Jonathan Blow hates video game bridges
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- Jonathan Blow, the game designer of The Witness and Braid, thinks that details matter.
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Clipped from: • Then & Now - How the I...
Jon's Twitch: / j_blow
"This is a fantasy MMO, let people have some creative fun"
"no"
LOL
Correct.
You cant just excuse every game design flaw or incompetency by saying "its a fanstasy game", the devs for this game didnt make the bridge like that (most likely) as a purposeful and well-thought through creative choice, they did it because they were lazy and didnt want to put time into making the bridge look realistic.
@@mosh1987 maybe they half assed it because they have more important shit to do than satisfy the autistic
The thumbnail is a masterpiece.
👆👆👆
This is just the bridge equivalent of "Her back must hurt"
Every stone brick a megalith :D
There's this silly fixation on "worldbuilding" where every port, wine and coal mine needs a justification in history, geology and culture. And yet, architecture and urban design routinely get ignored.
Game design is fractal! Every part infinitely deep.
I agree with Jon. Having unrealistic structures in fantasy video games is obviously part of the fun, but when they don't seem like they would work well within the context of the game world itself they just stand out as wrong.
A structure that works with the rules of the universe it inhabits is actually realistic, just within the reality of the presented world. Dragons are realistic in fantasy settings that establish dragons can exist and fly for some reasons.
@@Obyvvatel that is precisely the point. If there is no in universe reason to justify that bridge in a way that is actually engaging, then it becomes one of those "once you see you cant unsee" kind of things for players that notice, because the giant bridge just looks like a small bridge scaled up. Its kinda like for example, idk, the car keys in Rage. In that game, the keys are absurdly big, i guess the devs did that so that they would be easier to see from a distance which doesnt make much sense considering how there are smaller objects that are easy to see in the game, and considering the low poly nature of the key meshes, i suppose that the only reason they are big is because someone imported them at the wrong scale or whatever, but the point is that once you see, you cant unsee. If the dev is not making things consistently make sense within the world that they are crafting, then they end up very easily making things that just look goofy and out of place.
You're assuming a lot of things here, why don't you ask a dev who put it there?@@AlFredo-sx2yy
Magical realism is the way to go.
It's not really about bridges. It's about scale and proportions. People are right saying that you don't have to do everything realistic, but you have to know the rules to know how to bend them. People behind those giant monstrosities in MMORPGs clearly don't know anything about anything.
Yeah, you wouldn't see a painter using the excuse that they're "painting a fantasy bridge" so it's okay that the perspective is wrong, values are off and so forth.
Or if you _did_ see a painter saying that, it's just a lame excuse for not learning the rules that good artists understand enough to bend, e.g., Moebius
Also it's about what this says about your approach to game making. If you don't put careful consideration into everything you're doing you're then just throwing half-baked, possibly derivative and uninteresting ideas into a hodgepodge and calling it a game. And sure, if it feels comfortable enough to play people will play because gamers are stupid junkies, but fuck this shit
that's just so it's wide enough for multiple people to walk across at the same time during huge raids for example. so that you don't have to walk single file through a choke point. it's the same reason your gun in every single fps has no collisions and isn't realistic in any way. the same reason you don't see your character taking a shit or watching youtube for six hours and staying up all night binging netflix.
@wearecoterminous dumb take. need an adult? take a child model and upscale it 2-3 times. need a sword? take the knife model and upscale it 15 times.
The point Jon's making is don't upscale stuff to perform a function different than its definition because it just looks stupid.
It's a video game, game developers like Jon who have decades of experience coding games, not you, understand the balance of realism and compromise.
Otherwise, using your logic, it's a video game, just upscale a carrot and call it a grenade-- who cares for realism, the game is not real anyways. Right?
@@ViktorIsaacson false equivalence. Virtually NOBODY notices these things, I BET you only started noticing this after Blow pointed it out. Jonathan is not wrong, but players don't notice and care about these things.
There are a few places in Skyrim where they scaled objects intending them to be temporary but they ended up in the final product. For example, in the game there are large wooden chests and there are small iron safes. In a few places, where it would make sense to place a safe, there's a scaled down wooden chest that was clearly meant to be replaced with a safe but they never got back to it.
Regarding that trailer, I bet the level designer was like "We don't have a big bridge model yet so I'll scale up this small bridge temporarily. It doesn't look great but I'll fix it when I get the big bridge to replace it." and then the guy making the trailer was like "Ooh, cool bridge! That's going in the trailer!".
Literally "A sad story about get_temporary_buffer" (look it up)
The entire scene lookes like it's for a normal-sized character. @1:45 The dirt path paving is humungous (stone slabs?!?!?). The grass is huge. It's like Toy Story with miniatures.
The person saying that the bridge “Is like those statues from lord of the rings” must not realize the effort that the movie artists went through to make those statues look like real Megalithic structures. The bottom halves of those statues are carved from the cliff, but above a Certain point the Construction method switched to carved blocks you can even see the quarry near by!
It goes to show the mindset behind the shallow decisions like Jon talked about, when you can point to something valid (like LoTR) but don't actually even understand the depth and reason for that thing being valid, so you get the worst result: something that both lacks depth or meaning, and doesn't make sense (beyond the it's fantasy so nothing can ever be wrong excuse).
I had to check that and you are right. Through the camera work, you can clearly see how these monuments were constructed, you get both the transition from cliff to stone and the quarry in one single shot
"It's a video game so it's fine that it makes absolutely no sense in any way" excuse boils my blood so much when somebody says it to me directly.
wonder how he feels about game worlds that technically overlaps on themselves like dark souls 1
That’s like saying “It’s for children so it doesn’t have to make sense”
I agree , but it also boils my blood when people nitpick things that ultimately don't matter in the greater context of the work. could this thing be more realistic? Yes. Will the average player notice the inaccuracy? Possibly. Will the average player have less fun if it isnt accurate to reality? Unless its advertised to be realistic to real life, I kinda doubt it.
It's a video game so it's fine that it makes absolutely no sense in ay way" (directly to you)
@@tehnarelhok718 "Will the average player have less fun if it isnt accurate to reality" yes. And the word you are looking for is plausible, not "realistic". A large part of having fun in video games is getting entranced in the world.
A fully plausible world is far more impactful and engaging to explore than a plane with assets thrown over it to create some kind of network.
I could, for example, write this comment in short, abrupt sentences, with repetitive and colorless vocabulary. Would you still be able to read it? Sure. But I would imagine it wouldn't be, say, realistic to what an actual human would speak like and I would hope that these efforts make a noticeable difference in the experience of reading what I have to say.
Not to say that there is anything noteworthy about my prose, I just want the text to be effective beyond the function of the sentiment itself.
Buck fridges
Bon Jlow
The other problem with this bridge is it has a kind of pillar structure that would be required of a suspension bridge for the cable support but then it has no cable suspension system. So the artist has created something that is evocative of some underlying bridge-ness that he's seen but it is completely detached from the engineering function of any real design. It has the form of a suspension bridge but not the function of one. You're left explaining the huge double pillars at either end of the span as some a kind of monument. Bridges are difficult and expensive to build, and pretty much the most functional structure humans create.
Me: Wow what a nice bridge!
Jon: Omg, that bridge doesn't make any sense!
Me: Omg, that bridge doesn't make any sense...
Honestly I never noticed before. But now I can’t unsee it lol
Sheep
@@waltwhite8126 Guilty.
Some of the most fun I've had exploring in a game was Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It's almost like exploring one of those historical re-enactment towns. And the amount of attention to detail really makes it feel like everything is there for a reason, and that there could be something interesting around any corner.
@@lastburning It's definitely a smaller team than a Bethesda or Ubisoft open world. IMO it's worth playing purely to explore the map they put together. It's really like nothing I've seen in a game -- so believable and gorgeous. The combat and archery is a little rough, but it can be kinda fun.
@@lastburning oh nice! Glad you are enjoying it!
Yeah it's a shame the combat was piss poor.
Even the stars at night are period accurate. Warhorse used real constellation maps from that time and region. You can use the stars reliably for navigation without needing a compass or map.
This is hilariously random and an obvious overreaction.
also, the stones on the road are fucking massive, nobody would truck in 20 ton boulders and embed them into the ground to make a road, i can't not see the people in that scene as little shrunk down miniatures, maybe like a few inches tall
yes. Everything is normal size there except people.
@@vborovikov people and trees seem the same scale while the road and the bridge is exactly as he said, scaled up smaller asset.
Totally agree with Blow on this one. :-)
I disagree with john here and subscirbe to "it's fantasy lets just make it look cool" but that's not to say that there isn't an audience for realism in fantasy, but that would I presume, be a bit of a niche of the audience because it's more expensive to make.
To get artists with the level of skill that he requests is more of a rarity than you'd think. A lot of artists education is all over the place and not often very arcitechutre oriented.
We end up going to expensive art schools only to have the lowest pay of a lot of fields or get no job at all. If you want relistic arcitechture then you have to pay for a architect consultant to work with your artist or get one of the few who just happen to hold masters in both concept art AND architecture or is a crazy self taught masochist. I'd say your odds of finding someone thats a master of both is much less than one of them.
Everyone usually eventually specialize but there is an infinite amount of specializations and only a limited pool of top video game artits that can deliver this quality that john wishes for, and they are not getting paid or from what I have seen in gaming news in general, not even treated like decent human beings like so many AAA game workers.
TL:DR you get what you pay for but you have to find the right person for the right job, go look at behance or arstation.
Most games just wanna get the job done and wont spend budget on a niche audience that care about "hard fantasy" like "hard science". Most people just can't tell that the bridge looks off and think it looks amazing. it sells.
This isn't about realism or "hard science", its about not looking shit, Having a bridge be scaled wrong isn't cool, it just looks wrong. If you want monumental architecture design it for the size it is, then it'll actually look big and not just make the people look too small.
I could just counter with what you said with "Use references." That's like, the first step in making art.
Jonathan Blows. He likes to Braid meaningless complaints together. Can I get a Witness?
Wow I never really thought about what I am looking/playing but I did "feel" it, always felt not so engaged with alot of games. That scene is perfect example, just look at the people and trees and grass, they look in the same scale, then you have the massive road and bridge thats just scaled up smaller asset, it really looks wacky, you just dont feel in awe of this huge structure. Then compare it to Shadow of the Colossus, that even being on PS2, gave you a sense of massive scale like no game before, its totally made up world with made up giant enemies but everything was made to be huge, there were massive landscapes, massive structures, and yes massive bridges that actually felt massive.
“Is this For Honour 5?”
This seems like it's related to his Conflicts in Game Design talks. One was like from 2007, the other 10 years later... It boils down to a game maintaining "plausible authority". Maybe there is a better name for it.
I totally agree with him on this.
I’ve heard it put as “iceberg” and “hollow iceberg” theory
Him and PewDiePie both
At the end of the day the majority of people who are playing don't care don't notice don't know the difference and don't give a shit to them if it looks good it is good.
🤓
He’s not wrong about the design being lazy but “THIS THROWAWAY DETAIL IN A VIDEO GAME IS UNREALISTIC, DEVS ARE HACKS” is possibly the most Autism Speaks video game criticism of all time
I am sure that a moving bridge that connect less than 6 meters and moves at 10^-3 m/s sure is realistic, right Mr Blow?
Reminds me of the stream where Jon was trying Assassin’s Creed Greece edutainment mode and he pointed out how oversized the statues were and that was the takeaway I got from this: creative license in scaling happens everywhere in games
Now I know why RDR2 feels leagues above anything else, their world design is unparalleled.
Well, fantasy is kinda like cartoons and comedy, though: the flexibility is high, and the viewer goes in with a lower expectation of realism. A lot of things that would never work in other genres can still be believable within those expectations. That does not mean anything goes, but it does mean things don't have to be accurate to be acceptable. Fantasy is a genre that usually encompasses the notion of ancient civilizations that built magnificent structures, and in some cases they even use stronger animals than bulls to pull carts, and all that, so... I guess criticism of fantasy must be done on a case by case basis, within the context of the game's world and whatever limits of reality are established or observable within it.
By that same token, the tree house bridges in the game would be swaying side to side when I walk on them yet they're cement stiff.
Shit he says like this is exactly why he got bitter because no one “understood” Braid. It was an artisanal Mario clone that could’ve been made in GameMaker. It’s a game first, not the fucking Mona Lisa.
Thank god in this industry the consumers vote with their wallets and play time. Not snooty, artsy “hmm well this looks like a scaled Unity asset!”
The tree bother me even more. He looks too symmetrical and perfect and has too little leaves.
They got it from unity asset store and then scaled it up 😂
i like him and his games but DAMN is he picky
You like his games _because_ he is picky
@@imranzero good point.
I gotta know what he thought about death stranding
Nothing says "gravitas" like completing a quiz book.
You realize this could be said about any piece of media ever, right? The Bible is just a book. Every symphony is just a song. You just don't like the Witness, which is ok, not every game is for everyone and Jon tends to be up his own ass a lot. But that's just absurdly reductive.
This dude clearly never played Dishonored, Kaldwin's Bridge is one of the best stages ever.
Me when i got so frustrated with monsters being bad in games i talked to a paleontologist to plan mine.
What is "suspension of disbelief"
I just found this channel and I'm crying from the content, amazing lmao
They got it from unity asset store and then scaled it up 😂
Does anybody have a link to the stream the second clip is from? I can't find it in his twitch VODs
Thank you for putting these videos together!
now that i have seen it, it cannot be unseen
I agree with the broad strokes of his argument, but disagree on the details in the example he brings forth.
this guy reminds me of the guy i knew in college who always complained about the most inane shit, but really had no idea what they were talking about
i.e having steep grades in front of a bridge is fine especially if the bridge is tended to have ships pass under it
He says on the video why it is not fine.
@@seriouscat2231 lol
he hates everything and that's why he can't get anything done
Dude has shipped multiple highly acclaimed games. Just cuz he took on an even larger project afterward doesnt mean it's not getting done lmao who are you really talking about?
@@crimsonhawk52, many people get an emotional reaction to Jon, then a counterreaction and then they translate their counterreaction into facts and post it online. Half the comments on videos about him are made this way.
A lot of ultra-perfectionist artists are like this lol. Just a hypersensitive eye for the slightest imperfection because they’re so sensitive to it in their own work.
It's just an aesthetic choice. If you need to have models of a physical world that players navigate, what he's saying generally applies.
In the case of that one bridge though, I'd argue only the path surface seems gameplay relevant. So beyond that it's a creative choice whether to play with scale. However, many(slight majority?) artists definitely don't know the difference. Another factor is limited testing, artists can make assets in stark isolation at times. So even if the artist knows better, what's the chance the designers or QA actually know what they're looking at?
I'm always annoyed by seeing these massive monumental stone structures strewn around willy-nilly. I guess the developers want it to feel epic, but it's just cheap if they're everywhere. Call it "monumentality inflation". Even Elden Ring strayed into this a little.
Can we also talk about how dumb that path texture looks? On this scale, the people walking the path wouldn't flatten rocks the size of minvans into it. Those boulders would still stick out everywhere.
I feel like half the reason Sci-Fi and Fantasy are so popular in video games is it lets people gloss over details like this, like historical or even modern settings require research and attention to detail, fantasy you can kind of half-ass based on what you remember from the art in a D&D manual or a Lord of the Rings movie. Making something derivative of World of Warcraft you can just vibe and if stuff doesn't make sense it's magic.
It could be realistic. The bridge might be a prestige building and totally over oversized. Just for sending the message: "we got cash and build big shit" like the colossus of rhodes.
Comments section agreeing or justofying why the bridge is too big. No one has any thoughts on slope grades and turning angles of roads in games. Recommend checking out Lee Hawkins' city skylines let's play "reddington" if you wanna learn more
I don't know. Has Blow looked at some ancient roman bridges? Disregarding the usability comment, they're not too far off in terms of scale
what bridge is 1000x scale of a regular sized human?
Could you name a bridge? I did some quick searching and couldn't find anything. The width of the bridge seems fine but the steepness of the ramp and the height of the gateway look even more massive now that I have something to compare it to.
Counterargument: the wear and tear on the bridge makes it seem as though it's *really* old. The pavers on the road leading up to it are also extremely eroded and covered in mud. And the bridge spans a cliffside. That said, there's a possibility that what's going on here is that you have shifting soil and runoff. At the time of the bridge's construction, the pathway probably *was* level with the bridge. I've actually seen videos of this happening with driveways and sidewalks, where they become so buried in dirt that you can't even tell they're there. As for the incline of the bridge, what you might be looking at is essentially a variant of the flying buttress. I.e. a support beam that doubles as pathway. This would explain why there are fractures in it leading up to the gateway. It's under constant pressure while also being walks on.
People dont get "physical world". Of course until they start getting interested. But until then they just dont see what wrong with, ex, scaling the rockway up, so now theres giant rocks inhabitating the road, scaling the trees up, so the youngling trees are now gigantic... They dont think about natures growth cycle, but eventually they can look back and laugh about how silly it was.