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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

#581

Post by spicyusername »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #544
nurettin wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see him brag that much, but he says things like don't start with being a web dev, JavaScript kills your prospects of becoming a better programmer, etc. He probably thinks that formal education and books that teach people how a computer works and how to code in different paradigms don't exist, that everyone is a wannabe who only learns on hand at a job like he did. His job recommendation: "there are so many t…

He mostly says it from the angle that everyone else is dumb instead of himself being smart.

Every time I hear people talk this way I can't help but feel like they're projecting.

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

#583

Post by TwitBar »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #533
stephc_int13 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, a trailer should focus on emotional reaction, not a simple display of features or quirkiness (1400 puzzles,10 years of dev). Besides, the voices and writing are generic and maybe even AI generated. The witness had a really good promotion canpaign beautiful and intriguing.

Blow falls into a classic engineering mistake of marketing the challenge or effort to make something (audio logs everywhere) and not the end experience. Note that when masters like Steve Jobs do it, they mention it very quickly, or they mention the ideals of craftsmen ship, rather than the actual process.

Essentially Braid Anniversary edition. Huge effort for someone to just say “oh so just Braid Remastered?” In general from his streams you learn that so much goes wrong during the slog that is video game development. Hire failures. Contractors billing $$$ and writing 1-2 LOC. Devs rage quitting. Platform optimization. Even a suicide (not just an employee but someone close). They do all this work and dropped the ball on marketing despite betting the future of the company on its reception, but even failing that I think it was clear to a normal person (which can be hard to reach out to and interact with) that there was no appetite for this game.

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

#584

Post by biophysboy »

dismalaf wrote: post #479
biophysboy wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My evidence is genetic material; your evidence is state intelligence

Your evidence is a Chinese claim of genetic material. They've certainly never covered anything up before...

Any conclusion about a pathogen origin requires phylogenetic evidence. Everything else is secondary. You could write a trillion intelligence memos in the absence of genetic evidence and get no closer to the answer.

If you want to deny sequence data that predate worldwide recognition and controversy related to COVID-19, OK. But the origin question can never be answered with this denial.

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

#585

Post by TwitBar »

IshKebab wrote: post #495
enqk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s way less people willing to work with him in 2025 than when the witness was in development

Why?

Leans center-right. Candid. Publicly supported Trump. Other stuff that just makes him a normal person circa 90s but really turns some people off in 2025.

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

#586

Post by squigz »

pdpi wrote: post #518
tialaramex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but wait, why doesn't each Parlor count? Is your expectation that somehow each of the 1400 puzzles in Blow's game will be like finding Room 46 in Blue Prince? [[Massive spoilers implied, stop reading if you don't want a Blue Prince playthrough "spoiled" in some sense]] Take the Atelier, if you're Jon Blow that's obviously 45 puzzle boxes, plus 45 picture pairs = 90 puzzles just to spell out the clues before you…

> Well, but wait, why doesn't each Parlor count? Is your expectation that somehow each of the 1400 puzzles in Blow's game will be like finding Room 46 in Blue Prince? I'm saying that, if you removed the Parlour, the Billiards Room, all the Mora Jai boxes, and all the other puzzles that aren't directly related to finding room 46 (including everything after the "tutorial"), you'd have a lesser but still memorable game.…

> "1400 puzzles" rubs me the wrong way, like soulless open world games that brag about having hundreds of hours of content. A large part of what makes a truly exceptional game isn't volume of content, it's editing and curation.

There's a lot of people for whom what you're talking about is in fact a huge draw. Everyone likes different types of games, and that's fine; I don't really think we're at risk of losing one to the other :)

I'd also put forward that you can still make open-world games with 100s of hours of content that are still truly exceptional - look at Red Dead Redemption 2, for example.

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

#588

Post by eudamoniac »

nurettin wrote: post #547
eudamoniac wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess crosswords, chess, sudoku, solitaire, and competitive programming need to add plots and narratives to their next editions, lest they be thought to have pretensions! (Of what?)

I enjoy all of the above and not the bland, droning, tasteless, pointless "learn the next mechanic" JB games. YMMV. BTW the talos principle AI referred to itself as yahweh, if you ever read the bible. Edit: and chess is uniquely lore-heavy. Even the openings have openings and everything is tied to history. I'm surprised it is even brought up in comparison at all.

I would just like to point out that your condescending aside is ironic given that you also misremembered the name, Elohim.

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

#589

Post by addandsubtract »

TomatoCo wrote: post #525
dmonitor wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard The Looker described as "If you liked The Witness, you'll like The Looker. If you hated The Witness, you'll love The Looker."

[dead]

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

#590

Post by jackling »

spicyusername wrote: post #577
jackling wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn I thought STB and Jon were friends for a while. I find this indicative on how Jon has changed these past 5 years.

What do you mean by that?

Sean has been on Jon's stream, and there's a good video where briefly Sean states that he have Jon some syntax advice for Jon's language Jai.

I assumed they were friends as there are several videos of them conversing. The parent comment pointed out that Sean agree's with the negatives about Jon, which could not mean much, but the fact that Jon's negative as described in the Dreknek are really bad indicates to me that Sean likely doesn't view Jon as a good friend anymore. This is surprising to me because I really did enjoy one of their videos where they try and solve a problem together.

The fact that Sean agrees with this critical take of Jon is further evidence of how much Jon has changed since the pandemic.

STB Is the intial's for Sean T Barrett, who also created a software library with the same name.

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