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Talk:Jonathan Blow

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Vaticidalprophet in topic Did you know nomination
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Good articleJonathan Blow has been listed as one of the Video games good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Did You Know Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 4, 2023Peer reviewReviewed
June 20, 2023Peer reviewReviewed
August 18, 2023Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on September 14, 2023.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Jonathan Blow thought that he may not have finished creating the videogame Braid were he not simultaneously learning kung fu?
Current status: Good article

Deletion of "Criticism"

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Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I would like to suggest that the "Criticism" section is deleted. The paragraph speak of Blow's works and not of himself. WikiTryHardDieHard (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

I agree, I dont see what the section adds to the readers understanding, and it seems like positive criticism would also need to be included, as that was the primary response to his work. I get the impression that someone wanted a way to spout their opinion.--Bcomnes (talk) 20:06, 9 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ok, sounds reasonable; I've made that edit. 128.32.39.99 (talk) 20:01, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

minor change

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Latest comment: 14 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Someone listed this guy as dying on the internet. Deleted it. 129.174.106.5 (talk) 18:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Added a sentence about his next game, which should probably be made into an article at some point. Whoops, apparently that article already existed, thanks for updating the link. Stringanomaly (talk) 03:39, 29 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Article on Jon Blow in the Atlantic

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Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

At http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/ -- Jo3sampl (talk) 01:00, 14 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Podcast where a lot is said about pre-Braid work

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Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Link: https://www.idlethumbs.net/tonecontrol/episodes/jonathan-blow - this is two hours that begins talking about his experience at university, goes through times he was working on Munch's Odyssey/Deus Ex 2/Thief 3, and the other many-year-long-things he had going at the same time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.0.121 (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

A lot of talk about money?

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Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I feel that there is a lot of mentions regarding debt, "zeroes in his bank account," and just, overall, a ridiculous mentioning of money when talking about Mr. Blow. Sure, it helps add to the article but it just doesn't seem particularly helpful in getting any point across other than the article's writer/Mr. Blow are a little money obsessed.

Yikes maybe we can revise that, the full quote actually has a very different message and our abbreviation may be misleading. The full quote is... “I opened up my Web browser and Holy fuck, I’m rich now,” he recalled. “There were a lot of zeros in my bank account.” Blow’s similarities to the average millionaire end right there, however, because unlike most wealthy people, he seems faintly irritated by his memory of striking it rich. When Blow told me, during a typically metaphysical conversation in a park near his Berkeley office, that his windfall was “absurd,” he didn’t mean it in the whimsical “Can you believe my luck?” sense; he meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. 76.102.190.20 (talk) 18:28, 6 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

JAI or Jai?

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Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

In the only sources that mention the language, it seems like the experimental programming language is called "Jai," not "JAI." Source on the ALLCAPS version? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nokkromancer (talk • contribs) 09:49, 2 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

"Game 3" is not Sokoban

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Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I think it's a little confusing to call Sokoban "game 3", as in the current draft of the article. During development of The Witness, it was revealed somehow that J. Blow as a side project had created like 40 hours of gameplay for a completely different game, and that game became known as "game 3". It is not Sokoban, and the public has never seen it. It is true that Sokoban is the next game after Braid and The Witness that J. Blow will release (except for Braid: Anniversary Edition). However, even considering that, "game 3" is still not a good name for it because J. Blow shipped an online tank battle game earlier in his career before Braid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.252.62.110 (talk) 19:36, 4 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

Past discussions on controversies

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Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

In my experience, disputes between editors are supposed to be discussed on the article's talk page before they escalate to the point where the BLP noticeboard needs to be involved. Since that isn't what happened here, let me just state for the benefit of future editors that a thread on Jonathan Blow was started there a few months ago. As a result, some low quality additions that didn't refer to any RS source were rightly removed. A better sentence about COVID conspiracy theorizing was also removed on the grounds that a single RS source was not enough. I have no problem leaving that out if another source does not materialize. Connor Behan (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Copyediting tasked before GAN

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Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The article recently had some comments in a peer review, and amoung other things it was identified that the article needs to be copyedited before potential Good Article nomination. I have tasked the copyediting guild to do this. It will likely take several months for them to look at it. Please do not submit the article for Good article nomination until the guild has looked at it. Neuroxic (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Removed text

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Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

CC-BY-SA declaration; text in this section was removed from the article by me; see the article's history for full attribution. I'm removing this text because it's either off-topic, excessively detailed or otherwise doesn't belong in this article. I'm leaving it here for the benefit of future editors and in case its removal breaks any named references.

1994–2000: Career beginnings and Wulfram

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In Wulfram, players took control of a heavily armed hovertank, and joined one of two sides with the aim to force the other side off the map.[1] The standard map size was around 31 km2.[2] In a February 1998 interview,[3] Blow said the game was around 150,000 lines of C++ code, 2500 of which were assembly for texture mapping optimization, and the game ran on Windows 95, Windows NT, Linux, and Solaris.[2] Scott Keur of MPOGD reviewed the game while it was in closed beta, praised its graphics, gameplay, lack of lag, but criticized its sound, and called it "the best combined action/strategy game to date".[1] Wulfram was released in open beta in July 1998[4] and free to play on Total Entertainment Network.[5] TEN shut down slightly more than a year later, however, after which Blow brought the game to Interactive Magic.[6]

The name Wulfram went through several name changes, the final of which was Wulfram 2.[7] For a while after Bolt Action Software folded, Habermeier ran the final version of the game for free on the internet.[8][9]

2001–2004: contracting work

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In the game, physics simulation was done on the server. The movement of robots was not implemented with animations but by applying forces to their joints. Players could shoot these joints and thereby affect the movement of the robots.[10]

2005–2008: Braid

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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",[11] 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.[12] The game "is often credited as the catalyst for the indie [game] boom of the following years".[11]

Available only through download, the game represented an early shift in video games from physical to digital stores.[13] The success of the game inspired many other indie developers; in particular, a designer at Supergiant Games claimed the studio wouldn't exist without the success of Braid.[12]

2009–2016: The Witness

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The game was released on Windows and the PlayStation 4 in January 2016 to critical acclaim and commercial success. It debuted at $39.99, a price point that was met with outcry in some gaming forums.[14] Blow stated that the price point was "fairly reflective of what the game is",[14] and journalists noted that other independent games of a similar scope and quality debuted with the same price.[14][15] Blow reported that the first week sales revenue of The Witness totaled over US$5 million, and that it had sold more than 100,000 units.[16] After release, Blow said that The Witness was one of the top downloads on illegal BitTorrent websites, was pirated "just as heavily" as Braid,[17] and noted that pirating the game does not help fund Thekla's next game."[17] The game received several BAFTA and Game Developers Choice Awards nominations,[18][19] and appeared on 'Best of the decade' features from IGN,[20] Polygon,[21] NME,[22] CNET,[23] and National Post.[24]

2017–present: Jai Programming Language, untitled sokoban game, and Braid, Anniversary Edition

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Blow has noted that no previous programming languages have debuted with a piece of demo software as large and complex as a game. The game is intended to prove the capability of the language, thus reducing the risk associated with adopting Jai upon release.[25] During a 2018 conference talk, Blow demonstrated that a clean non-optimized compilation of the 80,000-line sokoban game took less than two seconds on his laptop.[26] He predicted that with additional work 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).[26] In July 2018 Blow felt the language had already improved his productivity by 15%, and thought that given time this could increase to 50–80%.[27] Blow intends to release much of the source code of the sokoban game upon release, and said Thekla is trying to structure the code to be "very malleable" so that upon release it can "provide an in for people who actually want to start experimenting with a program."[28] The Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021.[29]

The Jai-based sokoban game combines puzzle elements from a variety of other sokoban games while adding ideas of its own. The majority of characters from Jonah Ostroff's Heroes of Sokoban trilogy appear in the game, as do the lily pads and skipping stones from Alan Hazelden's Skipping Stones To Lonely Homes. By combining so many puzzle elements together, Thekla is able to "explode out the combinatorics [of the puzzle space] even further than Thekla did with The Witness."[30] In mid 2018, two programmers were working on the game, and the art team consisted of five people.[31] The sokoban game had over 700 levels as of May 2021, and Blow stated that it will probably have more than 1000 upon release.[32]

In August 2020, Thekla announced Braid, Anniversary Edition, a remastered edition of Braid.[33] The game's art is being repainted with significantly more detail, and will have smoother animations and enhanced sound.[34][35] The new edition will include detailed and thorough developer commentary from Blow.[36] Players will be able to toggle between the original and upgraded version while playing.[37] Blow explained that the remaster will be faithful to the original, remarking that Braid will not get the "Greedo shoots first" treatment (a reference to a change made to Star Wars).[38] Thekla planned to launch the game in early 2021.[38]

References

  1. ^ a b Keur, Scott (1998). "Wulfram Review". The Multiplayer Online Games Directory. Archived from the original on Jul 3, 1998.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference mpogd-1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Interviews". The Multiplayer Online Games Directory. Jul 3, 1998. Archived from the original on Jul 3, 1998.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference wulfram-open-beta was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Wulfram". The Multiplayer Online Directory. Archived from the original on Dec 3, 1998.
  6. ^ Tone Control 2014, 17:03.
  7. ^ Tone Control 2014, 17:30.
  8. ^ Tone Control 2014, 17:20.
  9. ^ Habermeier, Bernt. "Wulfram II". wulfram.com. Archived from the original on Jun 22, 2004.
  10. ^ Noclip 2017, 13:19.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Chalk, Andy (January 19, 2016). "The Witness preorders go live with a $40 price tag". PC Gamer. Future US. Archived from the original on January 21, 2016. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ 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.
  18. ^ 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.
  19. ^ 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.
  20. ^ "The Best Games of the Decade (2010 – 2019)". IGN. January 26, 2020. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
  21. ^ "The 100 best games of the decade (2010–2019): 100-51". Polygon. November 4, 2019. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
  22. ^ McMahon, James (December 20, 2019). "The 50 Best Games Of The Decade: The 2010s". NME. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
  23. ^ Serrels, Mark (October 5, 2019). "The 30 best video games of the decade, ranked". CNET. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
  24. ^ Marsh, Calum (December 5, 2019). "Nothing else compares to the greatest video game of the decade". National Post. Postmedia Network. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
  25. ^ AIAS 2021, 58:07.
  26. ^ a b Gamelab Conference (Jul 14, 2018). "Jon Blow's Design decisions on creating Jai a new language for game programmers". YouTube. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference c++mess was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ AIAS 2021, 1:10:38.
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference compiler100 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ AIAS 2021, 26:50.
  31. ^ Cite error: The named reference VB-2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  32. ^ AIAS 2021, 45:12.
  33. ^ Hall, Charlie (Aug 6, 2020). "Braid Anniversary Edition coming in 2021". Polygon. Vox Media. Archived from the original on August 9, 2022. Retrieved May 4, 2022. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; August 9, 2020 suggested (help)
  34. ^ Prescott, Shaun (August 7, 2022). "Braid: Anniversary Edition is a 'hand-repainted' remake, coming to PC in 2021". PC Gamer. Future US. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  35. ^ Pearson, Craig (Aug 7, 2020). "Braid: Anniversary Edition repaints the classic indie platformer". Rock Paper Shotgun. Gamer Network Limited. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  36. ^ Carr, James (August 6, 2020). "Braid Anniversary Edition Announced At PlayStation Event". Gamespot. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  37. ^ Wales, Matt (August 6, 2020). "Braid is getting an Anniversary Edition with redrawn art and a developer commentary". Eurogamer. Gamer Network Limited. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  38. ^ a b Makedonski, Brett (August 6, 2020). "Jonathan Blow's next project is Braid: Anniversary Edition". Destructoid. Retrieved May 4, 2022.

Cheers, Baffle☿gab 00:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

GA Review

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Latest comment: 1 year ago25 comments2 people in discussion
GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Jonathan Blow/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for the delay, planned on getting this up on the weekend, but ran into real-world stuff. Anyhow, overall the article's in good shape. Comments as follows:

  • Prose:
    • In 2002, together with Chris Hecker, Doug Church and Robin Hunicke, Blow co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference. It'd be nice to get an explanation of what the Gameplay Workshop is here, besides just its creation.
    • The Braid section doesn't actually tell us anything about the game, neither its plot, nor even what genre it is.
    • Blow hoped to release The Witness in 2013 as a launch title for the Sony PlayStation 4 but the game was not released until 2016. Redundant with the mention of the year before; makes sense to structure this more chronologically.
    • No info on how the Witness was received?
      •   Done Originally the article contain this and a lot of other game-specific info, however the copyediting guild removed it a couple of months ago; I added some of it back. Neuroxic (talk) 18:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
    • In 2020, when asked about the name of the language he said that in many projects "people put all their effort into the cool name" before working on the project, and that he was "doing things in the opposite way". I don't really know what this means, since Jai is apparently not a placeholder name?
    • a game engine written in Jai, and a sokoban game built in that engine, began If Sokoban is a game, why is it not capitalized throughout?
    • As of 2023, the Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021 more weird chronology stuff.
    • "high dynamic range" what does this mean?
    • and ensured he could provide the game in the future there's an (unreffed) note for this, but I think it really should be made clearer in the body what is meant here.
    • The lead mentions Jai and its compiler making beta version 100, which a) doesn't seem important enough for the lead, and b) seems pretty unimportant in general? It's source to Blow himself, so it suggests it wasn't important enough for serious secondary coverage, and version numbers are ultimately arbitrary so it's not really a huge deal.
    • In general I think there's a bit too much overuse of quotes and primary sources for the coverage. Blow isn't exactly the most succinct at explaining himself, apparently, because a lot of his quotes I don't actually find edifying but more confusing. I also want to hear more about what people say about him than his own talks and similar.
      •   Done (Or at least done to the best of my ability.) I've gone through the entire article and removed / trimmed quotes that I didn't think were essential – I agree that some unnecessary quotes were being used for coverage. As for including more about what people say about Blow / his artistic practice, I remembered some lines I had omitted and swapped them in to the article, but in general I think there are hardly any secondary sources covering these topics (let alone good secondary sources). I think this is for two main reasons. First, there is virtually zero academic scholarship on the craft of Blow's puzzles (and almost none on specific puzzles in videogames more generally). Second, while Blow is prominent enough to have profiles in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NBC etc. and has done heaps of interviews, I haven't been able to find comments on his specific game design practice outside of interviews. (And annoyingly, I haven't found other game designers discussing his puzzles either.) In some fields like art history, famous artists like Jackson Pollock have had hundreds of academic articles analyzing their work, but I'm not aware of anything similar in videogames. Looking at other GA BLP videogame developer articles like Jenova Chen, Neil Druckmann and Andy Schatz, I think this is sadly the norm: for the equivalent artistry sections in these articles, I mainly see interviews with the subjects being used to construct these sections. In summary, I would have preferred to use secondary sources covering Blow's practice in the article, but I don't think they exist (yet). Neuroxic (talk) 20:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Media:
  • References:
    • Blow often identifies trends in games he thinks do not strengthen the medium and restrain it from reaching its potential, or are unethical. need an explicit source for this.
    • By 2010, some other indie games had become commercially successful, leading Blow to co-found funding organization Indie Fund in 2010 This implies no indie games before Braid had been commercial successes, which I think needs a better source than the used one, which I don't think adequately supports that assertion.
      •   Done Oooh, this was a subtle one, great catch! I've rephrased it to remove this implication, there was certainly other indie game from around that time which also found financial success. Neuroxic (talk) 17:37, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
    • You've got inconsistent formatting on websites/publishers for certain citations, some are missing publisher info, some have them. Joystiq in ref 35 isn't italicized when other websites are, etc. Jonathan Blow is given as "John Blow" in some refs, which isn't how you spell his name, let alone the random shortening.
    • Spot-checked statements attributed to refs 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 22, 25, 35, 38, 42, 54, 58, 59, 66, 77 and 80.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

@David Fuchs: Thanks for the detailed review! I've gone through and attempted to address your concerns. Of course please let me know of any further suggestions, or further improvements I can make if you're not satisfied with the improvements I've made so far. Neuroxic (talk) 20:26, 15 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Most of what I brought up looks good; I'm going to do one more pass. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Did you know nomination

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Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments3 people in discussion
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet (talk) 04:26, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

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Improved to Good Article status by Neuroxic (talk). Self-nominated at 14:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Jonathan Blow; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.Reply

General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
  • Cited:  
  • Interesting:  
QPQ: None required.

Overall:   @Neuroxic: Nice work. Personally, I prefer ALT0 and ALT1, as I think ALT2 may not be interesting to a broad audience without specific knowledge of porting or set-top boxes. There is just one issue that needs to be addressed. Epicgenius (talk) 14:20, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply


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