Jonathan Blow on indies, games as art, storytelling

I'm calling it right now. Blow's next game 'Crawling Out Of My Own Ass'...

It's a quest against the clock against the backdrop of one pretentious numbnuts' ego devours his own head.

But it's really about the Tuskeegee Airmen.

Games aren't art. Thats why things like Mario Galaxy, Killzone 2, and Viva Pinata can get such high ratings. If you take them as games, they are damn good. But if you look at them as art, they fall flat on their faces.

I loved braid, but as something different and fun to do, and am looking forward to his second game, but if all games were like that, im pretty sure it would get boring really quickly.

Stop calling yourself Jonathan Blow and I'll start listening to your opinions.

I can't say I remember ever having to do that.....

Here's the thing, man. I want the games that feature beautifully crafted landscapes, the actual craft and art of making games respected. I want the games' mechanics and graphics noticed for the artistry that goes into that. The packaging of the game can even be artistic.

Not all games, of course, but many games strive to entertain and motivate.

But I don't think it's this guy's job to talk down to people who have this as one of their hobbies. Or hard working people who make creating games their career, to tell them that they're not serious about what they do.

I also, and you can disagree if you want, don't think it's Blow's job to pretend as if Braid is the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread, because there are hundreds if not thousands of folks on the web more than willing to call his game 'extremely deep'. It's fashionable now to ask this guy what his opinion is, and believe me, I've known guys like Blow most of my life, and nothing they love more than giving their opinion on things like art.

I for one see that the emperor has no clothes. His game was good, but because he left out things like a real plot, and had the purplest prose this side of a pre-graduate Creative Writing course, people who don't critically think about these things equate that to 'art'. And, they're completely right, to their tastes. His game was lacking a lot of the things that compel me to want to play it more than once.

I think that if you put Braid up against Super Mario Brothers 3, in terms of gameplay...it's a loss. I probably won't play Braid beginning to end again. There's nothing about it that goes beyond 'Blinx' to me, really, and isn't as fun as reading an actual book.

If you pretend hard enough, I suppose, there's a story there....something about nukes, right? Guess what? An editor of mine said, when you write like that, it means you DON'T HAVE A STORY. You leave it up to the audience to decide what it was about. Especially, if afterward, you're asked 'What's it all about?' and don't...or can't...say...Then there probably wasn't much there to begin with.

You like stuff like that? Or do you say you like stuff like that to feel like you're smart? Let me let you in on something: You're smart. The fact that you had that needling little feeling when playing 'Braid' that said 'Wow...what am I missing?' says that your brain is working just fine.

It's the reason why they haven't released 'What Is It?' on DVD. Because it's not entertaining to people who don't pretend to be entertained by 'art' in that mode. And the artist in that case (George McFly) doesn't want his movie to be sullied by money, and enterprise, and all the things we have in what we like to call 'society'.

Sorry, I suppose I'm the only one offended the way he shits on people in the industry now that he's the flavor of the month.

Put out another game, Blow. Let's see your hand. Or, you're all talk.

Artistic legitimacy, the idea that there's an art establishment to aspire to, is fiction.

Sorry to break it to you guys.

It was this puzzle where you had to head a goomba to make it go someplace. But I think it was only necessary to catch a star

I'd have liked some subtle hints about stars too, I didn't even bother trying to figure out where they were.

Why are gamers so determined to have games be art?

Do you think it gives your pastime legitimacy if it's art? Like you can tell people you are really deep because you can appreciate the intricacies of Marcus Fenix?

I don't think video games have to justified like that. Games are games, and they have been played for fun since the dawn of time.

Now, I'm not saying they can't be art. Braid (from what I played of it) was grasping at it.

The conscious attempt to make games into art is misguided. Games will become art by going down their own path, not path pre-determined by the "artists" of other mediums

Manly,

I thought it was hard enough. If it was any harder then I would probably have given up or checked out gamefaq's. Sorry the game wasn't hard enough for your deified gray matter.

It's insecurity, man.

I proudly tell people I play video games. When they ask why, I sit them down, give them the Wiimote and have them bowl a couple frames in WiiSports. Of course, this never happens. But I would, if someone asked me to justify my hobby, be able to talk about aspects that verge on artistry, and show them things that would make them understand why I like the pastime.

But what I wouldn't do is feel as though games, to be a justifiable expenditure of time, have to be 'art' in the way Blow describes it. It's a pastime, like any other, and many times it can transcend, but Braid (to me, at any rate) is a clear play to that crowd that pretends that they know better than everyone else what everyone should do with their time to be 'intelligent'.

Nor would I feel the need to justify my gaming hobby to anyone. Why bother? It's not my job to tell people how to spend their time, or convince them to spend their time doing what I do.

Insecurity. Get over that, and you'll get over the need to see games as art.

Games can definitely be art, and NOT just indie games either (sorry trendy indie hipsters). But like all things it is all in the beholder. Also am I the only one that did not care for braid and think it was WAY WAY over hyped. I mean It was cool..but not anything i would remember.

Good God, we're in an age of smug douchebaggery - pandering, self-centered jackasses browbeating everyone else with their slightly-above-average vocabulary, and everyone too wowed by the 5-dollar words to care that they're being insulted.

Hey, Jonathan Blow-Me, how many copies did your game sell, anyway? Yeah, thought so. That explains your pompous gas-bagging. If only we could all be like you, only caring about sales when not getting them supposedly reaffirms our awesomeness and 'higher artistic intent'.

Games which have more of a meaning than kill-everything-and-put-a-bit-of-a-story into-it, (Gears, Killzone, etc.) will always be put under scrutiny as computerised violence and glorified violence, but games that have a slightly deeper meaning, such as Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Half Life 2 (maybe), possibly even Far Cry 2 (yeah, it's fictional but the underlying theme is real)... These are the ones that will be seen eventually as art. They clearly have work put into both aspects of the game and show that they are trying to say something by it...

Only when the general public see past the 'games are corrupting my son's mind' thing that we are seeing a lot of lately.

"art" is an impossible topic. But making games more respected definitely needs game developers and publishers to have a little more faith in their audience.

While it may have been true for a long time that most gamers were teenage boys in their bedroom (and many developers too), most of us have grown up.

I think we can take it if the developers decide to try some stories that are a little deeper, or decide to give us slightly more complex situations, relationships and topics.

It'd be nice if a game like mirror's edge didn't get noticed partly just because it had a realistic lead female that wasn't wearing underwear. Or if more games (but not all, of course) felt grown up.