Posted by Bob Mackey
The Onion A.V. Club recently put up an extensive and excellent interview with Jonathan Blow that's sure to piss some people off and make others fall deeper in love with the outspoken game designer. I'm leaning more towards the latter, even though he mocks my chosen profession--hey, at least I was smart enough not to even attempt an analysis at Braid's storyline and pass my word off as law. Which is why the following inflammatory quote really doesn't bug me. Honest:
What’s interesting to me is that in terms of people who I feel are getting what it’s about – and here I’m not even talking about what the elements of the story mean, like, whatever symbolism and metaphors and things are in there. But even the structure of the game, like, there’s a fundamental structure and reasons in the way things are laid out, and parts of the game that are meant to draw people’s attention to certain things, regardless of what’s contained in that structure. And what’s interesting to me is that some people get that, and some people don’t. But that’s completely decorrelated from people’s claimed positions in the sphere of commentary. By which I mean, there are lots of random blog posters on places like Gamespot or NeoGAF or whatever who show a clearer understanding of the game than people who are all, “I’m all about games, and narrative and meaning, and I write a blog just to tell you about how I analyze all these things.” Those people have the same hit rate as your general forum poster. So that’s given me a cynical response to that whole community, which is just that, “Guys, are you sure you’re qualified to do this?” And that sounds asshole-ish, and mean and snarky, but that’s just how I’m feeling right now.
More good stuff: Blow mentions other variations of the time-altering mechanic that never made it to the final game:
There were some other levels, like a turn-based one, where the idea is that time is always paused until you make a decision, and then time goes forward by a second or two seconds based on what decision you made, and then time stops for another decision. So it’s like a turn-based strategy game, but in the same platformer world. That one I actually got as far as programming, and making a couple of levels for, and there were some neat consequences to it. But there weren’t 12 puzzles’ worth of neat consequences that were of the same quality as the other worlds. And I just decided it didn’t quite fit.
Go check out the whole thing here. And don't feel guilty if you come away from the interview thinking that Braid was thiiis close to being named after one of Neitzsche's books.
Related Links:
On Beating Braid
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He's Right).
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About Bob Mackey
For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's
Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.
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