slurp slurp slurp
I met Jon Blow in early 2011, when my friend Tom Bissell—a journalist and author hired to help write the script for The Witness—invited me along to dinner one night when Blow was visiting Portland, Oregon. Knowing Blow’s outspoken reputation, I expected a sort of fire-breathing techie-Limbaugh, wreathed in nerd rage. Instead, when I entered Bissell’s condo, I saw an intensely serious-looking man performing a slow tai chi sequence in the living room. His face, bounded by a closely cropped widow’s peak on top and a clenched jaw on the bottom, radiated quiet imperturbability. But Blow’s most striking feature is his eyes, which sit under a perpetually half-furrowed brow and seem always to be evaluating, probing, assessing. His unchangingly flinty expression makes it extraordinarily difficult to gauge where Blow is on the spectrum between enjoying your company and despising everything you stand for.
he meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Quotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
i'm probably going to have to figure out how to get out of a hate crime charge
Even Blow’s friends choose words like difficult and spiky when describing him. “You have to approach Jon on Jon’s terms,” said Chris Hecker, his closest game-industry friend, over empanadas with Blow at an airy Oakland café. “It’s not ‘Let’s go out and have fun.’ It’s more like ‘Let’s discuss this topic,’ or ‘Let’s work on our games.’ You don’t ask Jon to hang out, because he’ll just say ‘Why?’”
Friendship with Blow requires patience for his rigid, often puzzling personal codes. He enjoys talking, but abhors idle conversation and is intensely private. He goes out dancing several nights a week, yet the suggestion of visiting the same club for a beer will elicit a lengthy anti-bar diatribe. “You’re poisoning yourself with alcohol,” Blow vented, as Hecker smiled knowingly beside him. “You’re kind of socializing, but the loud music prevents you from actually communicating. It’s all set up to help people socialize who don’t feel comfortable being honest about why they’re there. It freaks me out. Just understand what you’re doing, and do it.”
“Hold on,” I objected. “Are you saying people at bars should just walk up to each other and say, ‘I would like to have sexual intercourse with you’?”
“I think we could live a lot closer to a truthful existence and we’d all be better off,” he replied.
Astaereth 1 day ago
What a ridiculously insulting article. The profile of Blow is interesting; what isn't is the facile presentation of games as a artless wasteland, with Blow as the only artist and savior of the medium. I really liked Braid and the video description in this article managed to make me hate it a little. Subject does not make something artistic (be it violence or plumbers or an island of puzzles), a contemplative tone does not make something artistic, referencing other artists does not make something artistic, aping the "classy" bits of other mediums (classical music, painterly aesthetics) does not make something artistic.
Art is the skillful application of technique toward personal expression, and there are plenty of games that fall into that category--yes, even a few in the mainstream, like Bioshock, Heavy Rain, and LA Noire. And there's a world of independent artistic games out there that does not begin and end with Blow. To use a film analogy, you've written the equivalent of an article about 1970s Cassavetes while ignoring or denigrating both his contemporaries (Coppola, Roeg, Scorcese, Kubrick) and his predecessors.
It's doubly unfortunate that your simplistic and (although I hate to see the word thrown around) pretentious dismissal of the entire non-Blow video game output to date appears to have been written for people who have never played or heard of a video game before, because you've told those people why they shouldn't ever bother.
There are important discussions to be had about the nature and state of the medium, but boiling them down into "games are guns/sex/juvenile, except for Blow" does nothing but stifle discussion and close minds.
(I came here from The PA Report, by the way, and this is by far the most reductive and frustrating article they've linked to date.)
Quotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
And to make the half-hour commute from his apartment to Berkeley more constructive, Blow listens to audiobooks of literary classics in his Tesla. When I visited, he had just jettisoned Anna Karenina for being “too much like a soap opera.” Now he was listening to Walden.
Throughout my visit, every time I contorted myself into his Roadster, we would immediately hear an actor doing his best Thoreau impression, declaiming in stentorian tones about the furry beasts in their burrows. This had a certain jarring quality. One day, however, after a long talk about Blow’s vision for The Witness, Shockingly Loud Thoreau seemed almost clairvoyant. “With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits,” he proclaimed, “all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.”
Blow clicked off the stereo and turned to me. “I honestly didn’t plan that,” he said.
...
To Blow, the puzzles and environments of both Braid and The Witness function as a “long-form stream of nonverbal communication”—which is why he won’t bastardize them by expressing their messages in words. In one memorable exchange after a talk he gave at Rice University, a student pressed him to explain the opening imagery of Braid, and Blow replied with a definitive refusal. “As far as I’m concerned, the entirety of the communication of what is happening there is contained in the game, and that’s all that needs to happen,” he said. “And that’s why I make video games. So that’s why I don’t want to tell you.”
Worst paragraph in the history of the universe? You decide:I'm fine with that, but I keep coming back and can't get over this. I've read it like ten times.
“But I think what has frustrated you about people’s interpretations of Braid is that the atom bomb itself is a metaphor for a certain kind of knowledge,” I continued. “You’ve been chasing some deep form of understanding all your life, and what I think you’ve found is that questing after that knowledge brings alienation with it. The further you’ve gone down that road, the further it’s taken you from other people. So the knowledge is ultimately destructive to your life, just like the atom bomb was—it’s a kind of truth that has a cataclysmic impact. You thought chasing that knowledge would make you happy, but like Tim, part of you eventually wished you could turn back time and do things over again.”The response doesn't help:
Blow remained silent.
“Does that make sense?,” I asked.
“Yep, yep.”
“So?”
He smiled.
“Well, I would say that I would not be frustrated at all with that interpretation.”
This is an immensely valid, and relate-able point to me, good sir. :tophatQuotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
i think about my current financial situation, then read that load of horseshit, and i want to kick his fucking front teeth out
Quotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
i think about my current financial situation, then read that load of horseshit, and i want to kick his fucking front teeth out
Quotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
i think about my current financial situation, then read that load of horseshit, and i want to kick his fucking front teeth out
I'm sorry, Mr. Blow can't hear you over the sound of his revving Tesla. :patel
this article was so poorly written that I now hate the author more than I hate Blow
look i try not to judge but if i walk in for a scheduled appointment with someone and they're doing fucking tai chi, i'm probably going to have to figure out how to get out of a hate crime charge
The worse bit about this recent indie wave is how we have to stomach listening to these indie guys pontificate on anything and everything involving gaming.
There are a certain very small set of gamers that are desperate for validation from the critical arts community. So when something like Braid, or Journey, or name any indie darling of the last couple years comes around they overly prop up these creators as creative geniuses. Even though dudes (or very small teams) making individual games on their own has been around since gaming has been around. Not to mention there is as much "art" involved in making a coin-up game, as a pinball game, or any kind of game. It's just stupid. And its an insult to all the other people out there making games.
THERE’S NO NICE way to say this, but it needs to be said: video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb. And they’re not just dumb in the gleeful, winking way that a big Hollywood movie is dumb; they’re dumb in the puerile, excruciatingly serious way that a grown man in latex elf ears reciting an epic poem about Gandalf is dumb. Aside from a handful of truly smart games, tentpole titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Black Ops tend to be so silly and so poorly written that they make Michael Bay movies look like the Godfather series. In games, brick-shaped men yell catchphrases like “Suck pavement!” and wield giant rifles that double as chain saws, while back-breakingly buxom women rush into combat wearing outfits that would make a Victoria’s Secret photographer blush. In games, nuance and character development simply do not exist. In games, any predicament or line of dialogue that would make the average ADHD-afflicted high-school sophomore scratch his head gets expunged and then, ideally, replaced with a cinematic clip of something large exploding.
Quotehe meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.”
Truly some d33p sh1t, y0
i think about my current financial situation, then read that load of horseshit, and i want to kick his fucking front teeth out
I'm sorry, Mr. Blow can't hear you over the sound of his revving Tesla. :patel
but electric cars are silent ???
And having talked to Blow, he is a guy who doesn't banter around. He talks seriously about games and I appreciate that. He didn't come off as an eccentric egomaniac in person. He actually acted like he was afraid to make any statement that might get misconstrued and come back to haunt him.
There are a certain very small set of gamers that are desperate for validation from the critical arts community. So when something like Braid, or Journey, or name any indie darling of the last couple years comes around they overly prop up these creators as creative geniuses. Even though dudes (or very small teams) making individual games on their own has been around since gaming has been around. Not to mention there is as much "art" involved in making a coin-up game, as a pinball game, or any kind of game. It's just stupid. And its an insult to all the other people out there making games.
what really drives me crazy is that most of the games that these people like to call art are just shitty stripped-down imitations of great games we grew up on. take an old-school classic, strip out the skills, the scores, the challenge, and replace it with tons of ponderous navel-gazing and pretty art and hey! you've got an indie hit. there's no appreciation for real game-making technique, i.e. giving you a set of skills/abilities and designing varied challenges that play off those skills.
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:drool
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:drool
what game is he ripping off to make this
"The Witness is like that too. The blue mazes are a major aspect of the game, but they are not the point. The point is the magic that happens in the player's mind when he understands the subtle things that the mazes are saying - because the mazes aren't just puzzles, they are lines of communication that aggregate, become more complex and eventually say surprising things. This can't be seen in a video; you have to play it to have the experience. The magic is in the player's head, not on the screen."
I think there is a lot of truth here. I think a lot of indie games are simply retro games but because retro game design is hip right now they over state the historical or artistic importance of what these games are doing. I have a feeling if Super Metroid was made right now for the first time it would be hailed as an indie masterpiece with amazing indie design.
I love retro game design in many cases so I don't have a problem with that. The problem is sort of pretending this style of game design is divorced from any of the traditional game design that anybody does in the industry. They are a link in a chain of game design that dates back from the beginning of game design.
Quote"The Witness is like that too. The blue mazes are a major aspect of the game, but they are not the point. The point is the magic that happens in the player's mind when he understands the subtle things that the mazes are saying - because the mazes aren't just puzzles, they are lines of communication that aggregate, become more complex and eventually say surprising things. This can't be seen in a video; you have to play it to have the experience. The magic is in the player's head, not on the screen."
Yep.
"Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball is like that too. The volleyball game is a major aspect of the game, but it is not the point. The point is the magic that happens in the player's mind when he understands the subtle things that the volleyball game is saying - because the volleyball game isn't just a volleyball game, they are lines of communication that aggregate, become more complex and eventually say surprising things. This can't be seen in a video; you have to play it to have the experience. The magic is in the player's head, not on the screen."
The magic is in the player's pants, not on the screen."
As a developer whose independent success has emancipated him from the grip of the monolithic game corporations, Blow makes a habit of lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at the industry.
QuoteAs a developer whose independent success has emancipated him from the grip of the monolithic game corporations, Blow makes a habit of lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at the industry.
:yuck
And having talked to Blow, he is a guy who doesn't banter around. He talks seriously about games and I appreciate that. He didn't come off as an eccentric egomaniac in person. He actually acted like he was afraid to make any statement that might get misconstrued and come back to haunt him.
He's been strung up for saying a bunch of dumb stuff though - that's probably why. Which isn't to say that he doesn't make smart observations sometimes, but yeah.
To Blow, the puzzles and environments of both Braid and The Witness function as a “long-form stream of nonverbal communication”