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Comment by seivan | Hacker News Reader

It's hard not to admire Blow. Not only does he make amazing games, but he actually powers through and finishes them. That's a talent on its own. I mean put aside his engineering and design skill-sets, actually finishing should be part of what one would have to 'learn'. At least for me.

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One of my favourite talks from a developer was his talk on "Deep Work,"[0] where he talks about how he manages to keep working on projects that take a very long time to complete. He has some pretty good advice with regards to managing one's own psychology and avoiding burnout while being productive.

[0] https://vimeo.com/94259578

Thanks, haven't seen that one.

Cal Newport just released a book on "Deep Work" that talks about that subject. I haven't finished it yet, but so far the book is really interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/d...

Watching the talk but the crowd noise is exhausting to the ears. Would be nice if someone could filter it somehow and reupload.

After Braid, Blow (rightly or wrongly) took an immense amount of criticism for his views and opinions. Even more admirable is that he shrug all that off to come thru' with another game (unlike Phil Fish who took all his criticism rather badly).

Fish also stole much of his stuff, so you can't expect him to steal twice as he has eyes on him this time. http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/evidence-that-phil-fish-st...

I actually paid for Fez, apart from its little gimmick and art work, it wasn't really much. Never finished it even, and I finished Assassins Creed 1 ;-)

Blow just seems genuinely good at writing games/software and creating puzzles, but even better at finishing.

I feel like I could pop into that forum, ask "what is code, exactly?" and get 25 different, incorrect answers.

Yes, IGN message boards are hardly a place to cite as evidence of anything.

Your assertion that he "stole" Fez is really not supported by the purported evidence you linked. And you totally missed the point of Fez if you think it only has the 2.5D and artwork going for it.

I as a consumer missed the point of the game by not being enticing enough for me to finish it so I could get it, apart from its special 3D and artwork, yes.

I am not saying he Stole Fez, I am saying he seems to have mistreated people who worked on it with him. In the end, Blow is a force of nature, Fish was lucky to have someone code the engine for him, period. Look through the videos on Jai, there is some good stuff there that's not related to games in general.

"Fish also stole most of his stuff" was a direct quote from your comment, so yeah you kind of did say he stole it.

Since when is it possible to steal ideas?

Edit: Sure, it's perfectly valid to extend the meaning of "steal" to include "be inspired by" or "copy", but that does nothing but devalue its original meaning.

Yeah, agreed, he's quite the talent. I was more than a little pissed off when Indie Game: The Movie made a special effort to make him look like some kind of nutball for the audience to laugh at. I can't stress how terrible that documentary was. It played up hateful stereotypes of "pathetic geeks" and other things best found on sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory.

Blow was treated very unfairly, imo. He's actually interesting to listen to and something of a deep and critical thinker. Clearly he's someone who understands that games can be a transcendent experience like any art.

I just hope he's working on a VR game soon. I suspect the Vive is going to change everything in a couple months. I'd love to VR in the kinds of worlds he builds.

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