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‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

engadget.com

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Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#121

Post by swah »

icefox wrote: post #48
lambda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this could be more accurately described as "investing his fortune", or if you want to focus more on the risk (as game development is a risky business), "bet his fortune." Loved Braid, quite interested in trying out The Witness; hope it doesn't take too long to come to a platform I can play it on, as I have neither a Windows machine, nor any consoles, nor an iOS device.

At the same time it is sobering to learn that one of the more recent wildly successful indy games only made a few million at most.

I thought he hadn't made millions. I thought only notch had became truly rich w/ a single game?

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#122

Post by jasonvolpe »

footpath wrote: post #61

Here's a nice thread about Jonathan Blow's view on investing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2198255 you are better off taking the mental energy you would have expended on "investing" and subsequently worrying about your money, and instead funneling it into your creative endeavors. You will make more money that way, especially when you take a long-term view. ... If creative endeavors are profitable, you can use…

Though his point is not lost, the use of "primal" in "it is a shame to give into primal hoarding impulses" isn't fully accurate.

Would not primal hunter gatherers have spent it while they had it - resources being plentiful for those skilled to find and kill? Didn't hoarding only become necessary when humans transitioned to farming?

In fact it _is_ a primal urge to consume what you've earned, spending it on improving yourself/project.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#123

Post by teamonkey »

doktrin wrote: post #84
justintime2002 wrote: post #7

"Jonathan Blow's beautiful, distinct 2008 platformer Braid is largely regarded as the original indie game" Really? I find this difficult to believe, considering the success of Cave Story back in 2004.

It's a bit of a silly statement because it completely ignores the fact that in the recent past video games were almost universally "indie" efforts.

Actually it kind of died out for a bit. During the PS1 and PS2 era, with the introduction of optical media and a push for mainstream quality, low-budget (and hence only moderately profitable) games slowly died out, while high-risk, high-return 'AAA' games dominated. That's not to say that people didn't make independent games at this time but they were rather niche. The Indie movement was in part a rebellion against that.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#124

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

gamegoblin wrote: post #93
breckinloggins wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like his attitude on the turing-complete compile time metaprogramming feature: 'Yes you can shoot yourself in the foot, hang the compiler, and launch missiles at the same time. You're a good programmer or you wouldn't be using this language. So don't do that. If you do, don't do it again.' That's not always a good attitude to have in software development, but a modern language that backs away from the "wrap…

Are there any common languages that allow you to do compile time metaprogramming in the language itself? I'd like to write little miniprograms which output source code and get evaluated at compile time. For example: #include #include #COMPILETIME int fib(int n) { if(n and then at compile time that would get run and the source could generated would be: int fib(int n) { switch(n) { case 0: return 0; case 1: return 1; c…

Forth has always been able to do this sort of metaprogramming- in fact this approach is how most of the language is built. Constructs and syntax like conditionals, loops and comments are all just normal word definitions and it is easy and commonplace to extend the syntax of the language for a particular program. Forth is often described as "compiled AND interpreted" because "compiling" a program constantly swaps between interpreting pre-existing definitions and building up new definitions and allocations in memory.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#125

Post by Keyframe »

kelukelugames wrote: post #14

I've followed Jonathan Blow for a while. He has a reputation for being condescending. If you follow him a Twitter then you might come to the same conclusion. But he has given some amazing talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFzf6yIfcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Fg76c4Zfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM

He sure talks a lot, considering he made one game so far. I guess it was a good game if people like it (judging by scores on metacritic only), but I'd need a bit more of gravity around his body of work before listening his opinion on, well, anything. Compare that to Carmack for example - who didn't make games as a designer, but has a strong enough presence over the years actually doing stuff that carries weight. NB, I'm not putting him down, I'm just not seeing how his opinion is of any importance so far. And it seems he has opinion on everything and anything and is vocal about it.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#127

Post by yoklov »

swah wrote: post #121
icefox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time it is sobering to learn that one of the more recent wildly successful indy games only made a few million at most.

I thought he hadn't made millions. I thought only notch had became truly rich w/ a single game?

IIRC Braid made a couple million. I think less than 10 though.

Minecraft, OTOH, made Notch over a billion dollars. So it depends on your definition of truly rich.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#128

Post by yoklov »

gamegoblin wrote: post #93
breckinloggins wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like his attitude on the turing-complete compile time metaprogramming feature: 'Yes you can shoot yourself in the foot, hang the compiler, and launch missiles at the same time. You're a good programmer or you wouldn't be using this language. So don't do that. If you do, don't do it again.' That's not always a good attitude to have in software development, but a modern language that backs away from the "wrap…

Are there any common languages that allow you to do compile time metaprogramming in the language itself? I'd like to write little miniprograms which output source code and get evaluated at compile time. For example: #include #include #COMPILETIME int fib(int n) { if(n and then at compile time that would get run and the source could generated would be: int fib(int n) { switch(n) { case 0: return 0; case 1: return 1; c…

To add to the (at this point rather large list), Haxe[0] allows this, although it prefers that you don't use the string-based method (which IIRC the docs, outside of the API reference, don't really mention, but does exist), but instead manipulate an AST-like object defined in its standard library.

It's macro facilities are actually fairly amazing, and allow for a lot of boilerplate code to be generated at compile time (think: the kind of things reflection is used for in other languages).

Sadly, it's a GCed language, so while it's very popular for game development, it's use is mainly in the indie scene, and so it's probably never something I'll use for anything other than a toy.

[0]: http://haxe.org/

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#129

Post by TeMPOraL »

gamegoblin wrote: post #93
breckinloggins wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like his attitude on the turing-complete compile time metaprogramming feature: 'Yes you can shoot yourself in the foot, hang the compiler, and launch missiles at the same time. You're a good programmer or you wouldn't be using this language. So don't do that. If you do, don't do it again.' That's not always a good attitude to have in software development, but a modern language that backs away from the "wrap…

Are there any common languages that allow you to do compile time metaprogramming in the language itself? I'd like to write little miniprograms which output source code and get evaluated at compile time. For example: #include #include #COMPILETIME int fib(int n) { if(n and then at compile time that would get run and the source could generated would be: int fib(int n) { switch(n) { case 0: return 0; case 1: return 1; c…

Learn a Lisp (say, Scheme or Common Lisp). For Lisp family, this is bread and butter. Since the source code itself is at the same time a data structure, you can (and often end up doing it) easily generate code at read time, compile time or run time. The border between those three kind of starts to blur.

Your example could look like this in Common Lisp:

    (defun fib (n)
      (if (
spliced-fibs macro will generate you a full case block at compile time, so the hardcoded-fib will be basically one big switch/case block. map-iota call maps a function over a list of numbers from 0 to n. Note that a macro can call ordinary functions at compile time, which themselves can use other macros, etc. So a lot of code can be used both at compile and run time.

Re: ‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game

#130

Post by noblethrasher »

anonbanker wrote: post #108
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think pg would behave like that, let alone say that. He was 29 when he started Viaweb, which is not far from 35. YC has funded people over 35 as well.

I love that I'm being downvoted for quoting pg.

The closest thing that I can find that pg has said on the matter is that good hackers between about 23 and 38 should start a company. He said 38 was the upper bound because the simple reality is that the affordability of risk declines with age. But, even then he said that there was a lot of play in that number.

Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

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