Talk:Jonathan Blow
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Deletion of "Criticism"
I would like to suggest that the "Criticism" section is deleted. The paragraph speak of Blow's works and not of himself. WikiTryHardDieHard (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree, I dont see what the section adds to the readers understanding, and it seems like positive criticism would also need to be included, as that was the primary response to his work. I get the impression that someone wanted a way to spout their opinion.--Bcomnes (talk) 20:06, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Ok, sounds reasonable; I've made that edit. 128.32.39.99 (talk) 20:01, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
minor change
Someone listed this guy as dying on the internet. Deleted it. 129.174.106.5 (talk) 18:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Added a sentence about his next game, which should probably be made into an article at some point. Whoops, apparently that article already existed, thanks for updating the link. Stringanomaly (talk) 03:39, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
Article on Jon Blow in the Atlantic
At http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/ -- Jo3sampl (talk) 01:00, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Podcast where a lot is said about pre-Braid work
Link: https://www.idlethumbs.net/tonecontrol/episodes/jonathan-blow - this is two hours that begins talking about his experience at university, goes through times he was working on Munch's Odyssey/Deus Ex 2/Thief 3, and the other many-year-long-things he had going at the same time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.0.121 (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
A lot of talk about money?
I feel that there is a lot of mentions regarding debt, "zeroes in his bank account," and just, overall, a ridiculous mentioning of money when talking about Mr. Blow. Sure, it helps add to the article but it just doesn't seem particularly helpful in getting any point across other than the article's writer/Mr. Blow are a little money obsessed.
Yikes maybe we can revise that, the full quote actually has a very different message and our abbreviation may be misleading. The full quote is... “I opened up my Web browser and Holy fuck, I’m rich now,” he recalled. “There were a lot of zeros in my bank account.” Blow’s similarities to the average millionaire end right there, however, because unlike most wealthy people, he seems faintly irritated by his memory of striking it rich. When Blow told me, during a typically metaphysical conversation in a park near his Berkeley office, that his windfall was “absurd,” he didn’t mean it in the whimsical “Can you believe my luck?” sense; he meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. 76.102.190.20 (talk) 18:28, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
JAI or Jai?
In the only sources that mention the language, it seems like the experimental programming language is called "Jai," not "JAI." Source on the ALLCAPS version? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nokkromancer (talk • contribs) 09:49, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
"Game 3" is not Sokoban
I think it's a little confusing to call Sokoban "game 3", as in the current draft of the article. During development of The Witness, it was revealed somehow that J. Blow as a side project had created like 40 hours of gameplay for a completely different game, and that game became known as "game 3". It is not Sokoban, and the public has never seen it. It is true that Sokoban is the next game after Braid and The Witness that J. Blow will release (except for Braid: Anniversary Edition). However, even considering that, "game 3" is still not a good name for it because J. Blow shipped an online tank battle game earlier in his career before Braid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.252.62.110 (talk) 19:36, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Past discussions on controversies
In my experience, disputes between editors are supposed to be discussed on the article's talk page before they escalate to the point where the BLP noticeboard needs to be involved. Since that isn't what happened here, let me just state for the benefit of future editors that a thread on Jonathan Blow was started there a few months ago. As a result, some low quality additions that didn't refer to any RS source were rightly removed. A better sentence about COVID conspiracy theorizing was also removed on the grounds that a single RS source was not enough. I have no problem leaving that out if another source does not materialize. Connor Behan (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
Copyediting tasked before GAN
The article recently had some comments in a peer review, and amoung other things it was identified that the article needs to be copyedited before potential Good Article nomination. I have tasked the copyediting guild to do this. It will likely take several months for them to look at it. Please do not submit the article for Good article nomination until the guild has looked at it. Neuroxic (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Removed text
Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
GA Review
- This review is transcluded from Talk:Jonathan Blow/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, planned on getting this up on the weekend, but ran into real-world stuff. Anyhow, overall the article's in good shape. Comments as follows:
- Prose:
In 2002, together with Chris Hecker, Doug Church and Robin Hunicke, Blow co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference. It'd be nice to get an explanation of what the Gameplay Workshop is here, besides just its creation.The Braid section doesn't actually tell us anything about the game, neither its plot, nor even what genre it is.Blow hoped to release The Witness in 2013 as a launch title for the Sony PlayStation 4 but the game was not released until 2016. Redundant with the mention of the year before; makes sense to structure this more chronologically.No info on how the Witness was received?In 2020, when asked about the name of the language he said that in many projects "people put all their effort into the cool name" before working on the project, and that he was "doing things in the opposite way". I don't really know what this means, since Jai is apparently not a placeholder name?a game engine written in Jai, and a sokoban game built in that engine, began If Sokoban is a game, why is it not capitalized throughout?As of 2023, the Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021 more weird chronology stuff."high dynamic range" what does this mean?- and ensured he could provide the game in the future there's an (unreffed) note for this, but I think it really should be made clearer in the body what is meant here.
The lead mentions Jai and its compiler making beta version 100, which a) doesn't seem important enough for the lead, and b) seems pretty unimportant in general? It's source to Blow himself, so it suggests it wasn't important enough for serious secondary coverage, and version numbers are ultimately arbitrary so it's not really a huge deal.In general I think there's a bit too much overuse of quotes and primary sources for the coverage. Blow isn't exactly the most succinct at explaining himself, apparently, because a lot of his quotes I don't actually find edifying but more confusing. I also want to hear more about what people say about him than his own talks and similar.
Done (Or at least done to the best of my ability.) I've gone through the entire article and removed / trimmed quotes that I didn't think were essential – I agree that some unnecessary quotes were being used for coverage. As for including more about what people say about Blow / his artistic practice, I remembered some lines I had omitted and swapped them in to the article, but in general I think there are hardly any secondary sources covering these topics (let alone good secondary sources). I think this is for two main reasons. First, there is virtually zero academic scholarship on the craft of Blow's puzzles (and almost none on specific puzzles in videogames more generally). Second, while Blow is prominent enough to have profiles in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NBC etc. and has done heaps of interviews, I haven't been able to find comments on his specific game design practice outside of interviews. (And annoyingly, I haven't found other game designers discussing his puzzles either.) In some fields like art history, famous artists like Jackson Pollock have had hundreds of academic articles analyzing their work, but I'm not aware of anything similar in videogames. Looking at other GA BLP videogame developer articles like Jenova Chen, Neil Druckmann and Andy Schatz, I think this is sadly the norm: for the equivalent artistry sections in these articles, I mainly see interviews with the subjects being used to construct these sections. In summary, I would have preferred to use secondary sources covering Blow's practice in the article, but I don't think they exist (yet). Neuroxic (talk) 20:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- Media:
- Free images appropriately tagged and licensed.
As an aesthetic thing, [[:]] is not a great image (out of date, distant, and dark.) Of the images in the article I'd say a cropped version of File:Jonathan Blow, Gamelab 2018 (42432130094).jpg is probably the best one.- Done Neuroxic (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure the fair use rationale for File:Wulfram hovertank screenshot.jpg meets NFCC. Wulfram gets only a single direct mention, and is part of a section/period of time covered in just two paragraphs.
- Free images appropriately tagged and licensed.
- References:
Blow often identifies trends in games he thinks do not strengthen the medium and restrain it from reaching its potential, or are unethical. need an explicit source for this.By 2010, some other indie games had become commercially successful, leading Blow to co-found funding organization Indie Fund in 2010 This implies no indie games before Braid had been commercial successes, which I think needs a better source than the used one, which I don't think adequately supports that assertion.You've got inconsistent formatting on websites/publishers for certain citations, some are missing publisher info, some have them. Joystiq in ref 35 isn't italicized when other websites are, etc. Jonathan Blow is given as "John Blow" in some refs, which isn't how you spell his name, let alone the random shortening.- Spot-checked statements attributed to refs 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 22, 25, 35, 38, 42, 54, 58, 59, 66, 77 and 80.
Ref 6 is used to cite Blow learning BASIC on the TRS80, but technically he just says "assembly languages" and mentioned BASIC only as an example of RadioShack books, so I'm not sure you can say for sure he was programming in BASIC specifically from that ref.Ref 15 is to a podcast but it's missing the timestamp present on other refs from the same source.Ref 55 has an archive template issue.Ref 54 is just pointing to his Twitch channel, which I think is a step beyond what you can do to cite the statement of what his videos include (and what defines "regularly"?)
--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
- @David Fuchs: Thanks for the detailed review! I've gone through and attempted to address your concerns. Of course please let me know of any further suggestions, or further improvements I can make if you're not satisfied with the improvements I've made so far. Neuroxic (talk) 20:26, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks. Most of what I brought up looks good; I'm going to do one more pass. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
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