Atlantic Article on Jonathan Blow

[TwistedAegis]

Thought this was a good read on Jonathan Blow, the maker of Braid, and his ideas for his next game:

Although video games long ago blossomed into full commercial maturity (the adrenaline-soaked military shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, for example, racked up $400 million in sales during its first 24 hours in stores last fall), the form remains an artistic backwater, plagued by cartoonish murderfests and endless revenue-friendly sequels. Blow intends to shake up this juvenile hegemony with The Witness, a single-player exploration-puzzle game set on a mysterious abandoned island. In a medium still awaiting its quantum intellectual leap, Blow aims to make The Witness a groundbreaking piece of interactive art—a sort of Citizen Kane of video games.

Call me doubtful it's possible to do it all at once, but I think it's a step in a right direction. I'm all about games as a visual medium of art and storytelling in an immersive environment - but there is also room for cartoonish murderfests!


Also, this quote made me crack up...kind of a douche, but still damn funny!

At his Berkeley office many months later, as I was playing a more polished build of The Witness, I turned to Blow at the next desk and asked if I was missing some clue for a specific puzzle. He fixed me with a stare that could hammer a nail into a wall. “The clue is, you’re doing it wrong,” he said. In other words: don’t ask me to do your thinking for you.

 

[piscian18]

Links being weird repasting

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/

Im really interested to see where the braid guys go with the next thing, but yeah they're definitely in the "Gamers arent using their fucking brains anymore" club and I'm not insulted the least its true.