Giant Bomb Presents: A Chat With Jonathan Blow

Does anyone at all know the song at the beginning of this podcast? I freaking love it but can't find it anywhere. None of the sound-identifying programs seem to recognize it either.

Thanks in advance.

@orangekiwii: It's called "Get Connected" and it's from AudioNetwork. Here's the page!

@austin_walker: Thanks a ton man! You're why this site is great!

Fun fact. This guy's (Jason Pedder) material was also used in Heavy Rain and Life is Strange too.

Late to the comments game on this podcast, but I just found it!

Some others have echoed this, but I also found the discussion about "honesty" to be odd. The reason is because I don't think it's elaborated on. The word gets used somewhat like Austin uses "interesting." There's a meaning there, but as Austin himself has said, that meaning is different for everyone, so in this context, it needs to be explained, and I don't think they do a good job of honing in on that.

Saying that what he does is "honest" is a valid description, but it's also a very black-and-white description that forces everything else into being "dishonest." Honesty, like everything, is on a spectrum, and is HIGHLY subjective to each person's interpretation. It's too easy a way to lift yourself up while putting everyone else down. Not to say that Blow isn't a good game designer (The Witness looks pretty fascinating, and I do want to play it even though I'm not usually a huge fan of puzzle games) but it makes him come off as pretentious and doesn't do him a service.

How I think this should be approached is a discussion about INTENT and whether the end product matches the original intentions of the creators. There's definitely movies where the INTENT is to tell a story about family, but the execution fails to support the intent. It's not about honesty or dishonesty. I'm sure the creators for a lot of movies strive for honesty, but their execution is what fails them, but the discussion around why the execution fails is where the value of criticism comes from. Simply labeling it as "dishonest" doesn't provide the necessary context needed for accurate judgement of any criteria.

"We don't play Ode to joy"

No... you play bloody Hall of the Mountain King and I'm going crazy! In a good way. (spoiler)

@oddparticle Jonathan Blow, pretentious? You don't say.

Man, it would be so nice if Blow's brilliance when it comes to game design (and he is truly brilliant in that respect) actually carried over to the writing as well. I guess you can't expect someone to be great at everything, but it would be so great. Maybe that's why it can't happen. A game that good would tear the universe asunder.

His assertion that the playing of this game is in itself a form of narrative is spot on, and it would've worked so much better if the gameplay was all there was. Listening to his opinions on storytelling, as a writer and lifelong student of storytelling, was hard. Maybe he should outsource the writing next time. Worked great for Croteam. Probably wouldn't meet his requirements for "honesty," though. Maybe a collaboration with an established, talented writer would? Whatever the case, I will continue to hope for something better out of the writing in his games because that's really the only thing holding this one back from perfection.

And I still don't believe anybody is taking 100 hours to finish this game. It's long, but not that long.

Right.