Joystiq

The Witness cares about you more than you know

Ben Gilbert — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:00:00 EST

Soon after launching his debut hit, Braid, on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, creator Jonathan Blow issued a cheeky walkthrough tip on his personal site. In so many words, it said "suck it up and don't use a walkthrough" - a statement which many saw as reflective of a perceived "my way" attitude to game design.

Others saw it more expectantly, knowing Blow to be a perfectionist and not one to offer hints on his games. He hates games that hold your hand. "Treating the player like a baby all the time, I don't like that," he told me during an interview last week at GDC.

That's why he's designed his latest game, The Witness, to hold your hand just long enough to find the path. "What I do is I work really hard to not condescend the player and to not treat the player like they're stupid, but at the same time to follow good game design practices. This game has to be learnable, and there has to be tutorialization in it, but it's not patronizing tutorialization."

Unlike Braid's more linear pacing, The Witness is designed as an open world - albeit a very small open world - so that difficult puzzles can either be skipped (not all must be solved to reach the end) or passed by for later on. Blow said this was intentionally designed to respect the time of players. "It's more about crafting a small, heavily interconnected jewel that gives people the highest density experience, respecting their time that way. There's not gonna be a lot of walking around through empty lands in this game."

Though the game is looking more complete than ever, The Witness has no set platforms or launch window beyond PC and iOS, and "some time in 2012."

The Witness cares about you more than you know originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Witness is Jon Blow's second shot at all or nothing

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:00:00 EST

When is Braid creator Jonathan Blow's second game, The Witness, going to launch? None of your damn business is when. "When it's good," Blow told Joystiq during a GDC 2012 preview meetup. He's not even sure where The Witness will end up -- beyond PC and iOS, that is. "PSN a year from now? XBLA a year from now?," Blow said. It's possible, but more of a question of if it's worth the expense. The Witness is Blow's second ambitious attempt at crafting a story built around brilliant yet obvious puzzles, but this time it's a fully 3D world. A beautiful and complex one at that. And expenses are adding up.

He hired two new programmers not so long ago. Blow can't continue development forever, of course. "In the case of this game, the answer is also when I run out of money. Which may happen," he said. But wait a minute -- didn't Braid rake in boatloads of money and cost around quarter of a million bucks to make?

"Like I said, I just hired two more programmers and that's expensive. I'm spending all the Braid money on this game," Blow said. That's right: all the Braid money. Right on time, Chris Hecker -- SpyParty dev, hotel room roommate, and good buddy of Jon's -- shouted, "Crazy person!" To temper the jest at his friend's expense, Hecker admonished, "You attain orbit, and then you stay in orbit!"

Continue reading The Witness is Jon Blow's second shot at all or nothing

The Witness is Jon Blow's second shot at all or nothing originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What's in a Name: Thekla, Inc.

Ben Gilbert — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:00:00 EST

Thekla, Inc.'s Jonathan Blow, creative lead of Braid and upcoming game The Witness, revealed the following Italo Calvino quote, from the book "Invisible Cities," as the origin behind his new dev studio's name.

"Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask 'Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?' the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer 'So that it's destruction cannot begin.' And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, 'Not only the city.'

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. 'What meaning does your construction have?' he asks. 'What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?'

'We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,' they answer.

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. 'There is the blueprint,' they say."

- Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities"

What's in a Name: Thekla, Inc. originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Witness preview: Peering through the Myst

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST

"Hey man, come in," a weary looking Jonathan Blow said. He was welcoming me into his temporary New York City abode, a swanky hotel in midtown where he'd been put up for a few days to show off a preview build of his next game, The Witness. His bare feet indicated to me that I'd either just woken him up, or that he was very comfortable with strangers. It turned out to be a combination of both, as Blow's PR-less presentation style (and sleepy demeanor) soon revealed.

"We started the game about two years ago, for real. I actually started it as a prototype earlier than that, before I finished Braid. I wasn't convinced I really wanted to do it, because I was still in the mindset of 'I'm the lone indie developer who types everything in himself and this is gonna be a much more ambitious project.' So I didn't wanna do it for a while, then I played with some other game ideas. Kinda liked those, but decided I really wanted to do this," Blow cursorily explained before I jumped in. While the dev process has seen contract workers, Blow's new studio (the ... uniquely named Thekla, Inc.) still only employs three full-time devs, himself included. "We're gonna be going into more of a production-type phase this next year," he added.

The work of just one 3D artist has made the game's mysterious, puzzle-filled island alive with bright, colorful, abstract flora. In fact, outside of a handful of expected bugs I encountered, The Witness is shaping up to be another standout work from a developer already well-respected in his field. Blow left me with one final note before I jumped in: "What you play here is basically the game, it's just gonna be a better version of this that we show."

Gallery: The Witness

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The Witness preview: Peering through the Myst originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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