Can we give a round of applause emojis for Jonathan? ► Follow Jonathan's new game on Twitter: x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1854276627305283874 ► Get 50% off Full Time Game Dev during the Black Friday sale: www.fulltimegamedev.com/full-time-game-black-friday
Hi! There's this upcoming platfom called Gamearly which goal is to help game developers fund their game thanks to the players. Have a look to it, it might be a game changer for developers in a close future.
I looked up JB's twitter images and wow that's a pain to look through. I found the easiest way to find them was to look at his media posts, and of the five polished images from Nov 6, and Sep 12, I think this post picked one of the least interesting. The others were much more atmospheric.
So your solution is that you, as an indie US developer, came first and grew, and now it's the time to shut the door for other developers? That's a very nice, typical US act! I think in response, other countries should ban Steam from selling in their countries and open their local stores!
the thing that Jonathan was talking about at 1:28:15 is something I was thinking this entire interview. Coming from a music background, gaming is going through a similar shift that music did in the 2000s into the 2010s. Listening to the "indie" artists (not the genre, just self produced and published) talk about their experience, the thing I hear echoed the most is, back in the day it was 1 million fans for 1 band, but today it's 1 million bands for 1 fan. All you really need to survive as a small creator is around 1 thousand people who like your stuff and want to show you support, then you'll be able todo what you like. The concept of what is "successful" has shifted dramatically, and too many people are trying to chase an idea of success that's 10-20 years out of date at this point. Ease of access to tools (game dev, marketing, and funding) has created a type of market saturation that just doesn't allow for the huge hits to happen at the same rate that they used to. Its not a BAD thing, I think it's actually the proper evolution and healthy for both consumers and creators alike. It's the playing field getting balanced in a way that lets more people do these types of things as more than just a hobby.
Jonathan Blow has a real knack for taking complex, technical things and putting them into plain English, in an interesting and, sometimes, even entertaining way. Very rare gift, I find.
If Jonathan Blow thinks, I agree.🤔✅ If Jonathan Blow speaks, I listen.🗣👂 If Jonathan Blow orders, I obey. If Jonathan Blow has a million fans, I am one of them.🙋🙋♂🙋 If Jonathan Blow has one fan, I am that fan 🙋 If Jonathan Blow has 0 fans, I’m dead😵❌
It’s all the unfinished things, external factors, sustaining his company and its team and so many more things, man …. It just weighs heavy… sleepless nights, I tell ya. It’s hard.
it seems like when jonathan talks about what his motivation is to make a game, thomas cant quiet understand, because they are very different at that point. thomas makes a game because he wants to earn money. jonathan makes a game because wants to make a game.
What I'm getting from Jon's comments about the difficulty of making games is exactly what matches how I feel right now: it's easier than ever to get started, but it's harder than ever to finish and stand out. There's so many more features and so much more polish that you need that you could simply get away with not having back in the day. Optimizing is a nightmare too when the code behind it is a mess; Unreal's source code is a trainwreck, but it's got the tools I need to ship a game, so... oh well.
yeah, add in the complexity of today's low end platform development or cross platform. I'm an XR developer and it's been an ongoing nightmare since 2017. The software stack just keeps getting more and more jank. Meanwhile Epic is chasing the film and automotive industry instead of focusing on it's game developer audience. Haven't had a stable engine version since well before UE5.
Its so easy to get started and yet the biggest question new devs have is still "which engine do I use?" People who are interested in game dev still aren't really starting game dev.
Yah, you can go UE 4 Indy but anything ue5 is a trap. Yes, you can make really cool looking environment or animations but once you dive into any systems that isn’t built specifically for Fortnite, you need to do some engine rewrites beyond the scope of an Indy project.
@pizzaman11 you need to do that in UE4 as well. Also, even with the UE4.27 plus branch, you're going to have issues If you're targeting anything other than PC / steam.
@@lifeartstudios6207 yah it’s not quite as bad though because you don’t have the overhead of the larger UE5 systems sinking framerate which gives you the space to hand wave a few things as good enough.
As a programmer I completely relate on what he said about wanting to make your own engine... a programmer wants to program like a singer wants to sing and painter wants to paint.
thanks both! loved hearing Jonathan's approach to the challenges of gamedev these days. Thomas I really appreciate you creating this, but in the future please refrain from grabbing my head (the mic) to re-position it each time before you speak... or at least reduce/edit that out of the audio if some adjustment throughout is unavoidable. Video quality here is sooo high, but the audio feels like a kid is kicking the back of my airplane seat every couple minutes lmao
Thomas - What you discussed with "Making a game where you can get paid to make it" and "Building an audience to activate for funding" is *exactly* what my studio is trying to do right now. We have a harder time because we are a team, but our entire social media strategy is around getting patreon subscribers so that we can be self reliant and liquid even if we find publishing etc. Ideally we wouldn't have to do layoffs if a game doesn't sell incredibly well or we get a publisher and then finish the project we got that funding for because that money is supplement to the audience funding.
Really funny to see these two minds together on one video - I see Thomas as this passionate, emotional artist contrasted with this analytical mastermind Jonathan Blow. They kind of care about different things but they're attempting to meet each other within this space between them. Kind of great.
"passionate, emotional artist" definetly applies to Jon too, like more than to a lot of other game devs. I didnt watch this video yet, but ive watched tons of other stuff with Jon and i can definetly say so. Thats literally why some people hate Jon, thats because he was really emotionally reacting to people critizing his games (though it was often really exaggerated by media and people). He really puts all his soul into his games and they mean very much to them, like he kinda tries to explore a meaning of life through them
Jonathan Blow is one of the realest artists out there. I don't mean to compare or anything, but I see him as even more of an artist in the truest sense of the word than Thomas.
RUclips throws so much stuff at me that just wastes my time. Your conversation and the video is, what this RUclips thing should be all about. You are helping us and hopefully yourself with it. Couldn’t be more win-win than this, man. Thanks :)
I want to just take a moment to push back further than the assessment of Thomas that "it's easier to make a game because the engine will just do those things for you." Jon was nice about it, but it needs to be understand that it's unequivocally not true. A game engine obviously solves some problems, but you also inherit all the problems of that engine. Also, given how complex the tool you are using is, most of the time you also cannot feasibly solve those problems, even if you were using your own technology a solution would be feasible. In Unity's case, you can't even access the source code to hope to fix any of it. I have personally ran into this problem of waiting years on a fix in Unity for something, which is why I no longer use it or even consider it a reasonable tool for game dev unless you are a large studio that can pay for source access. Jon brought up the problem of frame rate independence. "Just let the engine solve it for you." Unity can't solve it for you. Unity will do frame rate independence through fixed update. That is a solution with many drawbacks (go look at how it actually ensures you get a fixed update) Also, once you understand how it works, you know you cannot take user input there. Well, if you can't take input from the user in the fixed update, you run right back into the problem Jon was talking about. Also, even if you do use fixed update, you run into the other problem Jon talked about. By fixing the update interval, you are basically disallowing higher frame rate refreshes from occurring. How do you solve this? Interpolation? That's an extremely non trivial solution. Unreal is the same way. AAA studios inherit it's shader combinatorics issues. That leads to in game stutters. Do you really think you are going to fix the massive beast that is Unreal's material system just because you have source access, when even AAA studios and Epic themselves have yet to do so? Yes, you can reasonably architect YOUR system to not have the problem, but can you do it for the multi million line codebase of Unreal? How about trying to get a temporally stable frame in Unreal? Very difficult task, given how they develop the renderer, it's actually borderline impossible. There is no magic solution to these problems and a game engine existing is not some panacea that is going to solve all of these things and make them easier. You can choose to ignore all of these problems and say they don't matter, but then we run right back into the problem of mass produced subpar quality products. It is easier to ever to make something with reckless abandon, but the entire point here is that that is in and of itself a major issue.
lol its not that hard, you do input in Update() but the action itself in FixedUpdate() you can use a boolean like ButtonPressed or something. And the rigidbodies have interpolation built into the component, you can choose interpolate, extrapolate, etc Sure its something you have to learn but its not like some super complex issue. The fact is unity DOES out of the box provide you with Update() and FixedUpdate(), And if you're not making a unity physics dependent game then its even simpler.
I don't think the problem Jon was talking about has to do with Frame Rate Independence (FixedUpdate vs Update), but rather with Frame Pacing. As far as I understand Alen Ladavac's presentation that Jon was referring to, the issue is that graphics APIs do not expose a way to measure the display timing of a frame. Game engines can measure the render time, but on desktop OSes, the frame is actually displayed at a later time after the OS has finished composing. This introduces microstutters that you can't account for, regardless if you use a fixed step or not. This issue cannot be solved via a custom engine either (Croteam is using their own engine for the Talos Principle).
Regarding AI, I feel like its effectiveness is inversely proportional to knowing what you want: the more you have a specific vision of something, the less likely it's going to be any use creating it. If, on the other hand, you have the absolute vaguest idea of something, you might actually get a useful result out of it.
Thanks. I don’t understand why you have the camera back focusing on you when J is talking and you are looking away. Great work, would appreciate if you can get a director/editor.
He is right about the software declining. Around 2017 we worked on a game, and we updated the Unity version. Turns out, it didn't compile at all! You press "Build" and literally nothing happens, like the button was disconnected from a code it should execute. At first we were pulling our hair out if the project went to shit, then when we found nothing obviously wrong, tried the other projects, and also different machines (we had an iMac and Windows machines). Then my friend contacted Unity via support chat, and they were pretty responsive and chatty, again pointing us that our project might have an error, but we insisted that they have a major bug. It lasted until the guy tested that Unity version himself. At that point the support stopped responding, he didn't even say "hey, you guys were right, we'll look into it", nothing. I can only imagine a panic mode they went into when they realized that the game engine can't produce an executable lol. Tomorrow the patch was out fixing the issue :)
I think the road to success in 2025, and what I am planing for my game franchise as a budding Indie Developer, is to get online and develop your community first. Give them a game within your ability to develop that they are interested in and excited to play (a simple entry into the survival genre for me), give them a roadmap, show frequent progress, and release playable demo builds. Basically grow your playerbase along with your game or game franchise, listen to your fans and don't let them down.
to a certain extent, if we can't choose our external circumstances and it is they that shape who we are, that define our personality, then we can't choose how to respond to them either, we will simply respond in the way that those initial external circumstances have taught us to behave. does that make sense? furthermore, if we could choose our external circumstances, what would dictate those choices? there must always be some initial world, with rules, so that we can create a mental model and understand which personality is best adapted to guarantee survival in that world, we can't simply exist outside the universe and have the ability to decide our external circumstances I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough, I myself am trying to understand if what I'm saying makes sense
I like the interview a lot but something that other podcasters do that is really missing here is they stay quiet when the interviewee is talking like I understand that's not natural conversation but do it post or something because its really jarring to listen to and just hear every 30 seconds "right"/"yeah". Please keep doing what you're doing but just some honest feedback. Questions are great and again great interview and honestly it didn't happen that frequently
13:28 the idea of a blue and red ocean comes down to doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. If no one else is doing the gameplay like you do it, no one else is doing camera changes and no else is adapting the gameplay like you, then you are doing a blue ocean strategy! In the end a good game is a polished (and addictive) game hook. So good you can’t put it down, the effects the lighting the cinematic camera changes etc all of it contribute to immersive gameplay and you can’t help and say “yes I’m the greatest! Yes that was a great goal, yes that was a great dragon punch!” So, establish a game hook and polish it: add particles, add cam changes, add sound and visual response to your button actions, etc! Only you know how you would want the game to play, it also takes a lot of time and effort to do all of this!! So polish polish polish !! Until you polished it into a diamond!! 💎💯💯💯
nah if the market is overheated, then the amount of supply goes way beyond people’s ability to pay attention even if your game stands out in terms of gameplay have you ever been in like a super gigantic store, you just completely ignore massive amounts of things and you just buy things from the list
I appreciate his perspective, and I really hope this doesn't sound harsh at all. But I'm seeing a pattern with these videos with certain people. Many who have had a hit and just don't have it in them to get to that same creative space they were in to make another one, and have trouble adapting to industry changes. Sometimes new technology also. This is an insanely hard thing to do technically, but also you have to mix that with a creative mindset that appeals to others, doing that over and over again is a monumental task. With that said, the space may be getting more competitive, but I still don't see many games that I would consider great products not doing well. Mullet Madjack, Animal Well, and many others I could list are showing where our heads should be at when developing a game. You really need something unique these days, customers are rewarding creativity more than they ever have before.
i dont think you really need to be that unique these days just put out a fun game thats not a buggy mess as thats "unique these days" lol also this guy has a pretty big option on game engine's like unity and unreal but hasnt used them for 20 years. I havnt used unity but worked in unreal for the last 3 years and love it, i proto type in blueprints which compiles instantly and then i move the heavy functions to C++ and its pretty quick to work with and can look great. Some people say UE5 is unoptimized but most just dont know how to get the most out of the engine and because theres many ue5 games that run like shit but thats not ue's fault its on the devs. look at the finals its not my cup of tea but the game runs really well end looks great
Since watching the hl2 documentary that just came out - it's startling how much they talk about feedback and play testing, like it's something that doesn't come up in conversation nearly enough for current game devs, but its so obviously necessary for building a good game
I work with Unreal Engine all the time. As cool as the engine is, it’s not unusual for me to spend several hours every week just waiting for things to load/compile. It can definitely be very frustrating.
I've had massive respect for Mr. Blow since I played The Witness (one of my favorite games) and learned about the creative process of its development. Unlike a lot of people, I guess, I have never played Braid despite hearing so much about it (it's not really my genre of game). Whereas 'that realization moment' in The Witness truly was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced in a video game. On top of the game being so gorgeously crafted. Despite a ton of people hating on Jonathan as a pretentious snob, I think he has proven he has the actual intelligence to back it up. Haters always gonna hate.
You should check out Braid man, it’s closer to the Witness than it sounds like you’re assuming. The new anniversary edition is really cheap right now and has a ton of developer commentary. And oodles of a-ha moments!
This was a great conversation, and it hit close to home for me as a solo dev because I could really relate about the stress of working on a project for so long only to see it drift into the void so-to-speak. I worked on my game for almost 4 years and poured my heart and soul into it, so I'm proud of what I made even it wasn't a financial success, so I agree with Jon's philosophy regarding working on something you're proud of first and foremost. Also I think your strategy for 2025 makes a lot of sense, and I'll probably be leaning in that direction too. Thanks for the great interview and good luck with 2025!
Excellent conversation! I love hearing what Jon has to say and I really enjoy your conversation style Thomas ☺ If I could give one small bit of unsolicited advice, I'd keep the focus on Jon whenever you do something like move the mic or say "yeah", rather than making a cut to you. I find the constant cutting slightly nauseating 😂otherwise loved the show!
Industries evolve and platforms evolve. I for one am not seeing the hardship. My little Meta Quest game I have been working on for the past 2 years is starting to do well. I am getting a couple grand a month and my game is still in early access not even fully released. Mainly because standalone VR is a new emerging market and competition is less. Just takes a creative mind to adapt to emerging new technologies.
Great interview! But some feedback regarding the audio. There's a lot of low frequency rumbles that are distracting when listening with good speakers. For example at 27:30 but it happens many times. You should put a high pass filter on the audio to get rid of all that.
You may think the interview was a little ankward and it was. But it was GREAT and that's because you two are really different types of dev, it was amazing to see the intersection of the two places you are coming from. More alike devs could have had more feeling at times but would have been far less nuanced. Thanks Thomas
100% agree with the idea that development is getting harder as the times goes by. In all areas, with all the patterns, articles, "optimization"...This podecast is one of the best of the series! Thanks!
1:31:44 I really like what Subset games did with FTL, which is they pushed an update for the game in which an advert for their new game was shown, which is how I found out they had a new game and then I bought it. But it requires you already own a popular title on the platform.
I think Jon Blow's plan to release his next game is to package up the full game with the JAI compiler and the source of the game as real example of how to use it. So he'll sell both to the people that want the next J Blow game, AND he'll sell to developers that want JAI with full example. Which will be quite a feat, as no one's been able to sell significant numbers of a compiler commercially for decades.
I can't imagine myself being able to write proper code in the whirlwinds of an open office environment. Full remote or nothing. I never ever want to commute to an office ever again.
Never expected this conversation to happen. Cool talk! Would love to see more industry veterans, perhaps even older devs like Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.
With what was said about hiring before hand and is a waste of money, but it scales really well, once you have broken that level, and Jon hit some keys points. Understanding that the first half is done by x number of key people, writers, designers etc, then the others will start being more involved, so if you have a timeline of what each person does on a project, you will see overlaps and clear "non overlaps" So when the artists are coming on board and doing all the final art work, the writers will be not working on it, but if they are now starting the next project, it can keep leap frogging and everyone is busy at the same time, but not on the same project. and this is where it becomes cost effective with time, money and knowing the people. If you area small and waiting for your one project to wrap up, and then wait to start a new project, then contractors / part time hires will be so much more cost effective.
I think i understand where Jonathan is coming from. because of all the game making tool we have available its easier than ever to start making a game. but because of how far games have come. the standard of what a game should be has risen so high that it has become unreachable for most.
The thing that's likely killing your compile time in Unity is the domain reload (clearing of all statics). Unity has to do that because your C# code can execute both in edit time and in game runtime. You don't want any static variables to persist between these contexts, and certainly not between game runtime sessions. You can actually turn off the domain reload if you don't use static variables, or are very careful to reset any when the game starts or stops. It reduces the recompile time significantly, and the time it takes to enter and exit play mode. It's makes such a big difference that I would argue you can't realistically make a large game in Unity without switching it off and managing any statics yourself.
It was sad to watch the "ADHD version of Henry Cavill" being distracted the whole time, playing with the microphone, and finally having to go pee. Anyway, thanks for this interview. Listening to Mr. Blow was very interesting and comforting.
The constant fidgeting and interjections were a bit distracting, also not doing homework about Jon's language and new game project. But I can't say I didn't enjoy the discussion and ideas they exchanged.
"You can't just make a multiplayer shooter anymore" Well... Battlebit remastered made tens of millions last year despite being a really, really low budget indie game. I would say it is vastly superior to the latest Battlefield game.
After 8 years of development, being a hit lead to immediate six-figure server bills for that tiny team, the game is still listed as early access and they haven’t posted an update in the last 11 months. Most social media chatter about it now are people saying it’s been abandoned. Success isn’t simple
@@GreatistheWorld Yeah, I'm aware. Look, abandoning the game still in development is a really dck move, but to be honest, I had my bang for my buck, so fk them, I'm okay with it. On the other hand, EA releasing BFV in a very early beta stage and calling it 1.0 I am not okay with. Then once they brought the game to an actual 1.0 state, they abandoned it, cut the promised content. And the newest BF game is just pure trash. BF1 was great though.
Fantastic interview! Been really enjoying them recently, great guests! Keep it up, one day I'll start making a game again and these are so full of invaluable information!
the guy on the right is visibly anxious, doing this nervous laughter and trying to be as agreeable as possible. I guess its understandable but i wish it was just jon
Speaking as an ex-dev... It's infinitely easier to get started these days. You can literally produce a smallish game in a week, maybe a few days. It probably won't be great, but you can get results, really quickly. You can get prototypes made within a day. But making a *good* game remains the real challenge. And even if you do make a good game, there's zero guarantee it will ever sell. The market is utterly saturated. Steam is filled with gems that don't make any money. Devs are giving their games away for free for "exposure". You need a good product, good marketing and LUCK. LUCK is grossly underrated in game development. The reality is that the market is fickle, and you need to be very, very lucky to make a hit.
Wow thank you for this! As a new comer to the industry this helped me immensely - especially that veterans are also facing some of the same challenges us new comers face. At least I'm not alone 😉🙏
Damn Thomas got the legend himself on the show, must have been hard. Game Dev industry indeed looking dire, I'd say current environment favors good story-tellers and artists whereas before it'd favor technical skills and programmers. It's still tough for all though.
Jon speaks very confidently and is very knowledgable and opinionated, but is he really the right guy to ask? He's in such a unique position due to his fame and his financial situation, that his perspective isnt really representative of what it really takes to make an indie game today. Bring me on, instead, I'm a 10 year indie dev who's struggling to make it as Winterpixel Games now. I can tell you what it's really like to grind with no name recognition like Blow.
Jon is talking nonsense about smooth framerate though. Just code for vsync with interpolation (especially straight forward in a tradition double buffer setup) and you will get smooth framerate on any tv as long as performance can keep up.
I understand Jonathan's concerns regarding the culture in the industry around utilising bloated game engines, but it's difficult to blame modern devs for this culture when these game engines are the industry standard and something that you essentially need to know to even think about getting employed within the industry.
Interesting interview. It felt like you were really impatient the entire time though and just trying to get to the part where you prove a point to him that its easy to make games now, when the reality is much more nuanced
well I started with unity years ago an left the game dev for a few years and when I came back this year to Unity it was even heavier at loading and stuff and it was more clunky. But I tried Godot (which I wanted to use for a while before) and I just loved it. The design descitsions, the loading time, the compiling time, everything is much better.
the "building a brand" is kind of tricky especially for Indies where many indies want to go off and make something different from the thing they made before, too where those people who got the previous game might not be interested in the next game because it is too different. Like for Super Giant Bastion was seen as an Action adventure almost brawler game, but then Pyier was seen as a sports game, so people who really like Bastion for the Action almost brawler combat would be like "what is this soccer + basketball game"; then Hades would be seen as a return to form. with Jonathan's games people might not have seen Braid as a puzzle game out right, so when The Witness rolled around it would have been too divergent, and I real feel that players are much more sensitive to Genre and mechanics then they are too "it was made by X" there are players that will jump at "it was made by X" but even those would be re-enforced by the genre and mechanics similarities. on the Statement about "advertising another game on the news feed of Steam" the only limitation is that the game must be available on the platform, and you must have some association with it, so you could advertise through your game's news feed (which will show up in the user's library) about a new game you have made, but you can't advertise like an Activision game.
![Shader Basics, Blending & Textures • Shaders for Game Devs [Part 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kfM-yu0iQBk/mqdefault.jpg)
Can we give a round of applause emojis for Jonathan?
► Follow Jonathan's new game on Twitter: x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1854276627305283874
► Get 50% off Full Time Game Dev during the Black Friday sale: www.fulltimegamedev.com/full-time-game-black-friday
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Jonathan is my hero! Which makes you my hero by proxy! Thanks for all your great work Thomas
Hi! There's this upcoming platfom called Gamearly which goal is to help game developers fund their game thanks to the players. Have a look to it, it might be a game changer for developers in a close future.
I looked up JB's twitter images and wow that's a pain to look through. I found the easiest way to find them was to look at his media posts, and of the five polished images from Nov 6, and Sep 12, I think this post picked one of the least interesting. The others were much more atmospheric.
Bidenomics.
I've never seen jon blow in such high quality before 😂😂
haha
I like your pfp
So your solution is that you, as an indie US developer, came first and grew, and now it's the time to shut the door for other developers? That's a very nice, typical US act! I think in response, other countries should ban Steam from selling in their countries and open their local stores!
He switched to Vulkan for this stream so now he can handle higher res textures
It's run on 4090 with dlss with 4k resolution. of course you get the highest quality there to be.
the thing that Jonathan was talking about at 1:28:15 is something I was thinking this entire interview. Coming from a music background, gaming is going through a similar shift that music did in the 2000s into the 2010s. Listening to the "indie" artists (not the genre, just self produced and published) talk about their experience, the thing I hear echoed the most is, back in the day it was 1 million fans for 1 band, but today it's 1 million bands for 1 fan. All you really need to survive as a small creator is around 1 thousand people who like your stuff and want to show you support, then you'll be able todo what you like. The concept of what is "successful" has shifted dramatically, and too many people are trying to chase an idea of success that's 10-20 years out of date at this point.
Ease of access to tools (game dev, marketing, and funding) has created a type of market saturation that just doesn't allow for the huge hits to happen at the same rate that they used to. Its not a BAD thing, I think it's actually the proper evolution and healthy for both consumers and creators alike. It's the playing field getting balanced in a way that lets more people do these types of things as more than just a hobby.
Thomas is just upset because he is all about getting financial backing. Your points are spot on.
Jonathan Blow has a real knack for taking complex, technical things and putting them into plain English, in an interesting and, sometimes, even entertaining way.
Very rare gift, I find.
When J. Blow talks, I listen.
When he talks, I kneel
If Jonathan Blow thinks, I agree.🤔✅ If Jonathan Blow speaks, I listen.🗣👂 If Jonathan Blow orders, I obey. If Jonathan Blow has a million fans, I am one of them.🙋🙋♂🙋 If Jonathan Blow has one fan, I am that fan 🙋 If Jonathan Blow has 0 fans, I’m dead😵❌
Same.
The man has correctly predicted many tech events years ahead of time, so smart thing to do I think.
When J Blow blows, I whistle
Thomas just visibly dying from stress.
Feeling this.
dude was like a student who has exam but never studied for. fumbled his way till the end of stream.
I don’t get this, the interview is good.
Edit: Ah I see, he was talking about stress half-way through.
It’s all the unfinished things, external factors, sustaining his company and its team and so many more things, man …. It just weighs heavy… sleepless nights, I tell ya. It’s hard.
I really hope the best for him, love his content. If your reading this Thomas, keep your head up and ship twisted tower!
it seems like when jonathan talks about what his motivation is to make a game, thomas cant quiet understand, because they are very different at that point.
thomas makes a game because he wants to earn money.
jonathan makes a game because wants to make a game.
What I'm getting from Jon's comments about the difficulty of making games is exactly what matches how I feel right now: it's easier than ever to get started, but it's harder than ever to finish and stand out. There's so many more features and so much more polish that you need that you could simply get away with not having back in the day. Optimizing is a nightmare too when the code behind it is a mess; Unreal's source code is a trainwreck, but it's got the tools I need to ship a game, so... oh well.
yeah, add in the complexity of today's low end platform development or cross platform.
I'm an XR developer and it's been an ongoing nightmare since 2017. The software stack just keeps getting more and more jank.
Meanwhile Epic is chasing the film and automotive industry instead of focusing on it's game developer audience.
Haven't had a stable engine version since well before UE5.
Its so easy to get started and yet the biggest question new devs have is still "which engine do I use?" People who are interested in game dev still aren't really starting game dev.
Yah, you can go UE 4 Indy but anything ue5 is a trap. Yes, you can make really cool looking environment or animations but once you dive into any systems that isn’t built specifically for Fortnite, you need to do some engine rewrites beyond the scope of an Indy project.
@pizzaman11 you need to do that in UE4 as well. Also, even with the UE4.27 plus branch, you're going to have issues If you're targeting anything other than PC / steam.
@@lifeartstudios6207 yah it’s not quite as bad though because you don’t have the overhead of the larger UE5 systems sinking framerate which gives you the space to hand wave a few things as good enough.
As a programmer I completely relate on what he said about wanting to make your own engine... a programmer wants to program like a singer wants to sing and painter wants to paint.
I've been waiting for this cross over for years!
Me2
Amazing to see this GOAT on the podcast
This industry BLOWS! Great guest, looking forward to these insights.
It doesn't help that the interviewee is Jonathan BLOW
Thats the joke lol @@facelessanon
thanks both! loved hearing Jonathan's approach to the challenges of gamedev these days. Thomas I really appreciate you creating this, but in the future please refrain from grabbing my head (the mic) to re-position it each time before you speak... or at least reduce/edit that out of the audio if some adjustment throughout is unavoidable. Video quality here is sooo high, but the audio feels like a kid is kicking the back of my airplane seat every couple minutes lmao
truuuuuue
Thomas - What you discussed with "Making a game where you can get paid to make it" and "Building an audience to activate for funding" is *exactly* what my studio is trying to do right now. We have a harder time because we are a team, but our entire social media strategy is around getting patreon subscribers so that we can be self reliant and liquid even if we find publishing etc. Ideally we wouldn't have to do layoffs if a game doesn't sell incredibly well or we get a publisher and then finish the project we got that funding for because that money is supplement to the audience funding.
Really funny to see these two minds together on one video - I see Thomas as this passionate, emotional artist contrasted with this analytical mastermind Jonathan Blow. They kind of care about different things but they're attempting to meet each other within this space between them. Kind of great.
Beautifully said, I agree.
"passionate, emotional artist" definetly applies to Jon too, like more than to a lot of other game devs. I didnt watch this video yet, but ive watched tons of other stuff with Jon and i can definetly say so. Thats literally why some people hate Jon, thats because he was really emotionally reacting to people critizing his games (though it was often really exaggerated by media and people). He really puts all his soul into his games and they mean very much to them, like he kinda tries to explore a meaning of life through them
Jonathan Blow is one of the realest artists out there. I don't mean to compare or anything, but I see him as even more of an artist in the truest sense of the word than Thomas.
Tom is more of a manager/marketer I think. If he was in a company he would be a producer.
RUclips throws so much stuff at me that just wastes my time. Your conversation and the video is, what this RUclips thing should be all about. You are helping us and hopefully yourself with it. Couldn’t be more win-win than this, man. Thanks :)
I want to just take a moment to push back further than the assessment of Thomas that "it's easier to make a game because the engine will just do those things for you." Jon was nice about it, but it needs to be understand that it's unequivocally not true. A game engine obviously solves some problems, but you also inherit all the problems of that engine. Also, given how complex the tool you are using is, most of the time you also cannot feasibly solve those problems, even if you were using your own technology a solution would be feasible. In Unity's case, you can't even access the source code to hope to fix any of it. I have personally ran into this problem of waiting years on a fix in Unity for something, which is why I no longer use it or even consider it a reasonable tool for game dev unless you are a large studio that can pay for source access.
Jon brought up the problem of frame rate independence. "Just let the engine solve it for you." Unity can't solve it for you. Unity will do frame rate independence through fixed update. That is a solution with many drawbacks (go look at how it actually ensures you get a fixed update) Also, once you understand how it works, you know you cannot take user input there. Well, if you can't take input from the user in the fixed update, you run right back into the problem Jon was talking about. Also, even if you do use fixed update, you run into the other problem Jon talked about. By fixing the update interval, you are basically disallowing higher frame rate refreshes from occurring. How do you solve this? Interpolation? That's an extremely non trivial solution.
Unreal is the same way. AAA studios inherit it's shader combinatorics issues. That leads to in game stutters. Do you really think you are going to fix the massive beast that is Unreal's material system just because you have source access, when even AAA studios and Epic themselves have yet to do so? Yes, you can reasonably architect YOUR system to not have the problem, but can you do it for the multi million line codebase of Unreal? How about trying to get a temporally stable frame in Unreal? Very difficult task, given how they develop the renderer, it's actually borderline impossible.
There is no magic solution to these problems and a game engine existing is not some panacea that is going to solve all of these things and make them easier. You can choose to ignore all of these problems and say they don't matter, but then we run right back into the problem of mass produced subpar quality products. It is easier to ever to make something with reckless abandon, but the entire point here is that that is in and of itself a major issue.
lol its not that hard, you do input in Update() but the action itself in FixedUpdate() you can use a boolean like ButtonPressed or something.
And the rigidbodies have interpolation built into the component, you can choose interpolate, extrapolate, etc
Sure its something you have to learn but its not like some super complex issue.
The fact is unity DOES out of the box provide you with Update() and FixedUpdate(),
And if you're not making a unity physics dependent game then its even simpler.
very well said!
I don't think the problem Jon was talking about has to do with Frame Rate Independence (FixedUpdate vs Update), but rather with Frame Pacing. As far as I understand Alen Ladavac's presentation that Jon was referring to, the issue is that graphics APIs do not expose a way to measure the display timing of a frame. Game engines can measure the render time, but on desktop OSes, the frame is actually displayed at a later time after the OS has finished composing. This introduces microstutters that you can't account for, regardless if you use a fixed step or not. This issue cannot be solved via a custom engine either (Croteam is using their own engine for the Talos Principle).
Grateful to hear Jonathan. It always have an impact in me because he is humble and realistic.
Regarding AI, I feel like its effectiveness is inversely proportional to knowing what you want: the more you have a specific vision of something, the less likely it's going to be any use creating it. If, on the other hand, you have the absolute vaguest idea of something, you might actually get a useful result out of it.
Yeah, it's the perfect solution if anything will do. :)
Thanks. I don’t understand why you have the camera back focusing on you when J is talking and you are looking away. Great work, would appreciate if you can get a director/editor.
He is right about the software declining. Around 2017 we worked on a game, and we updated the Unity version. Turns out, it didn't compile at all! You press "Build" and literally nothing happens, like the button was disconnected from a code it should execute. At first we were pulling our hair out if the project went to shit, then when we found nothing obviously wrong, tried the other projects, and also different machines (we had an iMac and Windows machines). Then my friend contacted Unity via support chat, and they were pretty responsive and chatty, again pointing us that our project might have an error, but we insisted that they have a major bug. It lasted until the guy tested that Unity version himself. At that point the support stopped responding, he didn't even say "hey, you guys were right, we'll look into it", nothing. I can only imagine a panic mode they went into when they realized that the game engine can't produce an executable lol. Tomorrow the patch was out fixing the issue :)
I think the road to success in 2025, and what I am planing for my game franchise as a budding Indie Developer, is to get online and develop your community first. Give them a game within your ability to develop that they are interested in and excited to play (a simple entry into the survival genre for me), give them a roadmap, show frequent progress, and release playable demo builds. Basically grow your playerbase along with your game or game franchise, listen to your fans and don't let them down.
“We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” - Epictetus
to a certain extent, if we can't choose our external circumstances and it is they that shape who we are, that define our personality, then we can't choose how to respond to them either, we will simply respond in the way that those initial external circumstances have taught us to behave. does that make sense?
furthermore, if we could choose our external circumstances, what would dictate those choices? there must always be some initial world, with rules, so that we can create a mental model and understand which personality is best adapted to guarantee survival in that world, we can't simply exist outside the universe and have the ability to decide our external circumstances
I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough, I myself am trying to understand if what I'm saying makes sense
@@I24FFA theres mos def a discussion to be had on this
I like listening to Jonathan Blow.
I don't like listening to the host adjusting the mic every few seconds.
It might not have been intentional but I like the long format interview. Good job, thanks for all these good interviews.
I like the interview a lot but something that other podcasters do that is really missing here is they stay quiet when the interviewee is talking like I understand that's not natural conversation but do it post or something because its really jarring to listen to and just hear every 30 seconds "right"/"yeah". Please keep doing what you're doing but just some honest feedback.
Questions are great and again great interview and honestly it didn't happen that frequently
13:28 the idea of a blue and red ocean comes down to doing the same thing that everyone else is doing.
If no one else is doing the gameplay like you do it, no one else is doing camera changes and no else is adapting the gameplay like you, then you are doing a blue ocean strategy!
In the end a good game is a polished (and addictive) game hook. So good you can’t put it down, the effects the lighting the cinematic camera changes etc all of it contribute to immersive gameplay and you can’t help and say “yes I’m the greatest! Yes that was a great goal, yes that was a great dragon punch!”
So, establish a game hook and polish it: add particles, add cam changes, add sound and visual response to your button actions, etc!
Only you know how you would want the game to play, it also takes a lot of time and effort to do all of this!!
So polish polish polish !! Until you polished it into a diamond!! 💎💯💯💯
nah
if the market is overheated, then the amount of supply goes way beyond people’s ability to pay attention
even if your game stands out in terms of gameplay
have you ever been in like a super gigantic store, you just completely ignore massive amounts of things and you just buy things from the list
Listened to this while crocheting and I feel like I learned so much! Thank you!
I'm amused by the unintended comedic timing whenever the camera, triggered by audio, pans over to Thomas as he adjusts his seat or stuff like that 😅
I appreciate his perspective, and I really hope this doesn't sound harsh at all. But I'm seeing a pattern with these videos with certain people. Many who have had a hit and just don't have it in them to get to that same creative space they were in to make another one, and have trouble adapting to industry changes. Sometimes new technology also. This is an insanely hard thing to do technically, but also you have to mix that with a creative mindset that appeals to others, doing that over and over again is a monumental task.
With that said, the space may be getting more competitive, but I still don't see many games that I would consider great products not doing well. Mullet Madjack, Animal Well, and many others I could list are showing where our heads should be at when developing a game. You really need something unique these days, customers are rewarding creativity more than they ever have before.
i dont think you really need to be that unique these days just put out a fun game thats not a buggy mess as thats "unique these days" lol
also this guy has a pretty big option on game engine's like unity and unreal but hasnt used them for 20 years. I havnt used unity but worked in unreal for the last 3 years and love it, i proto type in blueprints which compiles instantly and then i move the heavy functions to C++ and its pretty quick to work with and can look great. Some people say UE5 is unoptimized but most just dont know how to get the most out of the engine and because theres many ue5 games that run like shit but thats not ue's fault its on the devs. look at the finals its not my cup of tea but the game runs really well end looks great
Since watching the hl2 documentary that just came out - it's startling how much they talk about feedback and play testing, like it's something that doesn't come up in conversation nearly enough for current game devs, but its so obviously necessary for building a good game
There's a HL2 documentary?
@@TheJeremyKentBGross ruclips.net/video/YCjNT9qGjh4/видео.html :O
@@TheJeremyKentBGross Valve has it on their channel
Whoa epic guest!
When Jonathan gives it to you, hold on to it. This is a game developer in an era where it's hard to be an indie game developer.
It has never been easier to be indie developer, the hardest part is there are sooo many damn indie games coming out you won't get noticed.
I work with Unreal Engine all the time. As cool as the engine is, it’s not unusual for me to spend several hours every week just waiting for things to load/compile. It can definitely be very frustrating.
I've had massive respect for Mr. Blow since I played The Witness (one of my favorite games) and learned about the creative process of its development. Unlike a lot of people, I guess, I have never played Braid despite hearing so much about it (it's not really my genre of game). Whereas 'that realization moment' in The Witness truly was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced in a video game. On top of the game being so gorgeously crafted.
Despite a ton of people hating on Jonathan as a pretentious snob, I think he has proven he has the actual intelligence to back it up. Haters always gonna hate.
You should check out Braid man, it’s closer to the Witness than it sounds like you’re assuming. The new anniversary edition is really cheap right now and has a ton of developer commentary. And oodles of a-ha moments!
Braid also has that same insight moment, it's amazing.
The cuts to Thomas not talking and just listening/empathizing is crackin' me up. 1:06:24
Thank you, Thomas, for this interview and thank you Jonathan for sharing all your insights on the industry! ❤
w episode
Bro big fan!!! Am I first??
@@rapidstress2008yes
hope your cooking something new up
This was a great conversation, and it hit close to home for me as a solo dev because I could really relate about the stress of working on a project for so long only to see it drift into the void so-to-speak. I worked on my game for almost 4 years and poured my heart and soul into it, so I'm proud of what I made even it wasn't a financial success, so I agree with Jon's philosophy regarding working on something you're proud of first and foremost. Also I think your strategy for 2025 makes a lot of sense, and I'll probably be leaning in that direction too. Thanks for the great interview and good luck with 2025!
Excellent conversation! I love hearing what Jon has to say and I really enjoy your conversation style Thomas ☺
If I could give one small bit of unsolicited advice, I'd keep the focus on Jon whenever you do something like move the mic or say "yeah", rather than making a cut to you. I find the constant cutting slightly nauseating 😂otherwise loved the show!
Didn't see this coming. Blow with Brush
Great episode! Always excited to see a new Jon Blow interview.
Industries evolve and platforms evolve. I for one am not seeing the hardship. My little Meta Quest game I have been working on for the past 2 years is starting to do well. I am getting a couple grand a month and my game is still in early access not even fully released. Mainly because standalone VR is a new emerging market and competition is less. Just takes a creative mind to adapt to emerging new technologies.
What’s your game?
@ Glider Sim on Meta Quest and Steam
yes VR is different
Wow, gem after gem - what a conversation! You guys are giants. Thank you!
Bro. Stop touching the mic. How was this video released with all the noise in it
Jonathan Blow is the one that most inspires me to write quelity code.
*unexpected, but greatly appreciated
Looking forward to this one
It feels like Tom is trying to insert himself while Jonathan talks and then he just gives up
Great interview!
But some feedback regarding the audio. There's a lot of low frequency rumbles that are distracting when listening with good speakers.
For example at 27:30 but it happens many times.
You should put a high pass filter on the audio to get rid of all that.
6:33 THE WITNESS SPOILERS ALERT, THE WITNESS SPOILERS ALERT
The spoiler ends at 7:01
so unnecessary too!
Bump
Why did he do that?! RUDE!!
it's just gameplay footage of literally 1 puzzle
Yoooo, totally awesome surprise to see Jonathan Blow on the podcast!
You may think the interview was a little ankward and it was.
But it was GREAT and that's because you two are really different types of dev, it was amazing to see the intersection of the two places you are coming from. More alike devs could have had more feeling at times but would have been far less nuanced.
Thanks Thomas
The games as a business perspective is rare to see on yt and really needed
100% agree with the idea that development is getting harder as the times goes by. In all areas, with all the patterns, articles, "optimization"...This podecast is one of the best of the series! Thanks!
1:31:44 I really like what Subset games did with FTL, which is they pushed an update for the game in which an advert for their new game was shown, which is how I found out they had a new game and then I bought it. But it requires you already own a popular title on the platform.
never knew Dave Bautista was an indie dev
Dave Blowtista
dave now looks thinner than JB
1.6 hours of Jonathan Blow 🦅🔥
Wow I was literally listening to a Jonathan Blow interview as I saw this in my homepage.
Great Interview. I too went down the "write your own engine" path, couldn't be any happier. Did it pay off? Well, time will tell 😀
It's a really cool skill to have. You'll be able to make games and also work on cool low level stuff which not many people do
Jon: *coughs up a lung*
Jon: Maybe we can cut that out
Thomas: No, that's okay
Why, Thomas? Look after your guests.
Lol
fugg it
Cut out a lung? Seems a bit extreme
Thank you so much for bringing Jonathan on! Loved the episode!
You bet :)
I think Jon Blow's plan to release his next game is to package up the full game with the JAI compiler and the source of the game as real example of how to use it. So he'll sell both to the people that want the next J Blow game, AND he'll sell to developers that want JAI with full example. Which will be quite a feat, as no one's been able to sell significant numbers of a compiler commercially for decades.
I’m a mobile app developer and we work fully remote and we are highly efficient. Saves the company tons of money
Does your company need any C# Unity developers?
I can't imagine myself being able to write proper code in the whirlwinds of an open office environment. Full remote or nothing. I never ever want to commute to an office ever again.
Never expected this conversation to happen. Cool talk! Would love to see more industry veterans, perhaps even older devs like Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.
beautiful interview, thanks for this
The moment when you realize that Jonathan Blow is basically the reference Quantic dreams used for designing Markus from Detroit Become Human.
With what was said about hiring before hand and is a waste of money, but it scales really well, once you have broken that level, and Jon hit some keys points.
Understanding that the first half is done by x number of key people, writers, designers etc, then the others will start being more involved, so if you have a timeline of what each person does on a project, you will see overlaps and clear "non overlaps"
So when the artists are coming on board and doing all the final art work, the writers will be not working on it, but if they are now starting the next project, it can keep leap frogging and everyone is busy at the same time, but not on the same project. and this is where it becomes cost effective with time, money and knowing the people.
If you area small and waiting for your one project to wrap up, and then wait to start a new project, then contractors / part time hires will be so much more cost effective.
I think i understand where Jonathan is coming from. because of all the game making tool we have available its easier than ever to start making a game. but because of how far games have come. the standard of what a game should be has risen so high that it has become unreachable for most.
Got Blow J on the pod? Hell yeah
The thing that's likely killing your compile time in Unity is the domain reload (clearing of all statics). Unity has to do that because your C# code can execute both in edit time and in game runtime. You don't want any static variables to persist between these contexts, and certainly not between game runtime sessions. You can actually turn off the domain reload if you don't use static variables, or are very careful to reset any when the game starts or stops. It reduces the recompile time significantly, and the time it takes to enter and exit play mode. It's makes such a big difference that I would argue you can't realistically make a large game in Unity without switching it off and managing any statics yourself.
Excellent interview, thanks Thomas for sharing it! ☺️
Epic. You need to have him back, maybe with another interesting guest like a 3 way conversation.
It was sad to watch the "ADHD version of Henry Cavill" being distracted the whole time, playing with the microphone, and finally having to go pee. Anyway, thanks for this interview. Listening to Mr. Blow was very interesting and comforting.
The constant fidgeting and interjections were a bit distracting, also not doing homework about Jon's language and new game project. But I can't say I didn't enjoy the discussion and ideas they exchanged.
can you do split-screen for next interviews? it's more effective when we have the 2 sides at the same time
17:37 almost done with the next game. And he said that he would likely release Jai alongside it. Is the decade of waiting finally over?
"You can't just make a multiplayer shooter anymore"
Well... Battlebit remastered made tens of millions last year despite being a really, really low budget indie game. I would say it is vastly superior to the latest Battlefield game.
After 8 years of development, being a hit lead to immediate six-figure server bills for that tiny team, the game is still listed as early access and they haven’t posted an update in the last 11 months. Most social media chatter about it now are people saying it’s been abandoned. Success isn’t simple
@@GreatistheWorld
Yeah, I'm aware. Look, abandoning the game still in development is a really dck move, but to be honest, I had my bang for my buck, so fk them, I'm okay with it.
On the other hand, EA releasing BFV in a very early beta stage and calling it 1.0 I am not okay with. Then once they brought the game to an actual 1.0 state, they abandoned it, cut the promised content. And the newest BF game is just pure trash.
BF1 was great though.
Fantastic interview! Been really enjoying them recently, great guests! Keep it up, one day I'll start making a game again and these are so full of invaluable information!
Thomas and Jonathon Blow was not on my 2024 bingo card lol
Oh boy new comfy rant just dropped
3:40 wow, camera, chill out 😄
the guy on the right is visibly anxious, doing this nervous laughter and trying to be as agreeable as possible. I guess its understandable but i wish it was just jon
Speaking as an ex-dev...
It's infinitely easier to get started these days.
You can literally produce a smallish game in a week, maybe a few days. It probably won't be great, but you can get results, really quickly.
You can get prototypes made within a day.
But making a *good* game remains the real challenge.
And even if you do make a good game, there's zero guarantee it will ever sell.
The market is utterly saturated. Steam is filled with gems that don't make any money. Devs are giving their games away for free for "exposure".
You need a good product, good marketing and LUCK.
LUCK is grossly underrated in game development. The reality is that the market is fickle, and you need to be very, very lucky to make a hit.
This is an instant watch!
Great interview! Good we see more some day
Amazing content! Would love to see a video talking about building an audience with youtube and stuff if haven’t already.
Wow thank you for this! As a new comer to the industry this helped me immensely - especially that veterans are also facing some of the same challenges us new comers face. At least I'm not alone 😉🙏
Such an awesome guest and great episode - mant thanks fir sharing
Damn Thomas got the legend himself on the show, must have been hard. Game Dev industry indeed looking dire, I'd say current environment favors good story-tellers and artists whereas before it'd favor technical skills and programmers. It's still tough for all though.
Jon speaks very confidently and is very knowledgable and opinionated, but is he really the right guy to ask? He's in such a unique position due to his fame and his financial situation, that his perspective isnt really representative of what it really takes to make an indie game today. Bring me on, instead, I'm a 10 year indie dev who's struggling to make it as Winterpixel Games now. I can tell you what it's really like to grind with no name recognition like Blow.
The referred article is "The Elusive Frame Timing" by Alen Ladavac
Thomas can you try to interview developer 'localthunk', he made Balatro. Would be really interested to hear you 2 talk. Thanks!
Jon is talking nonsense about smooth framerate though. Just code for vsync with interpolation (especially straight forward in a tradition double buffer setup) and you will get smooth framerate on any tv as long as performance can keep up.
I watched the whole video and man at least is not just me, the market is super competitive and its super hard to make a game nowadays.
I understand Jonathan's concerns regarding the culture in the industry around utilising bloated game engines, but it's difficult to blame modern devs for this culture when these game engines are the industry standard and something that you essentially need to know to even think about getting employed within the industry.
Interesting interview. It felt like you were really impatient the entire time though and just trying to get to the part where you prove a point to him that its easy to make games now, when the reality is much more nuanced
Really great interview!
Steam please take notes @1:33:30 give options to opt in to show player pc spec
$20 in 1980 is equivalent to about $76.62 today 2:44
well I started with unity years ago an left the game dev for a few years and when I came back this year to Unity it was even heavier at loading and stuff and it was more clunky. But I tried Godot (which I wanted to use for a while before) and I just loved it. The design descitsions, the loading time, the compiling time, everything is much better.
Woah this is awesome! Very unexpected, really looking forward to this one.
The low quality churn problem is why I am on v3 of my game
the "building a brand" is kind of tricky especially for Indies where many indies want to go off and make something different from the thing they made before, too where those people who got the previous game might not be interested in the next game because it is too different. Like for Super Giant Bastion was seen as an Action adventure almost brawler game, but then Pyier was seen as a sports game, so people who really like Bastion for the Action almost brawler combat would be like "what is this soccer + basketball game"; then Hades would be seen as a return to form.
with Jonathan's games people might not have seen Braid as a puzzle game out right, so when The Witness rolled around it would have been too divergent, and I real feel that players are much more sensitive to Genre and mechanics then they are too "it was made by X" there are players that will jump at "it was made by X" but even those would be re-enforced by the genre and mechanics similarities.
on the Statement about "advertising another game on the news feed of Steam" the only limitation is that the game must be available on the platform, and you must have some association with it, so you could advertise through your game's news feed (which will show up in the user's library) about a new game you have made, but you can't advertise like an Activision game.