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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

Does he though?

It seems like he just makes these broad critical statements then pisses off to continue to do nothing.

I wouldn’t even say he’s accomplished great things. He’s accomplished some decent things.

He’s released two games which barely qualify as games. They’re more like puzzles. You don’t need to play them ever again after you finish the first time. Braid is ok. And the Witness is just Flow. And then after that he’s been working on a programming language for the past decade which he hasn’t released to the public because “it’s not finished”.

He got lucky and made his nut and ever since then has thought of himself as way more talented than he is.

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> He’s released two games which barely qualify as games.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but it's worth pointing out that Braid is not only widely considered one of the best games ever made[0], its success was also instrumental in the explosion of indie games in the late 00s/10s. The Witness didn't quite reach the same heights, but it got an 87 on Metacritic and was a financial success.

Even if it's only two games, that's a much stronger resume than most. You can argue that he takes too long to develop games, but other studios also take 8 years to make games and come out with Concord or Dragon Age: Veilguard.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered...

> Braid is not only widely considered one of the best games ever made[0]

The source here is a wikipedia article containing "A list of video games that multiple have considered to be among the best of all time"

I don't know anyone who is into gaming that takes the opinions of "video game journalists or magazines" seriously anymore. They are so obviously just a marketing extension of the videogame industry that you can't trust anything they say. Look at recent developments with Dragon Age Inquisition. Reviewers gave it great scores, but it flopped hard enough that Bioware had huge layoffs [0]

Braid is a game that people barely remember exists today, and in another 10 years it will be even more obscure. It is not remotely an all time great

> its success was also instrumental in the explosion of indie games in the late 00s/10s

Don't give Braid too much credit here, it caught the indie game wave at the start but the wave was coming either way. The explosion happened at the same time Braid came out, not years later inspired by its success.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/02/after-drag...

> Look at recent developments with Dragon Age Inquisition. Reviewers gave it great scores, but it flopped hard enough that Bioware had huge layoffs [0]

First off, it's Dragon Age: Veilguard, not Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Second off, it's had a better release (in terms of sales X days from launch) than literally every other Dragon Age came to date.

While it's true that it underperformed expectations, that's more because the expectations were ludicrous to begin with, and the actual performance can hardly be called a flop.

I like Braid. I do. But, it’s more of a puzzle than a game. Once you figure out the answer, you’re done. Like Myst.

Games have some element of skill involved and Blow’s products lack that.

And that’s not to knock the products. I like puzzles. And not everything has to be a game. Will Wright has said that he does not make games, he makes toys. Digital toys.

I also think people judge his work on his reputation more than on its merits

> I like Braid. I do. But, it’s more of a puzzle than a game. Once you figure out the answer, you’re done. Like Myst.

This criteria is very specific to you. Outer Wilds is also widely considered one of the greatest games of all time, and also one of the least replayable once you've beaten it. Myst too, since you mentioned it.

Besides, Braid is as much a platformer as it is a puzzler... is Super Mario Bros not a game since the levels don't change once you beat them?

I'm confused. When did puzzle games stop being games?

I despise Blow but this is a critique that borders on the incoherent. You could just as well say that when you figure out how to hurt enemies without taking damage, you're done with action games.

Being able to execute the action is part of the challenge. Being able to do it once does not guarantee you will be able to do it again.

Neither Braid nor The Witness nor Myst have that quality. Once you know solution, it’s done, it never changes.

You seem to think being a puzzle is an insult. But it’s not, it’s just not a game.

Wentworth and Ravensburg make decent money publishing puzzles. But neither company tries to say this is how all construction should be done. Which is how Blow comes across to me.

I do agree, although I do like him. I find it fun to listen to Blow’s rants and part of me feels like he is right to a degree. It would be nice if programmers knew more about the platforms they are developing on.

But it’s pretty clear that Blow’s process does not make him particularly productive. The dude obviously works insanely hard and is talented. I can’t imagine how much he would be able to produce if he leaned on some abstractions.

I think you're getting close to ad hominem. It should be sufficient to point out how little overall people like Blow have accomplished. Blow is a hard worker, and yet it took him and his team 8 years to develop The Witness, which as you pointed out isn't anything revolutionary. I think there's a weird form of elitism at play here. Working close to the hardware isn't hard. There was a point in my early 20s where I too felt like I'm better, because I know how a computer works, or that making games in pure C is harder than in C++. As an adult this is cringe. I work in embedded, and I can tell you there's enough low level programmers out there to threaten my job security.

The Witness isn't revolutionary, but it is crafted with the care of someone who cares about the small details of 3D worlds. Besides being easily one of the deepest/broadest puzzle games of the decade, it is GORGEOUS, and filled to the brim with visual scenes that take your breath away.

To me it's something more akin to the iPod. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." was absolutely a correct way to dismiss it as nothing revolutionary. And yet it's perfect well-rounded craftsmanship WAS revolutionary.

From what it seems, Blow is doing exactly the same thing with his next game too. And there's something admirable about that.

I say this as someone who disagrees with 80% of what he says, but VEHEMENTLY agree with the remaining 20.

I'm not dismissing the craftsmanship that went into making The Witness. All I'm saying is that it's cringe to be so critical of other developers when in essence he spends an extraordinary amount of time on his projects, and hasn't shipped anything cutting edge or anything other developers can even use.

I thought it was boring and not was not impressed by the visuals.

That's not germane

Blow routinely trashes software he’s never had to write.

Single user software that is the sole focused application when it is running. It saves nothing of importance and doesn’t alter any system to any appreciable degree.

You know what’s more impressive than The Witness? Any web browser. It has to deal with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, SGML, SVG, etc. An entire runtime environment with garbage collector. A web browser can run VS Code. It can run Doom. It can be made to run The Witness.

Blow does not remotely acknowledge the complexity needed to make modern software. He treats his incredibly small domain as the pinnacle of the craft.

You take for granted that delivering the user value of a web application needs to be in the form of dealing with "HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, SGML, SVG, etc. An entire runtime environment with garbage collector." There is nothing inevitable about that.

No, I'm saying the web browser itself is an incredibly complex piece of software that has to deal with a lot more than what The Witness does.

I actually said nothing about web applications themselves.

Don't mistake flash for substance. The Witness may be pretty, but it gets to throw away a lot of complexity. Even as a game, it's not terribly complex.

The only point of the web browser is to achieve the user value accomplished by web pages and web applications. My point is there's nothing about that problem which inevitably requires "incredibly complex" software.

If "achieve(s) the user value" by being an entire execution platform. Without the browser there is nothing for those pages or applications to run on.

Try writing a web browser that can render even simple, static pages. Then realize you haven't even started writing anything close to modern browsers.

You have a remarkably closed mind.

Have you shipped a commercial-quality 3D game engine and game? How long did it take you?

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