YAJBI: Yet Another J. Blow Interview

By: ARelativelyHotGirl

On: August 20th, 2007

To celebrate Graham Goring’s first TIGS post, I thought it was topical to bring up this keynote speech from Melbourne’s Free Play Conference with Braid creator, Jonathon Blow – who has apparently traveled to Australia to publicly dismember World of Warcraft while (I assume) exposing his massive biceps.

He also encouraged attendees to try The Marriage by Rod Humble. “If you care about the future of games as art, it’s a significant milestone.”

Oh dear!

The full speech (yes, I suppose its not really an interview, is it?) can be found at The Age’s website.

(Also, JB has entered the B-Game Compo! Be afraid. Very afraid.)

Posted in Community

DrDerekDoctors

“To celebrate Graham Goringâ€™s first TIGS post” I’m gonna’ knock it straight down to second billing within 5 minutes. ;)

Haha, priceless quote about The Marriage, that.
ARelativelyHotGirl

Oh, its ON.
duh

has jonathan released any games yet?
or is this his first one?
Peni

Flowers. Where would we be without them?
Siiseli

Calling others gay is really very childish you know.. I’m still a little child and even I realise to show the slightest maturity by not calling others gay, and besides, being a gay is not a bad thing at all.
Rod Humble

Wait I love Tigsource but TigSource doesnt love me.

Ah well, maybe you will dig my next game.

If you read this thanks for the shout out Jon!
Derek

TIGSource loves all game developers. But it’s a tough love! (The best love.)
Rod Humble

Cheers Derek! 8)
Rz.

Siiseli is _so_ gay!
Rz.

This italics thing just does *not* work!
Rz.

Oh, but now it *fucking* does, god damn it all. And I’m *totally* spamming.
Jonathan Blow

Yeah Graham, and I also mentioned Flow a lot in that talk, so you would have loved it.

duh: Braid is my first non-free game in a long time. Within the past couple of years I’ve released a few things that you could find linked from the article (here: http://number-none.com/blow/prototypes/index.html). Two of those are complete games, though they were developed in short periods of time.

Prior to that, the last *indie* game that I worked on that ever saw wide release was Wulfram which you can play here: http://wulfram.com … though only do that if you really can deal with old 3D graphics and controls that use every key on the keyboard multiple times. Since that time I did a lot of consulting work on mainstream games from bigger companies, wrote magazine columns, etc.. Braid marks (hopefully) the end of my doing that stuff and the return to full-time indie game development, but now powered by better ideas and philosophies.

I’m going to hopefully put up the transcript of this talk soon, as soon as I can get access to the recording; there was a bunch of stuff not mentioned in the article (and their screenshot of Braid is like 2 years old and full of programmer art; ugh).
Jonathan Blow

I neglected to mention that Wulfram is 10 or 11 years old… Play At Your Own Risk.
DrDerekDoctors

I suspect we’ll never agree on art and games, Jonathan. But I’m sure I’ll still love your games, even if I completely miss out on the subtext. ;)
edenb

You know, The Marriage is terrible if you look at as a conventional “game”.
However, if you look at The Marriage as “art” (whatever that is), it’s a pretty interesting bit of media.

Anywho, I agree with the majority of Jon’s speech, if not all of it.

There’s nothing wrong with a game that is “just fun”. But there needs to be different types of fun- or enjoyment. (Rather than the feeling of “fun” you get from most games).
Of course, there needs to be games (or realtime art), that go beyond being “just fun”.
Jonathan Blow

I don’t think there is much wrong with games that are “just fun”. But the comments in my talk were aimed toward making a game that really gets noticed, that publishers want to sign to a decent deal, etc. Since everyone is trying to make games that are just fun, one way to differentiate is to try something different (while still ensuring it’s a good game). Which could be another way of saying what you just said, that there need to be different types of fun.
http://www.designog.com Design for MySpace

The world of war craft is a classic.
“The marriage” is something new i’ve heard of Jonathan.
Adam Atomic

Burt Rutan says “just fun” can not possibly be used as an excuse or reason to condemn something as unimportant. E.g., when PCs were first made available to the general public, most people got them so they could play some cool games on them, or program cool games on them. Just for fun; not to change the world. And then what happened, because everybody had a computer at home already?

A little thing called the internet.

Sorry if that was too offtopic :P
konjak

I play and make games for the sole reason of fun, and that’s all games are to me and will remain.

I don’t understand why people feel the need to pursue artistic visions with the medium, and do it in ways that take away both the words that make up “gameplay”.

I mean that as what the words mean seperate of each other, not like some would say it is the gameplay that should be art.

What I’m saying is I’m against the whole “make games what only games can be”, because all the ideas that have come of it have all seemed like really uninteresting concepts to me. They’re not FUN.

Bah.
konjak

FUN IS PRIMAL!
chmmr

Konjak, the thing to remember is that people pursuing Art and people pursuing Fun (if you even buy that the two are diametric opposites; I certainly don’t) is not a zero-sum game. If everyone just makes what they’re passionate about, the medium of games will be better all around – we’ll attract more people for a wider variety of reasons.

It makes me sad when the people who have decided that “fun” is the end-all be-all of games get territorial about it and toss insults over the fence at the “pretentious art games”. I’m sure there are imperious snobs out there who look down their nose at fun, but in reality it’s mostly people like Jonathan who aren’t negative and have some really valuable things to say.

And of course we have the commentary from the TIGsource folks making sure no-one ever takes themselves too seriously… which is very healthy and important as well :)
konjak

You obviously took my opinion as something much more serious. Art is subjective and I’m not telling people to stop, I just felt like saying I don’t like the approach. I did say I don’t understand it.
konjak

I want to be friends but you make it hard, chmmr :(
http://myspace.com/akktivecarbon !CE-9

geez, thanks for the post. bril read.

James Blow is so fucken right about the exploitational design of today’s many games (the cigarette / junk food analogy is just brilliant), and even about cynicism as a fashionable pose (in game design trends or otherwise).

I hate how fashionable (again) it is in our so-called civilisation to pretend to _give_ whilst what you do is more like _taking_ something away. I hate how being cool is such a primary thing and nobody realises, that trying to be cool is actually fucking uncool.

I love how Blow cares about the human aspects of gaming. somewhat terrifyingly (if you think about it) it’s almost original.
Hooker with a penis

OMG! Jonathan Blow is my nu god!
http://myspace.com/akktivecarbon !CE-9

actually I was gonna say that, but then — y’know — I was hoping that somebody will come along and do that for me, albeit possibly (*cough*) with a hint of sarcasm.
chmmr

Aww, I’m sorry man. I think I understand where you’re coming from now.

Well it sounds like I could use some of that not-taking-self-too-seriously myself, so pass it around guys.
edenb

@Jon
Yeah, I think we’re on the same wavelength there.