness

I am not an expert either, if that episode occurred later than I remember, it could have been as you say.

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

#385

Post by dmonitor »

magicalhippo wrote: post #225

A side note, if you've played The Witness but not yet The Looker[1], you probably have been missing out. I quite enjoyed The Witness but The Looker was just great. [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/

The Looker is quite possibly the greatest parody ever executed in a video game. It creates the same kind of "ahah" moment that games like The Witness do, but in a way that really pokes fun at the level of pretentiousness those games tend to indulge themselves in.

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

#386

Post by desertrider12 »

Jensson wrote: post #284
Stevvo wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow has actually talked about those puzzles in streams, said he regrets it because more players than not stopped playing the games at that point. It's the definition of bad design to implement some untested abstract idea without giving the player any hints.

There are no hard puzzles in Braid, at least not that are required to beat the game, so not sure what you mean. I never played the witness so I don't know about that game.

Braid also has the stars which are so well hidden that I can’t imagine anyone finding them without a walkthrough (though some people obviously did in order to make the walkthroughs).

The Witness is different, it really does teach you everything you need to 100% it. I cheated on the ship puzzle but it’s totally possible to figure out.

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

#388

Post by CupricTea »

swiftcoder wrote: post #22
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…

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

Do you think it is acceptable to link to a submission to a place called "SubredditDrama" filled with bad faith links to secondary reactionary sources?

Am I supposed to take this seriously?

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

#389

Post by femiagbabiaka »

phantasmish wrote: post #202
_aavaa_ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as a statement is functions to excuse the representation in the field. It completely neglects the actual history of the field of computing, even just the 20th century, where the field was filled with women. It’s only once it became a prestigious field that women suddenly developed a “biological” inclination against it.

I… super hesitate to wade into this, but: 1) It was way before it became prestigious. And 2) An explanation of this needs to account for a great and rapid shift in favor of women, as far as proportion-of-practitioners, that was happening at exactly the same time as the opposite shift in programming, in both law and medicine. I don’t know what the actual reason is but “it got prestigious so women got pushed out” makes…

The traditional way I heard it wasn’t that it was about prestige, but rather that programming became engineering-coded rather than humanities-coded. And misogyny did play a role there, one of the Turing movies had a great story line about it, although I can’t remember the name off hand.

Related, I think math went through a similar transition.

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

#390

Post by Trasmatta »

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…

My main criticism of Blow is that he's consistently highly condescending to other games, game developers, and programmers. Many of whom have been shipping so many amazing and creative things while he's spent a decade making a Sokoban game.
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