Giant Bomb Presents: A Chat With Jonathan Blow

@jdp83: This was recorded on site in the hotel where the demo was! Some degree of background noise was sadly inevitable.

This is one of the better interviews ive heard so far. I really enjoy this feature.

@austin_walker and Jeff: Great interview guys. I really enjoyed the deep dive into the mind of a game designer. I am now very excited to check The Witness out, because I have a lot of nostalgia for adventure games. Mr Blow's critique of the common mechanics/tropes is right on though and I think that's kept me from enjoying them now.

His idea of game flow reminds me of the idea of game feedback loops that I've heard of in other situations.

best intro music

Really interesting interview, the whole conversation about honest art was really informative. I also loved the design talk, hearing developers break down their thought processes behind the mechanics or structure of their games is something I wish we saw more of. It's especially great hearing it from Jonathan Blow. Really great interviews though please keep them up!

The talk about "honesty" was a bit weird to me. Jonathan Blow is an indie developer. That segment of developers are expected, at least in my mind, to be more able to do whatever they like because they don't have a huge company or investors to answer to, and are made up of few people. They are the natural thing to compare himself to, not AAA video game developers or Hollywood studios. Was that whole segment him saying "I am an indie developer"? Or was it saying "By honesty I mean that I'm not saying what I want to say in common storytelling tropes, which lots of other independent developers do use"? I'm not certain that that's what "honesty" means, but I don't know what else I would call it. "Being original", maybe. He did say one of the goals was to create something you can't get in all of the other games flooding the market now.

For instance, I wouldn't say adventure game developers are "dishonest" for using mechanics from the old adventure games they liked, I would say they feel nostalgic and are unoriginal. And there are a number of these new breed of adventure games that are less about puzzles and more about telling a story. It hasn't died out. Vinny has videos of every one of them on this site. You guys just did video series on Life is Strange, Until Dawn and Contradiction. Telltale might have started that revival while everyone on the The Witness team were busy working I guess, but I feel like Austin should have told him that adventure games are well alive.

Fun interview, anyway. Time flew by and I got a lot to think about.

I don't agree that 'dishonesty' in stories is necessarily a bad thing, it can add nuance, subvert expectations and add depth to what otherwise could be a shallow experience. Of course I agreed with the example given of the father and son film just been used as a vehicle to check boxes but isn't that also down to a lazy and/or uninspired vision? From the sounds of it he would like very simple very clear cut stories which of course there should be a place for but I don't see as the optimal concept for storytelling.

~I'm SUPER excited to play The Witness. Every interview with Jonathan Blow just makes me more pumped. Thanks for this Austin and Bakalar!

Jono is the man!

I liked the bit where they pretended to talk about honesty in games.

Can't wait for The Witness.

Very jazzy intro there. Could it be we have a Nijabes fan on the GB staff now?

Great interview!

GB(East) needs to steal Bakalar from CNET, just like GB and Danny O'Dwyer from Gamespot. Bakalar kills it on the BeastCast!

@austin_walker: Ah, that makes way more sense! Well, I hate that you guys had to deal with that but it was a great interview nonetheless.

Yes! More GB Presents! Best feature 2015!

Great interview. Austin is such a graduate nerd, I love it. Also, Bakalar is my favourite non-official BDuder. His last name supposedly means 'dried cod' in Croatian.

I find J.Blow to be a fascinating developer/insightful person in general so this oughta be a treat.

I'm excited for the meat of the game, but I'm sure that I'm going to hate whatever first-year art student ending he has planned like he had in Braid.

Braid was back when following indie games was much simpler. Every good one would get a lot of attention and you'd know you had to play it. Every year that passed since then has had more and more indie games to where it was overwhelming to keep up with them all. Sadly, I stopped keeping up with indie games at all a number of years ago. Stopped checking Humble Bundle as well. Same with Steam's new releases, though that's for obvious reasons.

I suppose it's a good thing that Sony has been putting so many on PS Plus, else I'd never get around to playing any.

I'm definitely following the games from the developers of those initial indie games that sparked what we have now, though.

Austin, you got a bit too much ramble and preamble. I had to rewind a few times to understand what your question was. Anyway, great work with these interviews. Keep it up!

Good interview but I am not sure what Blow was trying to say about movies not being about what they are about. His refusal to use any actual examples didn't help. Was he suggesting all stories should be pure slice of life with no context or setup?

Thanks for interview! My 2 cents: I think you should let the interviewee talk more. In a way that dictates that you can't have too much of a set structure before the interview. You let them talk and try to pick the pointers out of their stuff (you can ofc adress new points once the story comes to an end).

That's because what he does is so important.

Interesting interview, more content like this is appreciated. Not really into puzzle games but I think I'll actually play The Witness.

Great interview, thanks Jeff and Austin!

@hayt said:

He's saying that conventional storytelling devices aren't "honest" - which is true, they are a set pattern of tropes and conventions designed to elicit an effect in the viewer and not an attempt to recreate real life ideas and situations - and he values "honesty" more than anything else in his personal storytelling so he tries to stay away from those.

@lhson: Right. So what would a real life example of something that fits this criteria be then? I am certain that it has a tvtropes page.

@blacklab: yeah. Only he can make an "honest" game, right? Also, I do like Austin but his questions got really fawning towards the end.

I think Jonathan sets a high hurdle for story telling, and to be honest I don't know what he think he means by truth. Without really understanding what he finds truthful or not truthful it hard to understand his argument...or even know if he has one.

Nevertheless, likely the most productive conversation/interviews anyone has had with Jonathan Blow in awhile. I did wince when he said that Braid was 'better than people thought'.

Jonothan Blow is great. Just search his name on youtube and click on any of his presentations. I can listen to him for days, such an interesting guy with lots of well thought out ideas.

Love these interviews, but seriously guys, 80% of the time in this audio file is Jeff and Austin talking, not J.Blow. Your asking really long questions, then interrupting Jonathan as he answers and re-interpreting his answers. Let the man speak for himself!

"I want to make the first HONEST adventure game!"

*describes 100 hours of soulless puzzles in a lifeless environment that you can't interact with*

Maybe I'm missing something, but...has he ever consulted with anyone else about adventure games? None of the best and most popular adventure games have ever really been about their puzzles, but are instead all about the writing (and his game doesn't even have writing!) Half of the point of not knowing which items interact with the environment/other items is so that the writer can throw in jokes when you try those actions. Having non-critical path interactions allows you to delve into background stories, side stories and other stuff to help flesh out the world. The talk of not being able to interact with things in the world also bugged me as well---the house in Gone Home felt so much more alive and tangible just because you could pick up and carry that damn Christmas Duck, whereas the town in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture felt static and dead because it lacked this interaction (which arguably may have been the point for that particular game).

As Austin alluded to in the interview, I don't really think that Jonathan Blow's conception of what an adventure game should be exists in anyone's mind but his. What he described sounds like a puzzle game with a 3d GUI

I feel like Braid worked because it had a novel gameplay mechanic that was interesting, but the story was incredibly poorly done. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having an ending that forces the player to recontextualize the events of the story (the novella I Am Legend did this quite well), except in this case there was no tangible story to recontextualize which made the "revelation" fall flat. There is more to storytelling than a clever narrative--you need to understand and manipulate the emotions of the player/reader/viewer, and I'm really not sure Jonathan Blow knows how to do this.

Braid was time-mechanic puzzle game pretending to be a game about a man looking for a princess pretending to be a game about a man stalking a princess pretending to be a game about the creation of the atomic bomb.

Honest.

I found Mr. Blow to come off as a whining person trying to convince others of his BS. I loved Braid, but this guy just took what little interest I had in this game and threw it out the window. He's made a good game and suddenly he knows everything? I almost can't tell if Austin has his tongue in cheek during the whole interview.

To each their own I suppose.

good interview, I look forward to The Witness. Seems like this game has been gestating for a considerable amount of time, hopefully that is indicative of its quality.

Remember this song from that first(I think first) The Witness trailer from that PS4 launch presentation almost 3 years ago? Also Patrick & Ryan played this game before they were bought by CBSi almost 4 years ago. Braid was one of my favorites from last gen and I'm psyched that The Witness is finally almost here.

Also this interview ruled.

I'm even more interested in this game now, and I didn't think that was really possible. It sounds to me like Jonathan has not shied away from creating some very difficult puzzles, which is right up my ally, and in my opinion doesn't happen enough in the puzzle genre. I totally understand the concept of making a game accessible to as large an audience as possible, but video games have evolved to the point where, like movies, you can have "niche" genres that only appeal to a small subset of viewers, or in this case, players. I want brutally hard puzzles, damn it!

Some of my favourite games are ones that challenge what a traditional video game "should" be, in whatever form the developers choose to focus on. They usually tend to be puzzle games of some form. Games like The Stanley Parable, The Talos Principle, Portal, Little Big Planet and, of course, Braid all do it in one form or another (Story/Progression, Philosophy, Traditional Physics, Content, and Traditional Mechanics, respectively), and they are fantastic because of it.

I hope The Witness is as strange and as difficult as it sounds Jonathan, and I'm glad there are developers like yourself that continue to challenge the concept of what a video game can be, and "the bottom line" or "general appeal" be damned.

Can't wait!

@riotcontrol said:

This is very true. GB still does a pretty good job of exposing me to some indies still (Human Resource Machine, yay! :D), but I'm sure there are plenty of gems falling through the cracks now.

I try to stay vigilant on my indie puzzlers however, as I just love the genre so much. Games like Braid have completely changed the way I view games as an art form, and there are so many indie puzzlers that I love to pieces, more so than 99% of the AAA games released these days.

Alas, you simply can't play them all anymore.. not that having more games than you can play is a bad thing. :P

This intro song is dope

Great interview Austin and Jeff. I want to see a Jonathan Blow RTS game.

The discussion about "honesty" was a bit odd.

For one, I don't believe that honesty in art is always a positive or desired trait. As it pertains to games specifically, something like Metal Gear Solid 2 wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting if the marketing for it was honest, or if the setup for the game was honest. I suppose there's something to be said about making an "honest" adventure game, but I don't think that the best adventure games are "less then" simply because they weren't honest.

@kalel814: I think what they're talking about is something more related to sincerity and earnestness, rather than literalism or lack of deception/misdirection. In other words, not seeming "pretentious", which is pretty difficult when trying to express stuff through video games. Metaphors can be honest. I think MGS2 feels pretty honest by delivering its anti-war conspiracy theory craziness with enough seriousness and confidence, while a lot of similar mind screw type games seem like they're trying too hard to be edgy without saying much.