Jonathan Blow

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Jonathan Blow
Jonathan Blow GDC.jpg
Born (1971-11-03) November 3, 1971 (age 50)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (dropped out)
OccupationGame designer
Programmer
OrganizationThekla, Inc.
Known forBraid, The Witness, Jai Language
Websitehttp://number-none.com/blow

Jonathan David Blow (born (1971-11-03)November 3, 1971)[1] is an American video game designer, programmer and Twitch streamer, who is best known as the creator of the independent video games Braid (2008) and The Witness (2016), both of which were released to critical acclaim.

From 2001 to 2004, Blow wrote the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine.[2] He was the primary host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop each March at the Game Developers Conference, which has become a premier showcase for new ideas in video games. In addition, Blow was a regular participant in the Indie Game Jam. Blow is also a founding partner of the Indie Fund, an angel investor fund for independent game projects.

Early life and education[edit]

Blow was born in 1971. His mother was a devout ex-nun. Blow's father, an aerospace engineer manager, worked for the defense contractor TRW. Blow would say in an interview with The Atlantic, "Early on, I detected that there weren't good examples at home, so I kind of had to figure things out on my own ... I had to adopt a paradigm of self-sufficiency."[3]

Blow grew up in La Palma until he was 8, then he moved to Rancho Peñasquitos, San Diego, where he attended Mt. Carmel High School[citation needed]. He then studied computer science and creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and was president of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association for a semester. He left the university in 1994, a semester before he would have graduated.[3][4][5]

He worked in San Francisco in contracting jobs, including one with Silicon Graphics to port Doom to a set-top device, until forming the game design company Bolt-Action Software with Bernt Habermeier in 1996.[5][6][unreliable source]

Their initial game project was to be a hovertank-based combat game called Wulfram, but at the time, the video game industry was undergoing a transformation of focusing heavily on three-dimensional graphics, making it difficult for them to complete the project;[clarification needed] the team was forced to take some online database work to cover their expenditures. Subsequently, in the wake of the crash of dot-com bubble, they opted to fold the business after four years in 2000, with them $100,000 in debt.[3][5]

Following Bolt-Action, Blow continued to perform contract work for companies like Ion Storm, and writing for industry publications such as Game Developer Magazine.[5] He also worked on a project with IBM to create a technology demo similar to the Wulfram idea that would highlight the features of the Cell processor that IBM was collaborating on, which would become a part of the PlayStation 3. Blow attempted to get additional funding to turn the demo into a full game from both Sony and Electronic Arts but was unsuccessful.[5]

Career[edit]

Braid[edit]

The 2D puzzle-platformer Braid (2008) was a landmark of independent game development. Released on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), the game was "an immediate sensation",[7] and a critical and commercial success. Braid demonstrated that it was possible for indie developers to release games on storefronts (instead of through publishers) and remain financially successful.[8] The game "is often credited as the catalyst for the indie [game] boom of the following years".[7]

In Braid, the player solves puzzles using a combination of platforming gameplay and the ability to rewind time. The puzzles typically require the player to figure out how to move the player-character to the jigsaw pieces located throughout the world. Rewinding time is usually an essential part of the solutions to the puzzles, and the precise mechanism of the rewind changes throughout the course of the game. The plot of the game is told through a combination of textual exposition between worlds, environmental art, and gameplay. The story initially appears to be about the protagonist searching for a princess, although Blow stated that the narrative was "big and subtle and resists being looked at directly."[9]

Blow created a prototype for Braid in December 2004, and begun work on the game proper five months later. Much of the work was part-time as Blow also did consulting work for income and invested time into martial-arts training. By December 2005 Blow had finished the first version of the game, however he felt the graphic art "looked extremely amateur". After many "false starts" trying to find a good artist, he hired David Hellman, who would eventually create all of the game's art. For the game's fiction, Blow drew inspiration from a variety of his favourite books and films such as Invisible Cities and Mulholland Drive. Blow used licensed music for the game as this allowed him to choose high-quality long tracks which worked well with time reversal while reducing development costs.[10][11]

In mid 2007 he signed with Microsoft to release the game on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade. Blow felt that time spent meeting the XBLA certification process would have been better spent polishing the game, but said "for the most part, working with Microsoft has been great". He noted that Microsoft was "very hands-off" with respect to game design, and that "the final game is exactly what I wanted to put there".[12] Blow estimated that he spent more than $180,000 of his own money to develop Braid.[13]

The game was released digitally in August 2008 to critical acclaim and commercial success. The Xbox 360 version holds a score of 93 on review aggregator Metacritic,[14] and the game sold more than 55,000 copies during the first week of release.[15] Available only through download, the game represented an early shift in videogames from physical to digital stores.[16] The success of the game inspired many other indie developers, in particular a designer at Supergiant Games said the studio wouldn't exist without the success of Braid.[8] By 2010 some other indie games had also found commercial success, leading Blow to cofound Indie Fund in 2010. Blow was featured in the documentary film Indie Game: The Movie, where he discusses his experiences developing and releasing Braid. By mid 2012 the game had sold more than 450,000 copies, and in 2014 Blow stated that sales had brought in more than $4 million in revenue. Blow used most of the revenue to fund The Witness.[17]

The Witness[edit]

Blow at GDC Europe in 2011

Blow's next project was The Witness (2016), a first-person game in which the player explores an island while solving a large variety of puzzles on panels. The panel puzzles require the player to draw a path on the panel, and the puzzle is solved if the path satisfies a number of rules. Blow desired to create a game utilizing non-verbal communication, and as such, the puzzle rules are never explained with words. Instead, the puzzles themselves teach the player the rules. Blow felt that solving puzzles in this way could generate epiphanies for players, and tried to design the game so that the player experiences "miniature epiphanies over and over again".[18] The game includes around 650 panels, and Blow estimated that solving every puzzle in the game would take more than 80 hours.[18]

Work on The Witness began shortly after the release of Braid in 2008. Blow created prototypes of several different game ideas before choosing the one he liked the most, despite it being a 3D game which he "absolutely didn't want to do".[19] By the time the game was revealed to the public in 2010, three people were working on the game full-time, and by 2015 this number had grown to eight.[19][18] Blow had hoped to release the game as a launch title for the PS4 in 2013, however work on the game continued until its release in 2016. At the time, it was virtually unheard of for an small independent game studio to spend more than seven years on a game.[18] Blow said that The Witness ending up being "a much bigger game than I thought", and that "as long as it looked like we were going to have the money and time... we decided to make it the best thing we can."[18]

The game was released on Windows and the PlayStation 4 in January 2016 to critical acclaim and commercial success. The Windows and PS4 versions hold scores of 87 on review aggregator Metacritic,[20][21] and several popular gaming publications awarded the game perfect scores.[22][23] The game received several BAFTA and Game Developers Choice Awards nominations.[24][25] The Witness debuted at $39.99, a price point that was met in some gaming forums with outcry.[26] Blow stated that the price point was "fairly reflective of what the game is", [26] and journalists noted that other independent games of a similar scope and quality debuted with the same price.[26][27] Blow reported that the first week sales revenue of The Witness totaled over $5 million USD, and that it had sold more than 100,000 units.[28] Blow noted that after release The Witness was one of the top downloads on illegal BitTorrent websites, and was pirated "just as heavily" as Braid.[29] He noted that piracy "will not help [Thekla] afford to make another game! :("[29]

Untitled Programming Language and Untitled Sokoban Game[edit]

Blow at the 2018 Gamelab Conference

Towards the end of development of The Witness, Blow began to become frustrated with C++, the language the game's engine was written in. While he liked recent feature additions to C++, he felt they "were encumbered by the rest of the language" and thought that C++ had "reached critical complexity".[30] He considered switching to Go, D, and Rust, but thought that each had its drawbacks.[30] Blow felt it would be possible to create a new programming language for game development which would increase programming efficiency by at least 20%, and make the job more enjoyable.[30] Further, he predicted that it would actually be easier to make a new programming language for professional game engine programmers than to make a videogame.[31]

In 2014 Blow begun work on designing and programming the new programming language, which has the codename Jai. When asked about the real name of the language in 2020, Blow noted that in many projects "people put all their effort into the cool name" before a project has had much effort put into it, and that he is "doing things in the opposite way".[32] For about a year and a half work on Jai was part time since Thekla was shipping The Witness during that period.[33] It was around the middle of 2016 when full time work on Jai and a sokoban game whose game engine is written in Jai begun.[33] By working on the sokoban game, its engine, and Jai at the same time, Blow is able to test out the design of Jai, and adjust it early in its lifetime to make it better. Blow has noted that no previous programming languages have debuted with a piece of software in that language as large and complex as a game. By doing so he is able to demonstrate the capability of the language.[34] During a 2018 conference talk Blow demonstrated that a clean non-optimized compilation of the 80,000 line sokoban game took less that two seconds on his laptop.[35] Blow predicted that as work on the compiler continued the compilation rate would increase significantly, with a target compilation rate of a million lines of Jai per second for a clean non-optimized build.[35] Blow intends to release much of the source code of the sokoban game upon release, and said Thekla is trying to structure the code of the game to be "very malleable", so that when it's released it can "provide an in for people who actually want to start experimenting with a program."[36] The Jai compiler reached beta version 100 in December 2021, and is currently in closed beta.[37]

If we can make a commercial quality game which ships on consoles and PCs, that's as good as anything we've ever made or better, that at least shows you that this programming language at least works well enough to do that, which is something that no other programming language has ever done.

— Jonathan Blow, May 2021, [34]

The sokoban game combines puzzle elements from a variety of other sokoban games, as well as adding elements of its own. For example, the majority of characters from Jonah Ostroff's Heroes of Sokoban trilogy appear in the game, as do the lilypads and skipping stones from Alan Hazelden's Skipping Stones To Lonely Homes. By combining so many puzzle elements together Blow is able to "explode out the combinatorics [of the puzzle space] even way further than The Witness did."[38] As of May 2021, the sokoban game has over 700 levels, and Blow stated that it will probably have more than 1000 upon release.[39] Work on the sokoban game, its engine, and Jai are regularly streamed by Blow on his twitch channel.[40]

Long-term project[edit]

Since 2012 or 2013, Blow has been working on a separate project that will be broken into different installments and elaborations on the same game over the course of 20 years, making it bigger and more complex. They will be individual playable games, each related thematically and deepening in investigation of subject matter for each chapter. Blow stated that the game would not be puzzle-related and that it would be built with the Jai language and engine.[41]

Other work[edit]

In March 2010, Blow, along with several independent game developers including Ron Carmel and Kellee Santiago, became a founding member of the Indie Fund, an angel investor fund for independent game projects.

In 2012, Blow was one of the subjects of the independent documentary film, Indie Game: The Movie, where he discussed his views on the role of independent video games and his work on Braid.

Philosophy and views[edit]

Blow has spoken many times about his views on independent video games both in interviews and in public speeches, although he has said on his blog[42] that he has gotten what he wanted out of conferences from speaking at them. For his sometimes controversial views, he has received praise, notably being called "the kind of righteous rebel video games need"[43] and "a spiritual seeker, questing after truth in an as-yet-uncharted realm."[3]

Blow often speaks of the potential for games to be more. He has said that he tries to make games that are more adult for people with longer attention spans[43] and noted that games could have a "much bigger role" in culture in the future, but current game development does not address this potential, instead aiming for low-risk, high-profit titles.[44] As a former physics major, Blow has expressed that games could examine the universe in similar ways that a physicist could.[45]

In referring to the progression of development in his games, Blow stated at the PlayStation Experience that he prefers to, "keep them playable and just make them better." This was stated during the live-cast panel while overseeing Justin Massongill on the playable demo.[46]

Blow has spoken out against some games for immoral game design. On World of Warcraft, he has said it causes societal problems by creating a false image of the meaning of life, calling it "unethical."[47] On FarmVille, he has said that the design of the game reveals the developers' goal to degrade the quality of players' lives, ultimately calling it "inherently evil."[48]

Despite Braid's success on the platform, Blow has claimed that Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade certification process would turn away developers because "they kind of make themselves a pain in the ass" and that they would lose market share to Steam as a result.[49]

Blow is a member of Giving What We Can, a community of people who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities.[50]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Barratt, Charlie (August 9, 2011). "Is Braid pretentious? Creator Jonathan Blow answers his critics". GamesRadar. Retrieved June 18, 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ Blow, Jonathan (April 2, 2009). "NYU Game Center Lecture Series: Jonathan Blow" (Interview). NYU Game Center. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d Clark, Taylor (May 2012). "The Most Dangerous Gamer". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ Jonathan Blow: California Dreamin', Hrej.cz (Czech) Archived August 18, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ a b c d e Machkovech, Sam (September 17, 2015). "The man and the island: Wandering through Jonathan Blow's The Witness". Ars Technica. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ "Jonathan Blow (Person)". Giant Bomb. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ a b Purdom, Clayton (April 4, 2018). "10 years later, Braid remains the definitive indie game". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on March 19, 2022. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  8. ^ a b Horti, Samuel (April 23, 2018). "Does Braid deserve its status as the iconic breakthrough indie game?". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on April 24, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
  9. ^ McElroy, Justin (September 25, 2008). "Joystiq interview: Blow unravels Braid in postmortem". Joystiq. Archived from the original on January 28, 2015. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  10. ^ Totilo, Stephen (August 8, 2007). ""A Higher Standard" — Game Designer Jonathan Blow Challenges Super Mario's Gold Coins, "Unethical" MMO Design And Everything Else You May Hold Dear About Video Games". MTV. Archived from the original on March 16, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2009.
  11. ^ Tong, Sophia (September 28, 2008). "Spot On: The music of Braid". GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 11, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2009.
  12. ^ Parkin, Simon; Alexander, Leigh (August 8, 2008). "Blow: 'Unnecessary' XBLA Hurdles Hurt Game Quality". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008. Retrieved February 19, 2009.
  13. ^ Brophy-Warren, Jamin (August 8, 2008). "Video Games: Braid — Advisor". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 26, 2008. Retrieved February 19, 2009.
  14. ^ "Braid for Xbox 360 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on December 21, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2018.
  15. ^ Blow, Jonathan (August 13, 2008). "Stats: The First Week of Braid". Jonathan Blow. Archived from the original on September 16, 2014. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  16. ^ Meslow, Scott (August 8, 2018). "Revisiting Braid, the Indie Video Game That Set the Industry Ablaze". GQ. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on March 19, 2022. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  17. ^ Parkin, Simon (April 3, 2014). "The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on September 7, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
  18. ^ a b c d e Kollar, Philip (September 17, 2015). "The Witness: The creator of Braid talks about his fiendishly difficult new game". Polygon. Vox Media. Archived from the original on July 2, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  19. ^ a b Parkin, Simon (December 6, 2010). "Catching Up With Jonathan Blow". Gamasutra. UBM TechWeb. Archived from the original on December 10, 2010. Retrieved December 6, 2010.
  20. ^ "The Witness for PC Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on April 27, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  21. ^ "The Witness for PlayStation 4 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on April 27, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  22. ^ Makedonski, Brett (January 25, 2016). "The Witness Review". Destructoid. ModernMethod. Archived from the original on January 25, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  23. ^ Rad, Chloi (January 25, 2016). "The Witness Review". IGN. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on January 25, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  24. ^ Webber, Jordan Erica (March 9, 2017). "Bafta games awards 2017: Inside and Uncharted 4 lead the way". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 10, 2017. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  25. ^ Makuch, Eddie (January 4, 2017). "Game of the Year Nominees and More Revealed for Game Developers Choice Awards". GameSpot. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2017.
  26. ^ a b c Parkin, Simon (February 7, 2016). "Is the price of a video game ever really right?". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Archived from the original on February 7, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  27. ^ Chalk, Andy (January 19, 2016). "The Witness preorders go live with a $40 price tag". PC Gamer. Future US. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  28. ^ Makuch, Eddie (February 2, 2016). "The Witness Sells 100,000 Copies, Xbox One Version Being Considered". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on February 4, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  29. ^ a b Makuch, Eddie (January 29, 2016). "The Witness Is Being Pirated a Lot, Dev Says". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on January 30, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  30. ^ a b c Blow, Jonathan (September 19, 2014). Ideas about a new programming language for games. Archived from the original on December 19, 2021. Retrieved November 27, 2021 – via YouTube.
  31. ^ AIAS 2021, 55:18.
  32. ^ Bryan Cantrill and Jessie Frazelle (January 26, 2020). "On the Metal" (Podcast). Oxide Computer Company. Event occurs at 1:34:10. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  33. ^ a b AIAS 2021, 57:16.
  34. ^ a b AIAS 2021, 58:07.
  35. ^ a b Gamelab Conference (July 14, 2018). "Jon Blow's Design decisions on creating Jai a new language for game programmers". YouTube. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  36. ^ AIAS 2021, 1:10:38.
  37. ^ @Jonathan_Blow (December 24, 2021). "We just shipped beta 100 of the compiler to The People" (Tweet). Archived from the original on March 20, 2022 – via Twitter.
  38. ^ AIAS 2021, 26:50.
  39. ^ AIAS 2021, 45:12.
  40. ^ "j_blow's Videos". Twitch. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  41. ^ Blow, Jonathan (March 1, 2019). PRACTICE 2014: Jonathan Blow. NYU Game Center. Archived from the original on December 19, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2019 – via YouTube.
  42. ^ Blow, Jonathan (May 29, 2012). "The Depth Jam". The Witness. Retrieved January 19, 2018. After about eight years, though, [being a conference presenter] ran its course and I had gotten the bulk of what I was going to get from this arrangement.
  43. ^ a b Totilo, Stephen (August 10, 2011). "Jonathan Blow, Opinionated Creator of Two Video Games, is 'Attempting to be Profound'". Kotaku. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  44. ^ "Jonathan Blow on future of video game industry". CBS This Morning. CBS. August 13, 2012. Archived from the original on August 15, 2012. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  45. ^ Blow, Jonathan; Ten Bosch, Marc (October 24, 2011). IndieCade 2011: Jonathan Blow & Marc Ten Bosch. IndieCade. Archived from the original on December 19, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2021 – via YouTube.
  46. ^ Massongill, Justin (October 25, 2013). "Hands-on with The Witness on PS4". PlayStation.Blog. Sony Interactive Entertainment. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  47. ^ "MIGS 2007: Jonathan Blow On The 'WoW Drug', Meaningful Games". Game Developer. November 28, 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  48. ^ Caldwell, Brandon (February 15, 2011). "Jonathan Blow interview: Do you believe social games are evil? "Yes. Absolutely."". PC Gamer. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  49. ^ Nutt, Christian (August 11, 2011). "Interview: Jonathan Blow – Xbox Live Arcade 'A Pain In The Ass' For Indies". Game Developer. Retrieved January 19, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  50. ^ "List of Giving What We Can Pledge Members". Giving What We Can. Retrieved October 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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