MTV Interview: Jonathan Blow

By: Derek Yu

On: August 9th, 2007

MTV’s all up in indie gaming’s grill these days, and with good reason. This time they’re doing an interview with the one-and-only Jonathan Blow, about life, games, and Braid.

One of the things that made â€œBraidâ€ different from the beginning was my determination to strike out in a new design direction, and just have faith that I could make it work. Rewind was going to be the basis of the game. If rewind conflicted with some other element of the design, then I would throw away that other element â€” regardless of how traditionally necessary it was. And I was glad I had that faith, because it paid off.

I’m noticing that Jon is getting a little bit of flak for his interview, most notably in the comments of Wired’s Game|Life blog. Now, I know he doesn’t need me to defend him, because he is an extremely smart and successful guy who could also kill any one of us with kung fu (really), but seriously, as someone who has heard Jon speak and played his game (albeit an early version), let me just assure you that a) if you perceive any egotism or condescension on his part, it’s the inevitable result of his being brilliant and also honest (he’s actually quite down to earth), and b) he is fully deserving of the so-called “hype” he’s been getting. Honestly, he deserves more. And a lot of independent developers do.

And c) it’s really sad how you can’t criticize anything anymore without somebody taking immediate offense and calling you a “wanker.” I give more credit to the man who is called a wanker because he has lots of strong opinions than the man who’s only opinion is that someone else is a wanker. Alright, you wankers?

Posted in Community, Interviews, Platformers, Previews | Tags: JonathanBlow

Tim

I would have quit the scene a while back if it wasn’t for a few people, with one of them being Jonathan Blow. Really. :)
DrDerekDoctors

Another reason to wub him. :)
Watcher

The next person to comment on this item is a wanker.
Watcher

Haha. That person su— oops.
Watcher

The next person to comment on this item is a wanker.
Albert Lai

That wanker.

But, man, Braid is one of those games that I think everyone’s watching, like parents waiting for the latest shipment of DS Lites during Christmas-time so they could buy their children’s love.
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

Watcher.. Watch this! :D

The next person to comment on this item is a Watchker.
nullerator

WTF, I’m no Watchker! You are all crazy! Screw you guys, I’m going home.
Tim

He did kind of hint a release date for Braid. :)
Xander

Yeah, a release date that is quite a ways off. Really I was suprised at how well of an interview MTV of all people pulled off here, though that’s much more to the credit of Jonathan Blow for being such an elequent and thought provoking bastard. Stop putting the rest of us to shame with our ‘IMMA CHARGIN LAZERS’, ‘Wankers!’ and ‘lolsauce!’
fish

i love it when game makers get a chance to go in debt about their creations like that. i love to hear them talk about their reasoning and intentionjs for this or that. i think it actually makes the experience of playing the game that much more personnal.

i wish more interviews were like this rather than the all too comon “whats your favorite game” type of interview.

i cannot wait for this game.
the GDc presentation blew my mind and blew it hard. and long.
Jonathan Blow

Thanks for the support, Derek.

One thing I definitely do not want is for the game to be overhyped. I’d like people to play it with an attitude of open interest, instead of “ohmygod this game had better live up to what everyone said!!”

However, as you guys know, it can be very hard to get an indie game noticed, to sell enough copies to come anywhere near supporting development of your future games, etc. So when a journalist comes along who is genuinely very interested in the game, and asks really good questions, of course I’m going to answer them. That’s a great opportunity to communicate what the game is really about. If you just look at a screenshot of Braid, you can’t see the gameplay — you just see a guy on a screen with some monsters. So things like this help people decide if this is a game they want to play.

And for a little perspective… approximately 0.0000% of people in the real world (not the indie games world) have heard of the game.

If the game were done, I would absolutely just release it now. But I want to make sure it is complete, so it’s going to take a few more months.

About the message board flak: that’s just how it is, I guess. There was a posting on Kotaku just after gdc that generated replies that were way worse. So this time it doesn’t seem so bad. It is pretty easy to be cynical about something, when someone on the internet tells you it’s really good, but you look at the screenshots or whatever, and it looks like some random game.

But that’s the thing about indie games in general: we don’t compete on production values, and the further we venture away from sites like tigsource.com, the more often it happens that people take one look at a screenshot for our game and assume it is not very interesting.

I think Braid kind of has an edge there, because of the painterly style; but for people who aren’t immediately appreciative of that… well, same situation.
Twisted Rabbit

I personally can not wait to get my hands on this time warper goodness. I have been psyched about it from the day i read about it a LONG time ago.
ZombiePixel

Brade iz teh suxxorz!!!!!! Wy don’t it even got 3D?!! Like itss 2007, HELLOOOO not 1940! 360 roxx cuz its has bumpy maps and fizzics. HELLOOO NE1 see the new MAdden clips on techTV? Olivea Munnn is my GF! Soo hawtt!! If U want 2 play Madden – my gaymer tag is “coachmolestsme”.
Derek

ZP, I almost lightning-nuked your comment out of pure instinct. 8|
ZombiePixel

LOL, sorry. I was worried something like that could happen. But I loves to poke fun at gamer trolls.
rinkuhero

“when you look at the rules of quantum mechanics, there is no arrow of time; whether time goes forward or it goes backward, things follow the same rules”

What about entropy? From what I gather, entropy always increases as time passes, so that would in one way indicate a direction of the arrow.
rinkuhero

But great interview, thanks for the link.
Jonathan Blow

Right, but entropy is a sort of high-level aspect of the universe, whereas the rules of quantum mechanics are the low-level rules. Entropy does create an arrow of time, but then the question is, why do we perceive time as moving in the “future” direction as opposed to the “past” direction? Why don’t we just know the future, since information travels the same in both directions?
Merus

Awwwwwwwwww.

Look, it’s probably a bit late, but it was the tai chi aside that spurred my “wanker” comment, not any of the actual thoughful commentary. This is kind of a cultural thing here, which is why I used that particular term – it doesn’t have a huge amount of currency outside of Australia.

I guess it’s also that fans of independent games (including me) do tend to give off an air that mainstream games are worthless garbage. I don’t believe that – they’re unambitious, sure, but that’s not a crime. I guess it was also a response to that particular tone.
rinkuhero

I’m not sure entropy is so high level. Even at that level, things tend to settle at or prefer the lowest energy state they can, no?

But it’s been some time since I thought/read about it, so I don’t think I can talk sensibly about it.

I’m not sure what you’re asking about why we don’t just know the future. We don’t just know the past, either. There’s history, but that’s not the same thing as knowing the past. We can’t just experience the fall of Rome or something. So information is limited in both the past and future directions.

I also think the experience of time differs between people. Some people are more past-oriented (worrying about mistakes and such), some people are more future-oriented (worrying about what’ll happen soon), some people are more present-oriented — so it varies by personality.
rinkuhero

Typo: first sentence should read ‘even at the quantum level’
Pacian

I’m a wanker, and I feel sorry for anyone who isn’t.

“So information is limited in both the past and future directions.”

I’d agree with that. But it’s much *more* limited in the future direction. You can deduce the fall of Rome from bones and writings, but you can only attempt to predict the fall of a modern nation by, well, looking at the more immediate past and its own bones and writings.
Joseph

GWAH you guys make mah brain A-Splode!
OH and I can’ wait to get my hands on Braid, I can already feel it expanding my perception of reality…
I Like Cake

I’m afraid that, in the sense physicists use it, information has a fairly rigorous definition. So when you talk about planning or expectation or history as ‘information,’ you’re actually debating a totally separate topic.

Entropy is not a quantum level occurrence because it describes the behavior of large groups of particles over distances and energies where quantum effects are not perceived. In results we can predict relating to quantum effects, time often doesn’t enter in to the calculation. It’s not that it “doesn’t exist,” it’s just unimportant. It doesn’t appear to have any relevance to the outcome (as I understand it).

It’s a scientific ‘fact,’ (as much as there are any) that can be demonstrated with repeatable laboratory experiments. The fall of Rome or what you’re going to have for breakfast tomorrow doesn’t really enter into it any more than the assertion ‘red is a terrible colour to paint your house’ figures into the calculation of whether or not a cluster of moving stars exhibits a red shift or a blue shift.
I Like Cake

Actually, I guess my statement isn’t entirely true. A lot can be said about information entropy inside a quantum system, but entropy in the thermodynamic sense as in the second law of thermodynamics, doesn’t really apply to quantum systems, as I understand it.
6over7

Hype it up, make lots of money, have a happy life – you don’t need to apologise because people are interested in your project. With every decent indy game that comes out it makes all our ambitions a little be more tenable – there is a market for our tinkerings, and some of us have the opportunity of making a decent career for ourselves out of it. The mainstream games community may either ignore us or even hate us – but I never listen to these people who are happy with their Madden blindness.
Dan MacDonald

The value of any idea is inversely proportional to it’s adoption.

(therefor, wankers rule)
Adam Atomic

Thought this was strangely apt!

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1077.png

Clipart dinosaurs weighing in on the topic of quantum entropy…
http://josephkingworks.blogspot.com Joseph

When do we get to see some videos of this game in action?
Jonathan Blow

I am cooking up a plan for a series of gameplay trailers. However, they are not your everyday kind of trailer… it’ll take us a bit of time to figure out and produce. If we do it. More news as it happens.
http://josephkingworks.blogspot.com Joseph

sweeeeeeeeeet
sam

WHAT