As somebody who thinks, lives and breathes video games, I find this man's arguments either factually true and spot on or, more importantly, almost ahead of the time. Games, when proven to be less serial and more nebulous than written art, can affect people at a more personal level. The reason being that it does not necesarily need language to create meaning.
Guess I'm behind the times so to speak, but I remember Zizek saying that games are a new form of subjectivity basically revolving around the idea of "undeath." A sort of obscenity. And I think the way some games have used this can speak to us, but it's clear, and this is where I want to converge and say I agree with you, that I think Blow is really challenging the idea that design has a finished history and that companies aren't just finding ways to turn these types of expression on people to basically drain them of some form of life's substance. Our time, for instance. Or even our very capacity for thought or our physical being channeled into some escape. You can use strategies similar to other artistic mediums to analyze games, but the problem is that their experience often shifts the expression of previous ideas to a subjectivity of doing over and over, and when you can compel people to basically create lifestyles/dogmas around this type of faith, I think it's important that we realize not just that games can manipulate people, but what games discarded or are modifying to do so.
I wouldn't quite say astounding - a mans ethical tendencies usually persist throughout his lifetime, whoever he may happen to be. It may get an 'update patch' so to speak, as he learns new facts over time, but only rarely is it changed wholesale.
This guy is Awesome. not only as a huge nerd, but as someone interested in philosophy, science, cultural development and the direction mankind is going, i'm glad there's people like Blow who are really thinking about the potential of videogames to impact and change culture, and to inspire really deep stuff.
Excellent talk! I like how he explains small things, at first that has nothing to do with game design (like that ant thing, and that evil investment plan) and at the end, everything comes to one place, and just makes sense. Bravo.
I have always shared these feelings with Jonathan; even though I've never met him. As I watched this video, and read articles about his ideas and thoughts, I find myself amazed (and relieved) that someone else out there has the same ideas as I do. I wish I could program and design games. I have to comment on something though. The human condition does involve aggression, and many humans find pleasure and satisfaction in shooting things and blowing things up. That's why these FPS's are so su
When I used to play Frontierville, my biggest motivation was to impress people. I thought people would look up to me 'cause I was Level 47 or whatever I was. If the game had been designed so that no one else could see my level, there would have been no point. I'm probably just mental, but I can't imagine any other motivation to play it. Then again, people spend a lot of "empty hours" practicing things for no other reason than to impress people, like card tricks.
This is a crisis prevalent in all forms of art and at all times. The opposition between the wide-selling blockbuster, "entertainment for the masses" work, set on being a commercial success, and the deeper works, set on being meaningful to the ones who experience it...
1:38:21 Actually this is something I've always been conscious about but it's more accepted now because playing Call of Duty is mainstream and lots of normals do it. People seem to be okay with and some even join in. Everyone has a playstation nowadays and not just for Netflix but it's ironically the social thing to do just like Facebook and Instagram -that are of course -*-not-*- social at all-
Egoraptor said in a recent game grumps AMA that Jonathan Blow was a big inspiration for him and (I think) sequelitis too, so it's very likely that he's seen this.
I as well didn't like some things that these games did but this made me understand why when I first watched this. I think the take-away from this talk was to know what we're doing and use these tools for good.
@InterstellarTortoise I uploaded 5 of his lectures to this channel now. The ones I would recommend the most are titled "Conflicts in Design" and "Design Reboot".
"Humans beings like visual and oral stimulation" - Jonathan Blow Is there irony is his surname here? I would like to think so. Anyways, very interesting and thought provoking presentation. Worth watching!
(part 2) ... over a decade because he was most challenged by it, but decided to go for a 2D game with Braid because he wanted to focus on what he found interesting first. Similar reason why he went with the platformer framework was to have it be familiar and approachable enough, where he could experiment more from a different angle.
That is true, but there is the element of "wishing you could turn back time". He also tried to employ the whole metaphor that the princess is the Atomic Bomb, as perpetuated by the ending, but you gotta admit, he nailed the ending. I felt a chill in my spine when I discovered that I was actually the villain, I didn't see it coming at all. So he succeeded on that front.
As a hobbyist game developer this clears my thoughts why im so tempted and disgusted by gamedev at the same time. Also there is something addicting in the way Jonathan talks so I had to watch the whole thing till the end, very interesting..
He can't come out and say What it means. If he could describe the meaning and rely the message by talking he wouldn't have to make a game about it. He could just say it or write it or make a book about it or a lecture. This is something so deep and meaningful to people but yet and idea so grand and nebulous that it can only be expressed as a game by playing the game. This is the power of games that no other thing in this world can do. This is why Jonathan Blow makes gmaes this is why we play gam
I was sickened, horrified, mollified and enraged when games started charging for consumable in game resources. Buy this game currency and then you spend it in the game and that'll help you progress faster. What does the progress mean at that point? I mean I guess you could say well what did the progress mean to begin with, which is kind of a fair point when all you're doing is, in essense, clicking a cow. I agree whole heartedly with everything said in this video, I think. I played the original EverQuest for 4 years. And I paid $13 a month every month. At first I was very reluctant to do that. I was kind of horrified, in fact. But I figured well, I guess it costs a lot of money to run all that infrastructure and do all that super in depth world building / development, etc., so. If that was the price of having an MMORPG, then I'd pay it, at least for a while. So I did. For a long time. (Well, 4 years.) It was like a giant on-line D&D club, with all the tedious paperwork being done for you in an instant. I had the best and worst social experiences I've had in my life playing EQ. My life was far, far richer for it. And if I saw someone with a particular soul bound item, I knew what that meant. I mean unless he just bought that character from someone, I knew what it meant that he had been through, because, the grind to get up to the necessary level and acquire the necessary equipment to even try the required raid was quite something, and even then, the chances of that drop occurring weren't that high. My brother and I went on many raids that failed that were lead by other people, and then eventually we lead raids ourselves that succeeded. We chatted, we collected email addresses, we got phone numbers, we called people.. are you going to make it, can you be there to stand in, can you be there to buff people going in.. do we need to scramble to get someone else for your slot.. we Made Sure enough people with enough resources showed up at the appointed time to carry it through and we made sure we knew how to do it. We watched videos of wrecks and successes and crafted our plan based on them. Lots and lots and lots of people tried and failed to do what we did. But if I saw someone wearing a drop from one of those raids - I knew what that person was at least present for. And I would say that that meant something. That person and I had something kind of extraordinary in common. But then of course the creators nerfed everything and trashed it all. Made everything easier and quicker and more effective for players in a shorter time. Which was good in a way, because my god, it was ridiculous the way it had been. I wouldn't have enough time in my life to go through it all again! But - it devalued what those of us who'd ground through it the hard way had done. A guy my brother and I knew from the game wrote a song, part of which was about that, and I "sang" it in OOC sometimes, and it was moving to people. I can't remember all of it, but I remember some of it: __ I can't remember if I cried when lightning my poor modem fried but something deep inside me [died? sighed?] the day that EQ died We were singin' My my, that raid sure went awry pulled a dragon started lagin' then the healers got fried we tried to abort but our attempts were denied readin' "LOADING PLEASE WAIT.." 'cause we'd died ... and when my group was looking down a monkey came all dressed in brown he brought with him a train oh man, he's gonna feign! and as we met our awful fate we cursed the monk and tried gate but as I feared it was too late the day that EQ died .. I had a friend and he played EQ (then one day he quit) ... so I went out to our favorite spot we'd sure hunted there a lot but without him, I just didn't want to play.. (stuff about people shouting for groups and ooc'ing about selling stuff, but it was just no longer compelling anymore.) __ I so wish I still had the full text of it. It was quite something. It talked about Verant's perpetual failure to fix the broken boat and about Verant's propensity to make newbie gear more buff than "heroic" gear that had taken hundreds, if not thousands of hours to acquire. The way the world of gamers went through their EQ phase was like a whole universe that birthed, rose, bloomed, withered and died (more-or-less) in the space of a handful of years. It was an Incredible Thing that can never really be in quite the same way again. The zeitgeist has gone. I feel like those of us who were there in the beginning of the whole MMORPG thing got something pretty extraordinary for our money. I will never forget those days. I've shared EQ tales with my children and I'll have them to share with my grandchildren. I feel almost like I was born, grew up, grew old, and died; like I lived a whole lifetime in 4 years, playing that game. The experience of that accelerated life kind of reminds me of the original Blade Runner. These human-robots show up looking for their creator. Why did you make us? And why did you make us live such short lives? Look at how badly we've been treated. Look at the Extremes we've endured that You cannot and would not if you could. Look at what we've done and become. Is This what you intended? They reach out to maybe kill the man for his dastardly deed - but they don't. Having confronted him, having shown him what they'd come to show him, and having asked him what they'd come to ask, and having received no very satisfying answer, they saved him from his eminant death. After all, he was a living creature. And life should be preserved. So they saved him, put down their weapons, sat down and died, legends in their own right, gone forever in the night. And that's kind of the way every person is in their life. No one has experienced what I have. No one could or would. And I have not, could not and would not experience what any other person has. I watched my father's dead body get carried off in a stretcher. No one knows what I know about him. I don't know 1/1000th of what he knew. And the same will probably be true for my son. The human condition has many ephemeral and hard to express things about it. I think the way I perceive past events needs adjusting, slightly. What happened was memorable and good, and it was good that it happened. And they portended even better things to come. They don't need to be repeated; they were enough, for what they were. They called for the even better things that either has come since or is yet to come, in one way or another. That's the way I should see those things. It's the way I should see everything that happens. Remarkable experiences and their related knowledge that seem to be lost and forgotten aren't really. What comes later grows out of them and reflects and echoes them, whether their exact detail is specifically consciously remembered by anyone or not. So even when a life expires, taking all of its unsharable things with it, still, the potential for ensuing good lives on. While we are here, we can strive for them and look forward to them, and when our time comes, we can be glad for and marvel about what we witnessed.
Great talk. But I found one thing I could disagree with. Suggesting that FPS type games are not technically fun. I find much joy in playing against other people and getting in engaging gun battles and sometimes winning or losing. And if I lose a tough battle or if I have bad teammates, I might say god damn it but that doesn't mean I'm not having fun. I say damn when I fall snowboarding, it doesn't render the experience not fun. It's actually a part of why it is fun. It's variety, it's challenge, and ultimately overcoming adversity. Uplifting. Joyous.
He says in other interviews, how "fun" is an amorphous word. It can mean many different things, to different people. While you might find FPS' fun, I hate them. BUT, that can't be universal right? FPS' have to be able to vary right? Videogames have to be bigger than defining them by such small genres. TF handles a lot different and plays a lot differently than CoD. Point being, I don't think he's saying FPS games aren't fun, but that "fun" can be defined in a variety of ways, and yet we're stuck with the same FPS genre that has driven down the popularity (until very recently) of the other genres. Case in point: Look at how CoD-like Resident Evil has become over the years, as the FPS genre has gotten bigger. Hell, the horror genre in general.
I just got a notification for this? lol wtf google. Yeah, I'm actually an RPG player. And am at severe risk of becoming an MMORPG slave because it offers all the things other games offer, just in a simpler form usually. PVP, PVE, crafting, character customization, in-game communication, etc. etc. Yet, even with all of that, I love popping in CoD or even TF2 and testing my skills in those games against other people. Just like board games with friends.
@MsBickle76 yeah I figured if they didn't want it on youtube, they would tell me or give me a cease and desist or something. I didn't edit it, so their logos and stuff is included, advertising for them.
Agreed. When I first saw 1:44:09 I was like PFF YEAH RIGHT. But it was an excellent speech and really put things into perspective for me concerning Diablo III.
(part 1) he mentions at the beginning he is among a number of designers of a school of thought that is looking to create games that speak more to the human condition, each with their own interpretation of that. I didn't hear him say the word art, so I wonder where you get that impression, perhaps the recent The Atlantic profile article that was done about him (which sometimes spoke in, unfitting in my view, hyperbole about him) ? He's been doing 3D graphics programming for over a decade...
I am actually surprised that Jonathan Blow does not like achievements. I guess it depends on what kind of achievement it is. For example I really like Factorio's achievements around finishing the game in a certain amount of time or in a very different way - like not crafting manually more than 111 items. These achievements lead me to play the game in a way that felt "new" because the created situation and interaction of these requirements with the game mechanics make it quite different and I have had to come up with new strategies to handle these new situations. And probably on my own I would not have thought of playing the game that way to make it more fun, so achivements to me seem like nice suggestions of how to play the game to perceive it differently.
he probably means things like "beat level 1" "beat level 2" "beat the game", nearly meaningless virtual trinkets that break the magic of the experience if you get a popup with a sound announcing you got them
Yes, in the end all mediums "manipulate" I just think that games such as Farmville get away with a lot more than a well structured but empty series would. I'm not sure do you mean "Conflicts in Game Design"? Because in that one it was more about conflicting ideas in gameplay and story.
1:02:45 Well when it comes to designing a game, I don't have a problem with manipulating players inside of the game. As long as the reasons for it are just. Most great video games subtly and psychologically prod the player so they have the smooth play experience that the designer intended to create. But it's when designers use the same techniques of creating engagement to achieve things like farming players for their money when it becomes a problem.
Watch the State of Play interview with him. He's doing the same thing to games (as a player) as games are doing to people. He's playing games, hoping they'll be the type of game he wants to play. This is a lot like opening chests with random rewards, hoping you'll get that awesome sword, or whatever. I haven't thought this through to a conclusion but I found the parallel interesting. And a little sad. There really should be a lot more games of the type he'd like to play.
There's a difference between an ambiguous story that's written to have multiple interpretations and a story that's just so loose that any interpretation is valid. From interviews with Jonathan Blow and my experience with the game, he seemed to lean towards the latter. For example, Limbo doesn't really explain any of it's story or it's ending but the ambiguity feels open to valid interpretations but not so open that anything could fit. Braid just had too many disparate elements to feel cohesive.
excellent speech. on a side note, do you think blow is so fixated on respect because he feels he doesn't get enough of it? i kinda feel like that myself honestly. maybe i find this speech excellent because it hits close to home? maybe...
Before realizing I had been manipulated for a long time while playing videogames I had no idea I was being disrespected in any way at all. At some point by random chance on the internet I stumbled upon the concept of a skinner box and suddenly a lot of things made sense. Because of my ignorance in the past and being negatively affected by that I too have the feeling of this speech hitting too close to home. I hope to make commercial games one day and these ideas will certainly weigh heavily in my decisions.
.. I think this is where Jonathan Blow might have gone too far in making a game that is very non-repetitive went a bit overboard. However, I must completely disagree with you when you say that the game is boring. You have a very original mechanic with how you manipulate time, the graphics and music was lovely, and the story was told very uniquely. Instead of advancing the story from beginning to end, you advanced it from end to beginning, from abstract to concrete, and from false to true.
It took me awhile to get where J-Blow is coming from --- at first I thought he was a huge douche because he'd run his mouth saying how all games were shit artistically implying his game was this artistic monolith that towered over all the other groveling peasant games. Eventually I figured out what his concept of an artistically successful game is, and the rest of him makes a lot more sense. He has a very narrow conception of what is good art in videogames, and it mostly doesn't line up with traditional pillars of 'good art' (say Dostoyevsky, Wagner, Miyazaki). His ideal game is an intricate puzzle box, where all the gameplay elements down to the programming level (reversing time in Braid, the spoiler bit of The Witness) and up to the thematic level fold back on one another to create a holistic, complex and tightly knit experience. His games are pretty unique when viewed through this lens, and they certainly succeed on this level. Good so far --- the thing is, Blow without much explanation leaves visual art (graphics), music, writing, and story in the far background prioritizing gameplay. In this talk art, sound, and story are just cheap gimmicks used to psychologically manipulate. Gameplay is what's new in games, it's not all they are --- videogames supersede film as the *unification* of all art forms. Visuals, music and sound, writing, these are integral to the videogame art form the same way they're integral to film. I think his focus allows him to explore some amazing ideas he wouldn't otherwise have come across, but it also makes it hard to take his work seriously when he insists Braid with its highschool creative writing class story or The Witness with its conception that scattering youtube videos of philosophy in the world gives it well integrated themes --- when he insists these are the pinnacles of videogames as art. They succeed on a gameplay level, but that's only an aspect of the art form. He reminds me of someone like M. Night Shyamalan who is intensely talented at some aspects of his craft, but is not humble enough to get someone else to help with his obvious shortcomings. Still, once I got where Blow is coming from his talks are awesome, I love what he's doing with his language so far, and he's one of the most exciting figures in games. I don't think he has enough engagement with artistry (or ironically, sensitivity to the human condition) to become a Kojima-esque all encompassing auteur, but he is doing a ton to push the art form forward from his own focused, unique angle.
I don't think he leaves music, writing/story, and visual art in the background. For instance, he's mentioned that visual style was very important to him when developing the Witness. What he's doing here is analyzing the medium of games and trying to develop a view of what makes a work of art deep within that medium. He identifies that games can exists without a story, art, and music and still be compelling due to the game-play. Another way to think about this concept would be that a well-made game has gameplay must have compelling gameplay without story, art, and music. This doesn't mean that adding a story or better art, or better music to the game would make it better. Or that the best games shouldn't have these aspects. It means that to best use the medium, a game must have good gameplay.
I fail to see what's so wrong with the 60 single-player experience when long novels are just as socially hostile for the same reason; lack of interaction with other people while playing the game or reading the book.
Reading books will expand your mind and broaden your human experience. Playing games will almost certainly not. Depends on the game of course. Not all forms of entertainment are equal. In general: Reading will make you smarter. Gaming will make you dumber.
ı think all games should have much more interactivity then the visual effects and stuff. Cause that makes a difference between real games and movie like games. If you think you have a good story but not an interactive gameplay, make a movie. I'll watch it.
I hate to break it to you, the troubling trend of "mainstream" being a bad word, which you recently noticed, has pretty much always been there. You probably didn't notice it because you are part of that main stream. The issue is that some create "art" directly for the masses while others don't. Braid was most likey not solely created to appeal to the mass, but it was a good enough game to appeal to a large audience. It is not about deciding good or bad, it's about the intentions behind creation.
My general notion of a mainstream product is when someone find ways to make a mass of people pay for their product, maybe not just by good gameplay but by marketing or addictiveness. Though, interesting gameplay will also sell -Braid. I am an "artist" by profession but could care less if my work is considered art or not. I agree that the individual can decide what "art" is, artist or consumer alike. Art is subjective. Kafka wanted noone to read his writings, still his books are considered art.
but he equally says that games such as chess show that a good story does not equal a great game, nor do any of the other elements of the toolset. in any case, if a story is ambiguous or multi-layered, does that make it a worse story?
Haha - "Think less of" doesn't mean I would be judging someone based solely on that they think of a video game. It just means it would be an indicator that myself and that person probably don't like much of the same things.
...advantage in stopping to figure out how the mechanics actually worked. In a world, when a door opened when you walked into it from the left but the key would just break when you walked into it from the right, you could stop and reason why that happened (which has a reasonable explanation) or you could just accept it and move on. Contrast this with Portal. In many ways the games are similar, but if you didn't understand how the mechanics works in the early levels, you will have trouble later..
that example doesn't correlate in my opinion. It depends on how much time there is, but, say you learn a difficult card trick (and if it wasnt difficult, it wouldnt impress anyone, so it must be) if you practiced this skill, put in effort, and mastered it, you gained. time gains you skill, dexterity, some pride in accomplishment, and fun when you share it. Frontierville/farmville gains you.....? if you impress people by NON-action. somethign is wrong. true games offer much more than than those 2
I wouldn't say racism is explored effectively, but the greatest asset of Bioshock Infinite in my opinion is visual storytelling, getting emotionally involved with AI and the story is themed very well. I think it failed on many levels as a game and at some levels as a story, but the effectiveness of the story is so grand that it makes you forgive that. You have to remember that as an AAA title, the development has to consider objectifying its consumers a lot more.
An interesting presentation, but I don't agree with the absolutism. If we want to call those best practices "manipulative," then I don't think that manipulation is necessarily bad. Sometimes people drown their food in hot sauce to disguise the fact that it's junk; that doesn't mean that its impossible for high-quality food to be enhanced by adding some hot sauce. Likewise, I like a game with some eye candy; eye candy shouldn't be used as a replacement for content, but a high-quality game can still be made better by including some. In that case, the designer is showing now disrespect by "manipulating" me.
He just treats the gameplay as the most valuable part of a game, but because gameplay in itself isn't compelling enough to get people to play the game, so the "best practices" are used to for that purpose instead. I think that he would agree with you that good visual can enhance a game, but in his view it's still a thing that's external to the game whose purpose is to influence the player. Go is a good example of what he was talking about. Go is almost entirely gameplay with none of the "best practices", and because of that it is very hard to get people to play Go; there's nothing immediately compelling about the game, though some people may find its minimalist aesthetics appealing. His view is very gameplay centric, but it's not the only valid view on games, and I think he would agree.
I suppose a comparison between chess and braid is somewhat misplaced, because as you rightly say, braid is "one and done", whereas in chess you face different opponents with different styles. perhaps braid needs multiplayer! as for your comment on ambiguous stories, i would politely disagree. ambiguity allows for multiple interpretations, which many of the greatest pieces of literature ably manage without sacrificing their value. it provokes discussion, and inspires further creativity.
59:00 I honestly think I am more unlikely to buy something like microsoft points which I can't evenly divide in my heard. However If I were to buy them, I would be likely to buy more, since I would have points on my account alredy.
Pong! and it's esoteric - and epistemological paradigms have shown me the way to the true and exponential cause celeb of just WHY the triple helix that some of us have, will go MUCH farther than the string theory - OR the harmonic value that Copernicus's -harmonic tonal (Vibratory) dalliances could (in fact DID) elucidate the true value of the next generations of Pong yet to appear and play a major part in the Human Condition. Mort Weiss Phd.
![[2019 TGDF] Making Games in 2019 and Beyond (Jonathan Blow)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aVb6-Rkz7W4/mqdefault.jpg)
This lecture was a massive pleasure to listen to. Love Mr. Blow's outlook and perception, as well as all of the information he gave throughout.
As somebody who thinks, lives and breathes video games, I find this man's arguments either factually true and spot on or, more importantly, almost ahead of the time. Games, when proven to be less serial and more nebulous than written art, can affect people at a more personal level. The reason being that it does not necesarily need language to create meaning.
Guess I'm behind the times so to speak, but I remember Zizek saying that games are a new form of subjectivity basically revolving around the idea of "undeath." A sort of obscenity. And I think the way some games have used this can speak to us, but it's clear, and this is where I want to converge and say I agree with you, that I think Blow is really challenging the idea that design has a finished history and that companies aren't just finding ways to turn these types of expression on people to basically drain them of some form of life's substance. Our time, for instance. Or even our very capacity for thought or our physical being channeled into some escape.
You can use strategies similar to other artistic mediums to analyze games, but the problem is that their experience often shifts the expression of previous ideas to a subjectivity of doing over and over, and when you can compel people to basically create lifestyles/dogmas around this type of faith, I think it's important that we realize not just that games can manipulate people, but what games discarded or are modifying to do so.
In 11 years Jon has worked so hard and achieved so much. I’d give anything to sit in a classroom and listen to him.
well good news! They filmed this lecture and you are currently watching it
It's astounding how this talk clearly reflects his work in The Witness - a game released six years later.
+Digital Dissection he is the bernie sanders of games
I wouldn't quite say astounding
- a mans ethical tendencies usually persist throughout his lifetime, whoever he may happen to be.
It may get an 'update patch' so to speak, as he learns new facts over time, but only rarely is it changed wholesale.
This guy is Awesome. not only as a huge nerd, but as someone interested in philosophy, science, cultural development and the direction mankind is going, i'm glad there's people like Blow who are really thinking about the potential of videogames to impact and change culture, and to inspire really deep stuff.
Excellent talk! I like how he explains small things, at first that has nothing to do with game design (like that ant thing, and that evil investment plan) and at the end, everything comes to one place, and just makes sense.
Bravo.
Jonathan Blow is not only an excellent game designer, but also a very insightful person. Kudos.
Fantastic lecture. thank you
Extremely fascinating, thank you!
I have always shared these feelings with Jonathan; even though I've never met him. As I watched this video, and read articles about his ideas and thoughts, I find myself amazed (and relieved) that someone else out there has the same ideas as I do. I wish I could program and design games. I have to comment on something though. The human condition does involve aggression, and many humans find pleasure and satisfaction in shooting things and blowing things up. That's why these FPS's are so su
I love this talk! Very important stuff to think about.
Really great talk. Thank you for the upload and for the interesting ideas!
When I used to play Frontierville, my biggest motivation was to impress people. I thought people would look up to me 'cause I was Level 47 or whatever I was. If the game had been designed so that no one else could see my level, there would have been no point. I'm probably just mental, but I can't imagine any other motivation to play it. Then again, people spend a lot of "empty hours" practicing things for no other reason than to impress people, like card tricks.
This is a crisis prevalent in all forms of art and at all times. The opposition between the wide-selling blockbuster, "entertainment for the masses" work, set on being a commercial success, and the deeper works, set on being meaningful to the ones who experience it...
Thanks for sharing this great talk.
We need more ethical game designers!! Thank you for all your efforts
1:38:21 Actually this is something I've always been conscious about but it's more accepted now because playing Call of Duty is mainstream and lots of normals do it. People seem to be okay with and some even join in. Everyone has a playstation nowadays and not just for Netflix but it's ironically the social thing to do just like Facebook and Instagram -that are of course -*-not-*- social at all-
Good watch. Interesting, although not new at this point. It's always good to see these in-depth looks into game design.
Egoraptor said in a recent game grumps AMA that Jonathan Blow was a big inspiration for him and (I think) sequelitis too, so it's very likely that he's seen this.
I've just seen two Jonathan Blow talks and there are Lost references in both :P (the con man is Sawyer from Lost)
I _love_ the island itself in *The Witness* - it's just _beautifully_ hand-crafted, over every single inch!
Ty for uploading this
It was really helpful for me
42:00 Clash of clans theory way before it was released
I feel like this guy could run a 12 hour talking session about games and it would be great!
Kinda like his Twitch stream?
I'm sold on Jon Blow.
Enjoyed this info a lot!
thank you, sir for clearing that out for me
nice cinematography
great talk
I as well didn't like some things that these games did but this made me understand why when I first watched this. I think the take-away from this talk was to know what we're doing and use these tools for good.
im certainly gonna dig it back up now, i never did quite beat it
17:24
Half-Life 2 did it originally. You could pin enemies to walls with the crossbow that shot pieces of rebar.
But Painkiller came out 6 months before Half-Life 2...
He's been doing lectures about game design since almost 2 years before he released Braid, I've got a few of them up on my channel.
That was a great talk.
@InterstellarTortoise I uploaded 5 of his lectures to this channel now. The ones I would recommend the most are titled "Conflicts in Design" and "Design Reboot".
love this guy
This is awesome!
Somehow I have avoided that fate, I just watched and thought:"this makes all so much sense!"
I really liked your videos. Keep up the good work
Great talk with a lot of things to think about. Guy addicted to zelda with such intelligence, this shit always blows my mind.
"Humans beings like visual and oral stimulation" - Jonathan Blow
Is there irony is his surname here? I would like to think so.
Anyways, very interesting and thought provoking presentation. Worth watching!
(part 2) ... over a decade because he was most challenged by it, but decided to go for a 2D game with Braid because he wanted to focus on what he found interesting first. Similar reason why he went with the platformer framework was to have it be familiar and approachable enough, where he could experiment more from a different angle.
That is true, but there is the element of "wishing you could turn back time". He also tried to employ the whole metaphor that the princess is the Atomic Bomb, as perpetuated by the ending, but you gotta admit, he nailed the ending. I felt a chill in my spine when I discovered that I was actually the villain, I didn't see it coming at all. So he succeeded on that front.
great camera action....
would love to have a backup of this posted, just in case it gets pulled ^_^
As a hobbyist game developer this clears my thoughts why im so tempted and disgusted by gamedev at the same time. Also there is something addicting in the way Jonathan talks so I had to watch the whole thing till the end, very interesting..
I love how camera man lost him at 12:40
He can't come out and say What it means. If he could describe the meaning and rely the message by talking he wouldn't have to make a game about it. He could just say it or write it or make a book about it or a lecture. This is something so deep and meaningful to people but yet and idea so grand and nebulous that it can only be expressed as a game by playing the game. This is the power of games that no other thing in this world can do. This is why Jonathan Blow makes gmaes this is why we play gam
I was sickened, horrified, mollified and enraged when games started charging for consumable in game resources. Buy this game currency and then you spend it in the game and that'll help you progress faster. What does the progress mean at that point? I mean I guess you could say well what did the progress mean to begin with, which is kind of a fair point when all you're doing is, in essense, clicking a cow. I agree whole heartedly with everything said in this video, I think.
I played the original EverQuest for 4 years. And I paid $13 a month every month. At first I was very reluctant to do that. I was kind of horrified, in fact. But I figured well, I guess it costs a lot of money to run all that infrastructure and do all that super in depth world building / development, etc., so. If that was the price of having an MMORPG, then I'd pay it, at least for a while.
So I did. For a long time. (Well, 4 years.) It was like a giant on-line D&D club, with all the tedious paperwork being done for you in an instant. I had the best and worst social experiences I've had in my life playing EQ. My life was far, far richer for it.
And if I saw someone with a particular soul bound item, I knew what that meant. I mean unless he just bought that character from someone, I knew what it meant that he had been through, because, the grind to get up to the necessary level and acquire the necessary equipment to even try the required raid was quite something, and even then, the chances of that drop occurring weren't that high. My brother and I went on many raids that failed that were lead by other people, and then eventually we lead raids ourselves that succeeded. We chatted, we collected email addresses, we got phone numbers, we called people.. are you going to make it, can you be there to stand in, can you be there to buff people going in.. do we need to scramble to get someone else for your slot.. we Made Sure enough people with enough resources showed up at the appointed time to carry it through and we made sure we knew how to do it. We watched videos of wrecks and successes and crafted our plan based on them. Lots and lots and lots of people tried and failed to do what we did. But if I saw someone wearing a drop from one of those raids - I knew what that person was at least present for. And I would say that that meant something. That person and I had something kind of extraordinary in common.
But then of course the creators nerfed everything and trashed it all. Made everything easier and quicker and more effective for players in a shorter time. Which was good in a way, because my god, it was ridiculous the way it had been. I wouldn't have enough time in my life to go through it all again! But - it devalued what those of us who'd ground through it the hard way had done.
A guy my brother and I knew from the game wrote a song, part of which was about that, and I "sang" it in OOC sometimes, and it was moving to people. I can't remember all of it, but I remember some of it:
__
I can't remember if I cried
when lightning my poor modem fried
but something deep inside me [died? sighed?]
the day that EQ died
We were singin'
My my, that raid sure went awry
pulled a dragon started lagin' then the healers got fried
we tried to abort but our attempts were denied
readin' "LOADING PLEASE WAIT.."
'cause we'd died
...
and when my group was looking down
a monkey came all dressed in brown
he brought with him a train
oh man, he's gonna feign!
and as we met our awful fate
we cursed the monk and tried gate
but as I feared it was too late
the day that EQ died
..
I had a friend and he played EQ
(then one day he quit)
...
so I went out to our favorite spot
we'd sure hunted there a lot
but without him, I just didn't want to play..
(stuff about people shouting for groups and ooc'ing about selling stuff, but it was just no longer compelling anymore.)
__
I so wish I still had the full text of it. It was quite something. It talked about Verant's perpetual failure to fix the broken boat and about Verant's propensity to make newbie gear more buff than "heroic" gear that had taken hundreds, if not thousands of hours to acquire.
The way the world of gamers went through their EQ phase was like a whole universe that birthed, rose, bloomed, withered and died (more-or-less) in the space of a handful of years. It was an Incredible Thing that can never really be in quite the same way again. The zeitgeist has gone.
I feel like those of us who were there in the beginning of the whole MMORPG thing got something pretty extraordinary for our money. I will never forget those days. I've shared EQ tales with my children and I'll have them to share with my grandchildren. I feel almost like I was born, grew up, grew old, and died; like I lived a whole lifetime in 4 years, playing that game. The experience of that accelerated life kind of reminds me of the original Blade Runner. These human-robots show up looking for their creator. Why did you make us? And why did you make us live such short lives? Look at how badly we've been treated. Look at the Extremes we've endured that You cannot and would not if you could. Look at what we've done and become. Is This what you intended? They reach out to maybe kill the man for his dastardly deed - but they don't. Having confronted him, having shown him what they'd come to show him, and having asked him what they'd come to ask, and having received no very satisfying answer, they saved him from his eminant death. After all, he was a living creature. And life should be preserved. So they saved him, put down their weapons, sat down and died, legends in their own right, gone forever in the night. And that's kind of the way every person is in their life. No one has experienced what I have. No one could or would. And I have not, could not and would not experience what any other person has. I watched my father's dead body get carried off in a stretcher. No one knows what I know about him. I don't know 1/1000th of what he knew. And the same will probably be true for my son. The human condition has many ephemeral and hard to express things about it.
I think the way I perceive past events needs adjusting, slightly. What happened was memorable and good, and it was good that it happened. And they portended even better things to come. They don't need to be repeated; they were enough, for what they were. They called for the even better things that either has come since or is yet to come, in one way or another. That's the way I should see those things. It's the way I should see everything that happens. Remarkable experiences and their related knowledge that seem to be lost and forgotten aren't really. What comes later grows out of them and reflects and echoes them, whether their exact detail is specifically consciously remembered by anyone or not. So even when a life expires, taking all of its unsharable things with it, still, the potential for ensuing good lives on. While we are here, we can strive for them and look forward to them, and when our time comes, we can be glad for and marvel about what we witnessed.
Honkai Impact 3rd is EXACTLY the problem with modern day gaming.
i think at some point this comment stopped being about videogames and such but pretty amazing nonetheless, thank you
@OverlordJohnEternal You can download the full video at the link I provided.
Yes Yes Yes-Thank You, Sir.
Great talk. But I found one thing I could disagree with. Suggesting that FPS type games are not technically fun. I find much joy in playing against other people and getting in engaging gun battles and sometimes winning or losing. And if I lose a tough battle or if I have bad teammates, I might say god damn it but that doesn't mean I'm not having fun. I say damn when I fall snowboarding, it doesn't render the experience not fun. It's actually a part of why it is fun. It's variety, it's challenge, and ultimately overcoming adversity. Uplifting. Joyous.
He says in other interviews, how "fun" is an amorphous word. It can mean many different things, to different people. While you might find FPS' fun, I hate them.
BUT, that can't be universal right? FPS' have to be able to vary right? Videogames have to be bigger than defining them by such small genres. TF handles a lot different and plays a lot differently than CoD.
Point being, I don't think he's saying FPS games aren't fun, but that "fun" can be defined in a variety of ways, and yet we're stuck with the same FPS genre that has driven down the popularity (until very recently) of the other genres.
Case in point: Look at how CoD-like Resident Evil has become over the years, as the FPS genre has gotten bigger. Hell, the horror genre in general.
I just got a notification for this? lol wtf google. Yeah, I'm actually an RPG player. And am at severe risk of becoming an MMORPG slave because it offers all the things other games offer, just in a simpler form usually. PVP, PVE, crafting, character customization, in-game communication, etc. etc. Yet, even with all of that, I love popping in CoD or even TF2 and testing my skills in those games against other people. Just like board games with friends.
cameraman = derp
@MsBickle76 yeah I figured if they didn't want it on youtube, they would tell me or give me a cease and desist or something. I didn't edit it, so their logos and stuff is included, advertising for them.
1:03:26 - camera man have a hard time xD Love Jonathan, we need more people like him in game industry!
Agreed. When I first saw 1:44:09 I was like PFF YEAH RIGHT. But it was an excellent speech and really put things into perspective for me concerning Diablo III.
I was impressed!
(part 1) he mentions at the beginning he is among a number of designers of a school of thought that is looking to create games that speak more to the human condition, each with their own interpretation of that. I didn't hear him say the word art, so I wonder where you get that impression, perhaps the recent The Atlantic profile article that was done about him (which sometimes spoke in, unfitting in my view, hyperbole about him) ? He's been doing 3D graphics programming for over a decade...
I Fucking love Go. I own like 3 go boards and several books. I got all giddy when John mentioned it!
I am actually surprised that Jonathan Blow does not like achievements. I guess it depends on what kind of achievement it is. For example I really like Factorio's achievements around finishing the game in a certain amount of time or in a very different way - like not crafting manually more than 111 items. These achievements lead me to play the game in a way that felt "new" because the created situation and interaction of these requirements with the game mechanics make it quite different and I have had to come up with new strategies to handle these new situations. And probably on my own I would not have thought of playing the game that way to make it more fun, so achivements to me seem like nice suggestions of how to play the game to perceive it differently.
he probably means things like "beat level 1" "beat level 2" "beat the game", nearly meaningless virtual trinkets that break the magic of the experience if you get a popup with a sound announcing you got them
Yes, in the end all mediums "manipulate" I just think that games such as Farmville get away with a lot more than a well structured but empty series would.
I'm not sure do you mean "Conflicts in Game Design"? Because in that one it was more about conflicting ideas in gameplay and story.
Oh, crap! I need to go click on my cow!! :O
1:02:45
Well when it comes to designing a game, I don't have a problem with manipulating players inside of the game. As long as the reasons for it are just.
Most great video games subtly and psychologically prod the player so they have the smooth play experience that the designer intended to create. But it's when designers use the same techniques of creating engagement to achieve things like farming players for their money when it becomes a problem.
Watch the State of Play interview with him. He's doing the same thing to games (as a player) as games are doing to people. He's playing games, hoping they'll be the type of game he wants to play. This is a lot like opening chests with random rewards, hoping you'll get that awesome sword, or whatever. I haven't thought this through to a conclusion but I found the parallel interesting. And a little sad. There really should be a lot more games of the type he'd like to play.
Just as a way to back up my reasoning, what are some of your favorite video games?
Got through the whole thing, booyah!
So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is "is this game making my life better or worse?"
Wow, humanity.
People didn't know Impossible Mission? I'm shocked!!! :P (Yes, I've played it. A lot later thought but still. I didn't get a C64 until the 1990s.)
It must be one of the most well known C64 games.
There's a difference between an ambiguous story that's written to have multiple interpretations and a story that's just so loose that any interpretation is valid. From interviews with Jonathan Blow and my experience with the game, he seemed to lean towards the latter. For example, Limbo doesn't really explain any of it's story or it's ending but the ambiguity feels open to valid interpretations but not so open that anything could fit. Braid just had too many disparate elements to feel cohesive.
excellent speech. on a side note, do you think blow is so fixated on respect because he feels he doesn't get enough of it? i kinda feel like that myself honestly. maybe i find this speech excellent because it hits close to home? maybe...
Before realizing I had been manipulated for a long time while playing videogames I had no idea I was being disrespected in any way at all. At some point by random chance on the internet I stumbled upon the concept of a skinner box and suddenly a lot of things made sense.
Because of my ignorance in the past and being negatively affected by that I too have the feeling of this speech hitting too close to home.
I hope to make commercial games one day and these ideas will certainly weigh heavily in my decisions.
Excellence quote from Alan Moore
wow, hes a genius, and a lovely man
.. I think this is where Jonathan Blow might have gone too far in making a game that is very non-repetitive went a bit overboard.
However, I must completely disagree with you when you say that the game is boring. You have a very original mechanic with how you manipulate time, the graphics and music was lovely, and the story was told very uniquely. Instead of advancing the story from beginning to end, you advanced it from end to beginning, from abstract to concrete, and from false to true.
It took me awhile to get where J-Blow is coming from --- at first I thought he was a huge douche because he'd run his mouth saying how all games were shit artistically implying his game was this artistic monolith that towered over all the other groveling peasant games.
Eventually I figured out what his concept of an artistically successful game is, and the rest of him makes a lot more sense. He has a very narrow conception of what is good art in videogames, and it mostly doesn't line up with traditional pillars of 'good art' (say Dostoyevsky, Wagner, Miyazaki). His ideal game is an intricate puzzle box, where all the gameplay elements down to the programming level (reversing time in Braid, the spoiler bit of The Witness) and up to the thematic level fold back on one another to create a holistic, complex and tightly knit experience. His games are pretty unique when viewed through this lens, and they certainly succeed on this level.
Good so far --- the thing is, Blow without much explanation leaves visual art (graphics), music, writing, and story in the far background prioritizing gameplay. In this talk art, sound, and story are just cheap gimmicks used to psychologically manipulate. Gameplay is what's new in games, it's not all they are --- videogames supersede film as the *unification* of all art forms. Visuals, music and sound, writing, these are integral to the videogame art form the same way they're integral to film.
I think his focus allows him to explore some amazing ideas he wouldn't otherwise have come across, but it also makes it hard to take his work seriously when he insists Braid with its highschool creative writing class story or The Witness with its conception that scattering youtube videos of philosophy in the world gives it well integrated themes --- when he insists these are the pinnacles of videogames as art. They succeed on a gameplay level, but that's only an aspect of the art form.
He reminds me of someone like M. Night Shyamalan who is intensely talented at some aspects of his craft, but is not humble enough to get someone else to help with his obvious shortcomings.
Still, once I got where Blow is coming from his talks are awesome, I love what he's doing with his language so far, and he's one of the most exciting figures in games. I don't think he has enough engagement with artistry (or ironically, sensitivity to the human condition) to become a Kojima-esque all encompassing auteur, but he is doing a ton to push the art form forward from his own focused, unique angle.
You perfectly summed up my feelings
I don't think he leaves music, writing/story, and visual art in the background. For instance, he's mentioned that visual style was very important to him when developing the Witness.
What he's doing here is analyzing the medium of games and trying to develop a view of what makes a work of art deep within that medium. He identifies that games can exists without a story, art, and music and still be compelling due to the game-play. Another way to think about this concept would be that a well-made game has gameplay must have compelling gameplay without story, art, and music.
This doesn't mean that adding a story or better art, or better music to the game would make it better. Or that the best games shouldn't have these aspects. It means that to best use the medium, a game must have good gameplay.
I strongly disagree with said below statement. I'm back now for a second listen of his lecture. He is an inspiring truth-talker!
I fail to see what's so wrong with the 60 single-player experience when long novels are just as socially hostile for the same reason; lack of interaction with other people while playing the game or reading the book.
Reading books will expand your mind and broaden your human experience.
Playing games will almost certainly not. Depends on the game of course.
Not all forms of entertainment are equal.
In general:
Reading will make you smarter.
Gaming will make you dumber.
Is Rice University , a university about staple foods (I decided against making this about ethinicity)
ı think all games should have much more interactivity then the visual effects and stuff. Cause that makes a difference between real games and movie like games. If you think you have a good story but not an interactive gameplay, make a movie. I'll watch it.
I hate to break it to you, the troubling trend of "mainstream" being a bad word, which you recently noticed, has pretty much always been there. You probably didn't notice it because you are part of that main stream. The issue is that some create "art" directly for the masses while others don't. Braid was most likey not solely created to appeal to the mass, but it was a good enough game to appeal to a large audience. It is not about deciding good or bad, it's about the intentions behind creation.
My general notion of a mainstream product is when someone find ways to make a mass of people pay for their product, maybe not just by good gameplay but by marketing or addictiveness. Though, interesting gameplay will also sell -Braid.
I am an "artist" by profession but could care less if my work is considered art or not. I agree that the individual can decide what "art" is, artist or consumer alike. Art is subjective.
Kafka wanted noone to read his writings, still his books are considered art.
@sully9088 Have you started learning how to code or make games yet?
but he equally says that games such as chess show that a good story does not equal a great game, nor do any of the other elements of the toolset.
in any case, if a story is ambiguous or multi-layered, does that make it a worse story?
Haha - "Think less of" doesn't mean I would be judging someone based solely on that they think of a video game. It just means it would be an indicator that myself and that person probably don't like much of the same things.
...advantage in stopping to figure out how the mechanics actually worked. In a world, when a door opened when you walked into it from the left but the key would just break when you walked into it from the right, you could stop and reason why that happened (which has a reasonable explanation) or you could just accept it and move on. Contrast this with Portal. In many ways the games are similar, but if you didn't understand how the mechanics works in the early levels, you will have trouble later..
Such amazing talk. Even though the slides suck. :b
I want to see his opinion on Bioshock Infinite. It's themes and story are reminiscent of an indie game, but the budget certainly makes it AAA.
that example doesn't correlate in my opinion. It depends on how much time there is, but, say you learn a difficult card trick (and if it wasnt difficult, it wouldnt impress anyone, so it must be) if you practiced this skill, put in effort, and mastered it, you gained. time gains you skill, dexterity, some pride in accomplishment, and fun when you share it. Frontierville/farmville gains you.....? if you impress people by NON-action. somethign is wrong. true games offer much more than than those 2
I wouldn't say racism is explored effectively, but the greatest asset of Bioshock Infinite in my opinion is visual storytelling, getting emotionally involved with AI and the story is themed very well.
I think it failed on many levels as a game and at some levels as a story, but the effectiveness of the story is so grand that it makes you forgive that. You have to remember that as an AAA title, the development has to consider objectifying its consumers a lot more.
I know the feeling. I'm lucky if I play 1 game a month now due to that bastard
An interesting presentation, but I don't agree with the absolutism. If we want to call those best practices "manipulative," then I don't think that manipulation is necessarily bad. Sometimes people drown their food in hot sauce to disguise the fact that it's junk; that doesn't mean that its impossible for high-quality food to be enhanced by adding some hot sauce. Likewise, I like a game with some eye candy; eye candy shouldn't be used as a replacement for content, but a high-quality game can still be made better by including some. In that case, the designer is showing now disrespect by "manipulating" me.
He didn't say the best practices were inherently bad - more like they are manipulative no matter whether used for good or bad.
He just treats the gameplay as the most valuable part of a game, but because gameplay in itself isn't compelling enough to get people to play the game, so the "best practices" are used to for that purpose instead. I think that he would agree with you that good visual can enhance a game, but in his view it's still a thing that's external to the game whose purpose is to influence the player. Go is a good example of what he was talking about. Go is almost entirely gameplay with none of the "best practices", and because of that it is very hard to get people to play Go; there's nothing immediately compelling about the game, though some people may find its minimalist aesthetics appealing. His view is very gameplay centric, but it's not the only valid view on games, and I think he would agree.
He discussed that a bit. I think that's the part he termed the pragmatist approach.
I don't think he believes that either. If he did, The Witness wouldn't be so pretty :D
Where is the world of warcraft talk?
Did you happen to find it? I tried to search for it too but to no avail.
I suppose a comparison between chess and braid is somewhat misplaced, because as you rightly say, braid is "one and done", whereas in chess you face different opponents with different styles. perhaps braid needs multiplayer!
as for your comment on ambiguous stories, i would politely disagree. ambiguity allows for multiple interpretations, which many of the greatest pieces of literature ably manage without sacrificing their value. it provokes discussion, and inspires further creativity.
I hope I could know him earlier.
Psychoanalytic Synopsis of Computer Gaming 101.
Validating everything that you knew, subconsciously, laid behind every game you've ever played.
59:00 I honestly think I am more unlikely to buy something like microsoft points which I can't evenly divide in my heard. However If I were to buy them, I would be likely to buy more, since I would have points on my account alredy.
I feel the need to watch this entire lecture to see how many times he says it, just in case he is in fact playing "Meow game" from Super Troopers.
Right!
I like how no one picked up on the oral/aural stimulation joke :p
Pong! and it's esoteric - and epistemological paradigms have shown me the way to the true and exponential cause celeb of just WHY the triple helix that some of us have, will go MUCH farther than the string theory - OR the harmonic value that Copernicus's -harmonic tonal (Vibratory) dalliances could (in fact DID) elucidate the true value of the next generations of Pong yet to appear and play a major part in the Human Condition. Mort Weiss Phd.
He's a freaking genius. Case closed.