Johnathan Blow is an American Independent game developer. He has been making games most of his life and is well known for his best titles Braid, and The Witness. Jonathan Blow has a unique point of view and philosophy on what games are and what they should be.
Jonathan's Game Philosophy
Jonathan Blow deeply cares about the importance of Indie games and he believes that others should too.
He also believes that people use the term Fun very loosely when referring to games. Movies have an expectation depending on their genre but games always are supposed to be "Fun". Jonathan thinks that is not always the case. He believes that games can be more or less than just fun, but they could be meant to be interesting or gruesome.
Another belief Jonathan has is that Game Developers should respect the gamer and believe them to be more intelligent than we think. We should be letting them discover these pieces of the puzzle, or game mechanics without holding their hand with every step.
Having the ability to discover how a game works is a part of what can make the game enjoyable. Without games having that ah-ha moment, the game can become stale.
Jonathan says that AAA companies take low-risk chances in order to gain profit. He thinks that this discussion needs to be had and talked about if we really do want to take games to the next level, and not just create them for profit.
The Success of Braid
Braid is a platform and puzzle game released in 2008. It was developed by Jonathan Blow and became well known for its time-warping mechanic. There are a total of 6 time-warping mechanics that is different in each world. Jonathan was 40,000 dollars in debt and had invested 200,000 into the game. Braid has made 4 million dollars in revenue to this day.
A New Coding Language
Jai is a new programming language that Jonathan Blow is developing for low friction development. He has shown a few demos of it at cons and on Twitch and continues to work on it. Jai is a data-oriented language. Jonathan plans on using this language to develop his next game. He plans on making this game a 20-year long project.
Final Thoughts
Jonathan Blow has made thought-provoking changes to the gaming industry and continues to do so for a portion of his life. He is always looking for new ways to innovate both AAA and indie game developers to focus on what gaming truly is and what it should look like in the future.