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Braid is out!August 6th, 2008 |
Jonathan Blow’s labor of love, Braid, already an award-winner, is out. And it is getting called the best game on XBLA ever, one of the best games of the generation, and its reviews are stellar.
Go try it out. Congrats, Jon!
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Okay, I guess… I can’t have any respect for that guy until he retracts his disparaging remarks about everyone who works in games and, especially, my profession. That’s right, Raph, he thinks your work is “mediocre.” He also thinks you’re “corrupted.” Oh, and that starting Areae was a “huge mistake.”
It does seem that this should have more press that it’s getting given the amount of hype. I don’t have a 360, so I don’t care. I’m a bit disappointed that this isn’t PC freeware; this game is the sort that I’d donate for but not buy.
Morgan: Jon’s actually a friend — he & I disagree on plenty, but he also has cited the book many times approvingly. BTW, I can’t find the original interview. 
LSK: Freeware? He’s a professional developer who has been working on it for three years. Surely he should be able to charge for it?
From investing three years, he’s going to have to make a LOT of money to recoup the costs of building it. I’m quite happy to pay; I just have to wait until it comes out on PC. It looks fantastic, and I love the blog describing how they made the game.
That’s the right attitude!
Such a beautiful game, to say it should be freeware is selling it rediculously short. I’ve not been as charmed and captivated by such a game in years.
Sigh, why you gotta keep tempting me to get a 360? 
I’m with Morgan. I need to get over my opinion that Blow is a pompous, egotistical jerk before I give him any of my money. If it’s really as good as people are saying, I’ll have to pretend I don’t think he’s a blowhard and try it anyway.
Looks quite fun. Unfortunately, I’m one 360 short of being able to play it, and I suppose it would be way too much work to port it over to have it be wiiWare. Maybe someday, though!
I don’t know where you guys are getting some of this from. As Raph said, he and I are real-life friends (though the kind of peer-friends who just see each other a few times a year, as happens when you live far apart). I don’t think Raph’s work is “mediocre” or “corrupted” or that Areae was a “major mistake”. In fact a year and a half ago, I was doing consulting for a company that wanted to make a very big-money MMO deal, and I traveled around the country visiting about 12 different companies, and I recommended to them Raph’s company as absolutely the best choice by far. (They didn’t take my recommendation, but that’s because they really wanted to make something like Second Life).
Please don’t make a habit of taking my words out of context in some attempt at character assassination. Life as a straight-speaking person on the internet is hard enough without that.
Jonathan Blow wrote:
I don’t know where you guys are getting some of this from.
The link to your own blog might be a big clue.
I don’t see what is so controversial about what he said. Jon said he values making his game and serving the idea with integrity more than he values marketing it or making money off it. It’s very starving-artist-in-a-garret, but I also know Jon counts sales and tracks the business quite closely. 
Jon is plenty controversial, and we HAVE had plenty of (cordial, I think) big arguments about games on forums and stuff. But I think it’s just because we’re both passionate about them. *shrug*
I think he disses the industry as a whole for the sake of trying to get the industry to aspire to better.
Gotta agree with all of the reviews – very well done game, found out about it via a blog post this morning, bought it, and it made me late for work, and made me miss dinner when I got home. Very well polished – if there’s ever a sequel, I’m all over it. Until then I’ll just have to tell friends!
I did have a slightly negative impression of Jonathan from the overall tenor of what he’s written, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The Uwe Bolls and Derek Smarts of this world are genuine blowhards in that they can’t actually deliver. From what I’ve seen of Braid, Jonathan can in fact deliver. Although I don’t really agree with his blanket statements about Big Corporate, I do think he’s earned (albeit retroactively) the right to make them.
That being said, I’ve only just finished the demo levels, so…
Braid is an outstanding game. I haven’t sat down and truly enjoyed a video game in months, but tonight I stayed up until 4am collecting every last puzzle piece. Clever, original mechanics and beautiful artwork.
I’m with Jon on this one. It’s not that making money on your games is “bad”, it’s that making games for the sole purpose of making money is bad. Like he says, if you aren’t making a game for the purpose of paying for your daily bread, then selling the game isn’t really top priority. What is top priority then is making the game that you fundamentally set out to create in the first place.
I’m not seeing where good marketing is a requirement to making the game you set out to create in the first place.
Whether you believe business and/or marketing is/are bad or not, you still have to agree that it has times where it’s very useful and times where it is an abject failure. Funding the creation of multiple projects, success, creating an excellent game without reference to potential sales, abject failure. When you really boil down Jonathan’s arguments, it seems to me that he would just prefer everyone create excellent games without reference to potential sales.
You may not agree, but don’t act like he is some pompus ass for daring to state that the business side can get in the way of the pure creation side.
Thinking is fun! Congrats to Jon. I don’t have a 360, not going to get one for one game. But it sounds really cool and imaginative.
It’s always been my hope for a MMORPG that’s loaded with puzzling things to explore. Time is a cool thing, I’ve also wanted to see music and mechanical elements in the puzzles, as well as historical lost lore tied to it all.
Making money is a bad prime directive. Make a good game, and they will come. The internet allows for anything that’s good and cool to spread faster than wildfire. And people are looking for cool things.
It’s Okay, congratulation John.
Please don’t make a habit of taking my words out of context in some attempt at character assassination.
Don’t worry. They are jealous.
Raph wrote:
I don’t see what is so controversial about what he said. Jon said he values making his game and serving the idea with integrity more than he values marketing it or making money off it.
That’s not what he said at all.
Jonathan Blow wrote:
Marketing is not, in fact, a need.
Blow claims that marketing is unnecessary. He claims that this is “fact.” Marketing is a universal discipline that is necessary to everything from yard sales to career development, from charities to government. Marketing is not, in fact, unnecessary. You can’t be a producer without engaging in some form of marketing.
Contrary to popular belief, even great products don’t sell themselves. Newton’s laws are applicable to commerce. Marketing is momentum. No momentum, no market.
Getting enough people to buy your game such that you make money is not a need, if you really care about the integrity of what you are making.
Blow claims that people who strive to generate revenue from sale of their products do not care about the integrity of their products. Clearly wrong. This is why people who are not experts on a topic should not pretend to be experts on the topic.
That integrity is the primary need; earning enough money through selling that thing, such that you can make more without taking up another job or whatever, is a luxury.
Profit is vital to the continued operation of any business, including charities. I’ve already written on this subject at length. As Drucker wrote, “Profit is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence.”
People bend to this luxury all the time. There are lots of ways to rationalize it. But I think it is usually due to weakness — or rather, lack of commitment to principles.
The purpose of profit is to ensure that corporations can continue delivering on their promises to consumers over the long term. Generating profit is a matter of integrity, not “weakness” or a “lack of commitment to principles.”
Among indies there is some kind of desire to be more like bigger companies, to be “professional” about making games. Owning a business and making money and having business cards is all part of that. But if you really care about games, it’s a huge mistake, and being “professional” will only hurt your work and cause it to be mediocre.
Blow’s message is that if you’re a professional, you don’t really care about games, and because you’re not a “true believer,” your work is “mediocre.” Since Blow apparently excludes you, Raph, Blow’s rule is more to the effect of “you’re not a true believer unless I say so.”
Business is, inherently, a corruptive influence on everything that is non-business.
Only crazy people believe such things.
Going to have to side with Morgan on this one. Yes, Morgan’s stating his position strongly and might be seeming a bit rude, but then Jonathan Blow did the same thing in the interview.
I don’t believe if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door.
Marketing is “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service” according to merriam-webster.com. So when he set up a website to promote the product, when he did interviews to discuss the product, when he selected a price point for the product, he was engaging in marketing.
Don’t get me wrong, I think underneath those statements is a fair point. Sometimes, while trying to market a game, compromises are made that negatively impact the game. But that’s true of every step in the chain.
Microsoft seems to be doing a good job of promoting Braid from within Xbox Live. Release on the PC will undoubtedly help as well. Braid is also getting a fair share of coverage on a lot of major gaming websites.
Jon is saying “make the game for the love of it and because the game wants to be made.” Marketing DOES have zero place in that. You would market it after — if you wanted to. But marketing is only need if commerce is a need, and commerce may not be the motivating factor. You assume the presence of a company, for example, when you cite Drucker.
I have many many games none of you have ever seen. Many of them work, are playable and fun. Marketing has not mattered to them, and may never matter. Would you play guitar if you had no possible earnings from it? I would, and I do.
Now, one of the places where I disagree with Jon is that I think marketing can often make games BETTER. Speaking here of inbound marketing, not just “selling,” of course.
Is there a link to the interview that’s not broken? I can’t tell Morgan off until I see the actual rant he’s gotten himself worked up over.
Also, I’m with Amaranthar in that I’m not going to buy a 360 just for this, though I’m tempted. It would make “fifteen dollars” what… a couple hundred? For something I’d probably never touch again? Waiting for PC port. =/
Business is, inherently, a corruptive influence on everything that is non-business.Only crazy people believe such things.
Only crazy artists. And not all artists are people. ^_^
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