Before last week on the day Braid released on XBLA, I had never heard of, or at least never paid attention to, Jonathon Blow or his game. Apparently he’s been hyping it for years, and Blow has been saying controversial things long, long before the game hit download queues. For whatever reason, I just never noticed. Well, safe to say I notice now.
Quickly I began to see a pattern as story after story was posted concerning the game and the man, who is rather proactive in commenting everywhere on stories concerning him and Braid. The community seemed polarized into for and against camps, as per usual the gaming community. Generally negative depending on what site your on, I began to wonder just who was this unfortunately named chap and why did everyone care so much.
I was greeted today by this article, which gave me all I needed to know about Mr. Blow…
“Games are going to be huge. Games will heavily impact patterns of human thought, and thus what it means to be human. Yet the industry is unethically exploiting all these players, because we don’t think about what we’re doing.
World of Warcraft says: You are a schlub who has nothing better to do than sit around performing repetitive, mindless actions. Skill and shrewdness do not count for much; what matters is how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, because to feel good you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else.
Games right now are teaching a lot of the wrong things.”
That’s an immediate jump to one of my favorite people in the industry. Especially combined with the fact that Briad is one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had since Portal. It’s like Mario meets Zelda’s puzzles with some Prince of Persia for good measure, and an ending so twisted something like Killer 7 comes to mind. An absolutely wonderful experience unlike any other I’ve ever had from an indy game.
I’ll be keeping an eye on Johnny’s adventures from now on, suffice to say. And I wouldn’t doubt a bit of his influence rubs off on me in my own game design in the coming years. Which reminds me, I start my first actual “Game Design and Development” course tomorrow. It’s not the kind of thing I expect can be well-taught in a classroom, but it’s a helpful start point.