163: Jonathan Blow's Shifting Intention

[Allen Varney]

Jonathan Blow's Shifting Intention

"On August 6, 2008, after over three years of work, independent game designer Jonathan Blow launched the puzzle platformer Braid on Xbox Live Arcade. Braid marks an inflection point in Blow's career, his first polished product as an indie; before, he had published only a few sketchy prototypes. Some players will eagerly assess how the game embodies the artistic principles Blow advocates. In contrast, a few bloggers, stung by his comments about the shady ethics of World of Warcraft, must secretly hope his game bombs.

"On that count, at least, they're too late. Whether Braid itself succeeds or fails commercially, it had already become famous before launch as a vehicle to highlight Blow's provocative and inspiring ideas."

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[sammyfreak]

The bloke does seem like an arse do me, but after just playing the demo I hail Braid as the best game ever made (or maybe Portals, I can't decide). Never before have I seen a title that furthers artistic ideas, expresses emotion and is fun in the same way.

His thoughts about MMO's are interesting and true to a degree, they are designed to be addictive because that earns them more money, but I think he takes his critisism a bit to far.

The game industry can learn from Mr Blow by playing his game, not by listening to him.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

He seems a bit arrogant yes, but his philosophy is sound and it's worth listening too, but should be taken with a grain of salt. It's sort of like Al Gore having an important message, even if he goes to far and is a bit of a hypocrate.

 

[dukeh016]

So, he doesn't think the game industry needs to create new games but he doesn't approve of alot(?) of the current games? Or, perhaps more accurately, he is just unhappy with the current thesis that drives most game design; interaction over entertainment. One could argue that theory is reflected in the title of this little publication.

While I do applaud his moxy, I think he may be sailing the wrong way in the storm. At best, he's going to make himself look valiant. At worse, hes going to sink the ship. Either way, he sure as hell isn't going to change which way the storm blows. If people didn't need the grind that WoW offers, they wouldn't play WoW. I can't really hold the designers responsible for identifying their largest customer base and catering to them. This is an industry, and any industry obeys the same law; profit. That doesn't mean that games can't be an artform, and that games shouldn't aspire to be so, but those games will always be more fringe than mainstream.

You could design a toaster that has flashy lights, an interactive toast-catching feature, and a "watch-while-it-toasts" window, but it probably would never sell that much. Why? Because people just want toast. And the mainstream gaming community just wants to escape. Still, a good article. Kudos.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Blow's philosophy of game design could work... so long as he doesn't forget that he's creating games and not art installations for the edification of future generations. It's all well and good to pooh-pooh the "grind" of MMOs today but people do play MMOs and are quite happy to grind, Skinner-boxing or no. Unless Blow takes that into account, and provides some substitute that satisifies this hunter-gatherer mode of play, he's not going to attract the players who seek that experience out.

I'm all for indie-designed games; it's great to have variety in the market. But I'm not terribly supportive of genre snobbery as it only hurts gaming as a whole.

-- Steve

 

[sammyfreak]

Guys, play Braid, seriously. It's the Pulp Fiction of gaming. You will understand what he is talking about when you do.

 

[dukeh016]

Those are the types of shoals we're headed for. Unless the industry develops a conscience, it'll very likely have one thrust upon it, and that's in none of our interests.

I would argue that the legislation is unavoidable. As things become "main-stream" they also come under examination. If it so happens that WoW does cause serious problems in some people's lives, perhaps WoW should be better governed. His response instead seems to be "we must head in a new direction, so that we can avoid such attention." That's great, but the industry won't follow. It would be like trying to stop gambling, or more fittingly alcohol consumption. The market follows the desire, and a capitalistic government will follow the market.

I don't know where this great fear of government intervention comes from. I'm not sure what experience, exactly, has inebriated the public conciousness with fear of government control. Perhaps we should fear speed limits and stop signs soon as well? If it was arguable that video games could never be dangerous, then sure, go crazy. But I don't think that the scientific opinion leans that direction, nor does my own experience. And if it is dangerous, then the only thing that will regulate it is the government. The market will never regulate itself because the market isn't in control. The consumer is.

 

[Kenshi_Ryden]

Sammyfreak is right in that we have to play Blows games and think, rather than just listen to the sounds that come out of his mouth. Braid is a fantastic game in terms of emotiveness as well as fun and its thought-provoking qualities. The only other games that have done that to me are Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

In regards to the Matthew Arnold joke, I was skimming Rasselas by Samuel Johnson the other night. I particularly like the joke about the lighthouse keeper who believes that because he is predicting where the weather will go, he is in fact controlling where the weather will go. I like it because Johnson was making a rather sharp satire about critics who think that what comes out of their mouth is controlling the medium's direction as opposed to just observing its fluctuations and problems.

The thing that irritates me about Blow is that he crosses that line sometimes. Still need to play Braid though...

 

[Thais]

There are some of us out here that don't want our games to be "art" or to be life-changing experiences. You know what I miss the most about the games that were around when I was a little kid? Fun. Dosen't matter to me how pretty it is, or how innovative it is, or how the designer wants it to change someone's life, or make them think or expose his personal (asshattish) philosophy...I want to have fun. I go home, and I turn on my PS2, simply so I can get over the feeling that I want to firebomb the houses of the people I deal with all fucking day. I don't want a game to be "important", I want it to be a game. When this discussion of "art above all" starts, consideration for people like me always seems to go right out the window (usually to the tune of "you're not real gamers!")

 

[Najos]

Yeah, games need to stay games. I mean, look what contemporary artists did to art!

 

[Echolocating]

I wish I could try this game out, but I don't have a 360. I read somewhere that Microsoft's exclusivity will eventually end and it will be released for other systems. I hope they figure out a way to bring it to the Wii.

 

[MorkFromOrk]

I think he speaks the truth about many things. Shareholders don't make anything but money (and whiney phone calls to the the board of directors complaining "where's my money?"), artists on the other hand have the ability to enrich our lives. Video games could be more artistic with compelling stories and gameplay but not if it means a shareholder might miss out on a new set of titanium golf clubs. Not to say we haven't had video games that are highly artistic, visionary, and emotionally moving just that compared to other forms of entertainment video games still have a lot of maturing to do. It's unfortunate that video games are so technology driven and subsequently expensive and time consuming to produce, otherwise they could really hold their own against artistic expression in film, music, art.

 

[UltraBlumpkin]

Braid is a great game, and it's fun to play the whole way through. I played WoW for a long time, but got really sick of it as the end-game portions were just constant grinds as your guild slowly pushed forward. It is quite annoying when you have to kill the same bosses and trash over and over each week to work on the next guy. Not exactly the kind of "fun" I expect from a game. I see what he's saying about it, and it does seem that the MMO's do get watered down to little grinds for meaningless items, but I think the sad thing is that many people just stick with their MMO because they have spent so much time with it.

(Maybe the same could be said of marriages as well?) =P

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The problem here is that Jonathan Blow and Roger Ebert seem to share a similar mindset- they want each and every release in their chosen field to be "different", to make us think and challenge our ways, to "change our lives" somehow.

The thing is, sometimes we just want loud explosions while we eat popcorn, you know? I like art in my entertainment, but I also like ENTERTAINMENT in my entertainment.

... or, in other words, what Thais said. That'll learn me to read.

 

[Nordstrom]

I'm all for games that attempt to say something, so no complaints here. We need all sorts of video games and we need all sorts of critics.

 

[Cousin_IT]

I think hes right on one thing. I cant think of any entertainment or art medium where the word "clone" is used so casually, often & derogitively to describe something. Theres nothing wrong with copying good ideas that have already been had; & while games do "copy" good ideas, they often seem to get vocally bemoaned by sections the community for doing so.

 

[Unholykrumpet]

I used to play WoW, and I agree with his criticisms of it. I was into it for a few months, then the repetitive "gather this 30% drop rate item 60 times from this mob of identical baddies" started to bug me. The expansion further turned me off, and yet when I have nothing to do over the summer I reactivate my account or just play on a friend's account for a few weeks, then remember that the game stopped being fun for valid reasons. It tells you that it's more fun now, that it's easier to hit level cap (which I've done twice...the /played on those characters make me want to break things), that there's more adventures, new quests that are fun, etc.
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I think I've probably spent more time thinking about Braid's message rather than playing the game. I think Blow is a brilliant, exciting indy developer, but his warnings are pointless. Change just isn't where the money is at right now. The money's in making more of the same with better graphics.

 

[Treffster]

I take exception to some of the comments posted here. Jonathon speaks forthrightly and very bluntly, and often people take his comments personally and become overly defensive. Personally, I feel they are completely missing the point.

There will always be pulpy games. There will always be summer blockbusters like Halo. Anybody who derides his views by saying "they like their games to be fun" to is adopting an extremely narrow view of the world. It's like saying "I like my movies to have action in them", and then taking that to mean the only movies that have any merit are Michael Bay movies.

The audience Blow is trying to reach are game developers, and his message is that developers have an opportunity to look beyond their genres and "stated customer expectations" and push the field. They have an opportunity to address this "cognitive dissonance" between mechanics and narative, once they identify it and understand how it affects the audience.

Everybody is full of praise for games which push genres or redefine gameplay rather than simply have prettier graphics, but when you ask ordinary audiences of what they want, you nearly always end up with a laundry-list of features culled from other games, with vague terms thrown in like "more focus on gameplay" or "better innovation". It's little wonder that so many games are simply new variations on familiar themes. But is this really want audiences want? If audiences knew what they wanted and were able to express it, why is Wii Sports so phenomonally successful? Or Brain Training?

There is a reason film or book critics and creators speak a completely different language to average movie goers. It is because they understand the medium and are able to identify what works or doesn't work in much greater detail than simply saying "That film sucked". And their message is important, because it allows other creators to learn from those lessons and apply it to their own work. In exactly the same way, the traditional gamer demographic are not in a position to help inform how to make games better. They simply don't have the critical framework to assess a game in the same way, and so simply phrase their feedback in terms they know: blanket statements and feature lists.

As both a software developer and game critic, I am keenly interested in what Blow is saying, because it helps me develop new viewpoints and frameworks to analyse both what I build and what I play. He may not always be right, and his examples may sometimes suck, but his point of view helps me become more critical (not negative, analytical if you prefer) and as a result, helps me develop my own skills. The fact that his game is so successful is just icing on the cake.