Jonathan Blow

American video game designer and programmer · United States · Developers · Born 1971 · age 54

Read more often than usual, most of all on 8 October.

6.9 times the usual readers on 8 October. 4,160 readers on 8 October, against about 606 a day before the rise.

He made two puzzle games that sit in the gap between art installation and cryptic exam - Braid in 2008, The Witness eight years later - and both became touchstones for what an indie game could be if you pushed craft and budget past the usual ceiling.

A life in dates

2022“I can complain about games for my whole life.”In their wordsMay 2022Interview with the No Frauds Club, May 2022Read the whole statement

2017“The way I think about puzzles is a real puzzle, is something you may not ever figure out.”In their wordsNovember 2017Q&A session at Graz Technical University, November 2017Read the whole statement

2016“Here's a thing I like to point out to people - I'm not really anti-piracy, I'm not really pro-piracy. I pirated stuff when I was a kid because I didn't feel like I had a choice.”In their wordsApril 2016In an interview with Brian Moriarty, April 2016Read the whole statement

“People have this reaction, ‘Why would I be interested in a game where you just walk around and draw lines on a bunch of panels? Why is there even a world there?”In their wordsIn an interview with Time, 2016Read the whole statement

“I feel like we don’t yet understand what games are capable of as a medium.”In their wordsIn an interview with Time, 2016Read the whole statement

2014“So, let me say something that may - I mean, some people get a little nervous when you talk about things like meditation and I'm gonna say something even worse than that.”In their wordsIn Blow's talk "Attempting Deep Work, Surviving Long Projects", 2014Read the whole statement

1971Born17 November 1971

Also in Deutsch

Photos 6

Blow learned how to program in BASIC on a TRS-80 Color Computer during his childhood.

Throughout the early 2000s Blow wrote a monthly technical column for the print magazine Game Developer.

Blow talked about assumptions underlying game design at the Montreal International Games Summit in 2007.

Blow talked about truth in game design at the Game Developers Conference in Europe in 2011.

Blow discussed the similarities between free-to-play games and bad television at a CreativeMornings meetup in Portland in 2013.

In their own words 10

Jonathan Blow

10 statements, newest first

I can complain about games for my whole life.
May 2022, Interview with the No Frauds Club, May 2022, Own words
[In games], a lot of the problems that we need to solve [are] global state manipulation problems.
Jul 2020, Interview "S1E09 - Jonathan Blow | On the Metal Podcast", July 2020, Own words
The way I think about puzzles is a real puzzle, is something you may not ever figure out.
Nov 2017, Q&A session at Graz Technical University, November 2017, Own words

Wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0

On YouTube

99.3K subscribers

Open channel on YouTube

About this person

Blow got interested in game programming in middle school, studied computer science and English at UC Berkeley, then dropped out to start a game company that folded in the dot-com crash. He spent years as a contract developer and co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop before Braid made him prominent in 2008. He poured that game's earnings into The Witness, forming Thekla Inc. and stretching development across nearly a decade until its 2016 release - another critical and commercial win. Frustrated with C++ during that long build, he began designing his own programming language, code-named Jai, now in beta, and a new game to go with it. His work runs on custom engines, costs more and takes longer than most indie projects allow, and he's become as known for sharp public opinions about the industry as for the games themselves.

Country

United States