# Talk:Jonathan Blow

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

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

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

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) 

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)

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) 

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) 

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)

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)

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
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. The standard map size was around 31 km2. In a February 1998 interview, 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. 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". Wulfram was released in open beta in July 1998 and free to play on Total Entertainment Network. TEN shut down slightly more than a year later, however, after which Blow brought the game to Interactive Magic. 
The name Wulfram went through several name changes, the final of which was Wulfram 2. For a while after Bolt Action Software folded,  Habermeier ran the final version of the game for free on the internet. 


### 2001–2004: contracting work
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.


### 2005–2008: Braid
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", 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. The game "is often credited as the catalyst for the indie [game] boom of the following years".
Available only through download, the game represented an early shift in video games from physical to digital stores. 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.


### 2009–2016: The Witness
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. Blow stated that the price point was "fairly reflective of what the game is", and journalists noted that other independent games of a similar scope and quality debuted with the same price. 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. After release, Blow said that The Witness was one of the top downloads on illegal BitTorrent websites, was pirated "just as heavily" as Braid, and noted that pirating the game does not help fund Thekla's next game." The game received several BAFTA and Game Developers Choice Awards nominations, and appeared on 'Best of the decade' features from IGN, Polygon, NME, CNET, and National Post.


### 2017–present: Jai Programming Language, untitled sokoban game, and Braid, Anniversary Edition
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. 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. 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). 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%. 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." The Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021.
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." In mid 2018, two programmers were working on the game, and the art team consisted of five people. The sokoban game had over 700 levels as of May 2021, and Blow stated that it will probably have more than 1000 upon release.
In August 2020, Thekla announced Braid, Anniversary Edition, a remastered edition of Braid. The game's art is being repainted with significantly more detail, and will have smoother animations and enhanced sound. The new edition will include detailed and thorough developer commentary from Blow. Players will be able to toggle between the original and upgraded version while playing. 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). Thekla planned to launch the game in early 2021.

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

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)
{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 16:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
The Braid section doesn't actually tell us anything about the game, neither its plot, nor even what genre it is.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 17:37, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 18:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
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)
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?
 Done On consideration, this quote wasn't needed so I removed it. Neuroxic (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 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?
 Done Sokoban is a genre (e.g. it's a popular tag on the Steam store), so I added a note to clarify what it is and the etymology of the name. Neuroxic (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC) 
As of 2023, the Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021 more weird chronology stuff.
 Done I agree that when the compiler reached version 100 was not that important, it's now removed. Neuroxic (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
"high dynamic range"  what does this mean?
 Done This was another quote the article didn't actually need, it's now gone. Neuroxic (talk) 03:29, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
 Done I rewrote and expanded this part to try and make it clearer. I reduced the note and made it obvious enough as to not need a reference. Neuroxic (talk) 23:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
 Done Yeah in retrospect I agree, it now simply states it's in a beta release. Neuroxic (talk) 20:42, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
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)
Media:
Free images appropriately tagged and licensed.
As an aesthetic thing, [[:]] is not a great image (out of date, distant, and dark.) Of the images in the article I'd say a cropped version of File:Jonathan Blow, Gamelab 2018 (42432130094).jpg is probably the best one.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure the fair use rationale for File:Wulfram hovertank screenshot.jpg meets NFCC. Wulfram gets only a single direct mention, and is part of a section/period of time covered in just two paragraphs. 
 Done I think the only NFCC which the image maybe doesn't satisfy is 8. (Contextual significance), but if you think that if the image didn't actually communicate the scope of what Blow and Habermeier did then it has to go. Neuroxic (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
 Done (removed sentence) Neuroxic (talk) 15:18, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
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)
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.
 Done I attempted to follow the guidelines at MOS:VG, with a focus on italicization and when not to include a publisher (e.g. when the publication / publisher's names differ significantly. Neuroxic (talk) 15:12, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
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.
Ref 6 is used to cite Blow learning BASIC on the TRS80, but technically he just says "assembly languages" and mentioned BASIC only as an example of RadioShack books, so I'm not sure you can say for sure he was programming in BASIC specifically from that ref.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Ref 15 is to a podcast but it's missing the timestamp present on other refs from the same source.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Ref 55 has an archive template issue.
 Done Neuroxic (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Ref 54 is just pointing to his Twitch channel, which I think is a step beyond what you can do to cite the statement of what his videos include (and what defines "regularly"?)
 Done (removed sentence) Neuroxic (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

@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)
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)