Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 654 posts

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

#591

Post by psyopsy »

__alexs wrote: post #551
psyopsy wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half his employees are women—including leadership, programming, and creative roles. If that doesn’t count as “thinking women have a role,” what would? 51%? 90%? You’re relying on blatant social media mischaracterizations over real actions. He actually employs women at parity. You feel like this is unwelcoming. One of those statements is data. The other is fanfic.

I didn't say he thinks women don't have a role.

You said, "I don't think he's said exactly that in his own words but..." That's implicitly saying, "well, he hasn't admitted it outright, but yeah, he basically believes it."

Now faced with evidence contrary to your beliefs, you're claiming you didn't say that. When presented with proof, It's ok to just admit that you were wrong.

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

#592

Post by eudamoniac »

meheleventyone wrote: post #550
eudamoniac wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Trump were quite literally a Nazi, he is the elected President. Democracy is important. I don't know how one can simultaneously believe in democracy and believe that everyone who voted for the winning candidate is objectively incorrect. If most voters want to gas the Jews, that is just the will of the people, and that's terrible, but you need to pick in that scenario between a democracy and some other form of…

Tell me what happened to democracy when Hitler took power? And how democratic was the overall process? So was the decision to commit mass murder of millions of people really the democratic will of the people? It’s like people haven’t even touched a history book sometimes. You can also look at the parallels to Trump and his continued assault on the democratic norms in the US government. For example assuming powers tha…

> Tell me what happened to democracy when Hitler took power? And how democratic was the overall process? So was the decision to commit mass murder of millions of people really the democratic will of the people?

It wasn't, but as I said, if the majority of voters do wish to commit mass murder, that is actually not trivially ignorable.

> You can also look at the parallels to Trump and his continued assault on the democratic norms in the US government. For example assuming powers that are those of Congress, trying to control what states can do via executive order, a thankfully rebuffed attempt at gerrymandering even the Republicans shied away from and so on.

Congress is our representatives. They are philosophically us. The majority of them do not want to impeach Trump for these things. Also the majority of voters reelected Trump knowing how he is. The way things are going is how the people want it (if you believe in democracy and the philosophy of representatives).

> If one believes democracy is important one must also believe that we need checks and balances within government such that democracy is maintained in the face of bad actors. Trump is not the only elected person in government after all and democracy requires free and fair elections to continue when his presidency ends.

There has been absolutely nothing to suggest that democracy, as in the literal sense of voting to determine representation, is at risk from inside the political apparatus. I don't consider Jan6 anything of that sort btw.

> Also nothing about a democratic result means that any side needs to be happy about it or that anyone is or should be protected from criticism

Sure, but the crux of the issue is that the left is going beyond criticism. The vocal left continuously claims that the elected government, and crucially those people who voted for it, are in some outgroup (nazis, fascists, bigots et al) that does not deserve to have democratic power in the country by their very nature. They weild the 'paradox of tolerance' as a bludgeon to disenfranchise half the country. It's unhealthy for democracy, both in itself and because when a group feels under (politically) existential attack they will do heinous things to survive.

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

#593

Post by swiftcoder »

kragen wrote: post #489
swiftcoder wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because he criticizes the Chinese government I think you are taking a very charitable view here - the tweet immediately before the one you quote is clearly talking about the US vaccine mandate (not China).

The tweet immediately before this one says: > There's a weird disconnect in this vaccine mandate debate: many are still pretending that Covid-19 is of natural origin, which gives such mandates a different feel than they otherwise have. Contrary to your assertion, this is not clearly talking about vaccine mandates in any particular place. And the tweet I quoted previously is claiming (or hinting) that the same "state…

The problem with your scenario is that the Chinese government didn't have a covid vaccine mandate in October of '21 (when Blow's tweet was published).

Their covid vaccine program was voluntary up until they tried to establish a mandate in July of '22 (a lot of commentators seem to be confused on this point, as there are mandates for childhood vaccines in China - but these never extended to covid vaccines)

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

#594

Post by kilpikaarna »

spicyusername wrote: post #575

It's interesting to me how Blow seems to ruffle so many feathers. I don't really get it. He's made two well received games, now a third one and an entire programming language, and anytime I tune in to his content he seems like a competent programmer with the kinds of opinions you'd expect from any kind of craftsman: sharp and borne out of their own personal experience. I never hear anything that strikes me as inflamm…

Apparently he's always had a pretty intense and acerbic personality. There's an article in The Atlantic from 2012 called The Most Dangerous Gamer that goes a bit into his character and history.

As far as politics go, in the past he mostly seemed kind of small business owner libertarian (which, fair enough, he's sunk a lot of his personal wealth into running a game studio). He's seemingly been getting increasingly grouchy about the e.g. state of software development and society in general for some time, and over the past year or so he's started expressing explicit Trump support/appreciation. Possibly exacerbated by the development of this game and Jai dragging on, apparently getting burned by what he considers bad hires (bet he's not easy to work for tho...), and such. Though I would say it feels like it's mostly hot takes on streams or X, not necessarily very coherent politics.

But the indie game scene and many of his former associates are very left wing, and with the political climate, esp. in the US, also being what it is he's quite the pariah in many places now.

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

#595

Post by psyopsy »

__alexs wrote: post #552
psyopsy wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex is the strongest single predictor of vocational interest orientation we’ve found. Nothing else comes close. If that’s not ‘explained by biology,’ you need to tell me what would be. Otherwise you’re operating on faith.

It's hard to control for social conditioning. I don't need to be able to tell you what the alternative is to be able to tell you that there are many confounding factors. Knowing what does not explain something, doesn't tell you what does explain it.

They did try to account for social conditioning: parents' education and jobs, local labor markets, school performance, the whole bit. The gap still didn't move much. If socialization were the main driver, you'd expect the most egalitarian countries to have the smallest gaps. They don't. In a lot of cases it's the opposite. Sweden, for example, shows bigger differences in occupational preferences than places like Pakistan.

So at that point you're not pointing to a specific confounder, you're basically saying "maybe there's something else." Sure, logically you can always say that. But if the evidence keeps stacking up in one direction and the only reply is "could be something," that's just refusing to update your view.

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

#596

Post by FelipeCortez »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #587

Hadn't heard of The Witness before, but from what I can tell, these are something like enhanced Sokoban puzzles? Has there ever been anything on the level of Myst/Riven published in the last 20 years?

you should try The Witness

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

#597

Post by pengaru »

progbits wrote: post #37
phtrivier wrote: post #7

I wonder how much of the 10 years spent making "a programming language, an engine, and a game" were actually spent on each slice. Hopefully, jai and the engine will help make the next game faster...

It's hilarious he had to build a new language just so he could create a sokoban game with graphics of flash era. I'm sure it builds fast and whatever, but you could make this in python in few weeks.

> I'm sure it builds fast and whatever, but you could make this in python in few weeks.

Show us how it's done big guy, it's only a few weeks of your time.

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

#598

Post by cwyers »

NathanaelRea wrote: post #215
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

That's kind of a rediculous assessment. "How many games have you shipped in the last 10 years" is the standard for how good your advice is. John has made two games + one soon in the last 17 years. Braid started off the indie boom, and the witness was a blockbuster hit. Casey works on game engines and optimization, and has an entire video series about writing a game from scratch. I agree that some authors don't ship a…

The point is that Blow has two blockbuster hits under his belt and can afford to take a decade to ship a single game. Most people would go broke never having shipped a game if they tried to do things Blow's way.

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

#599

Post by stodor89 »

dmonitor wrote: post #385
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.

I never found The Witness to be pretentious, but I still think The Looker is a great parody.

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

#600

Post by cwyers »

cloudhead wrote: post #228
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

And your point is? Shipping garbage is better than not shipping anything?

If you have bills to pay, it really is.
Post reply on HN