Can recommend "Masters of Doom" about the makers of Doom, "Explore / Create" by Richard Garriott (Ultima RPGs), "Not all fairy tales have happy endings" from Ken Williams (Sierra) & "Blood, sweat & Pixels" by Jason Schreier. As a bit of sidedish :) I would also like to recommend: "Creativity" by John Cleese (how creativity works) & "Creativity Inc." by Ed Catmul about the origins of Pixar - both not about Games, but likeminded-topics :)
Sid Meier's Memoir is on my reading list, I plan to read it soon! :) I personally loved "Doom Guy" the autobiography of John Romero. I love how after so many years he is still as enthusiastic about game dev as he was in the 80's! He delves into all his experiences, the good ( Wolfenstein, Doom) and the bad (Daikatana), and talks also about his lesser known recent projects!
Great interview. I find Jonathan is always worth paying attention too, even when I find myself challenged by some of his stuff. Thank you for sharing this.
Danke für die Infos! Jetzt hab ich wieder einiges zum Lesen (Korrektur: Noch mehr zum Lesen...) Huizinga, Callois oder Bernard Perron könnte man noch dazu lesen, wenn einer bissl mehr der philosophische Ansatz (Was ist eigentlich "spielen"?) interessiert, aber das ist vll wieder ein bissl weit weg von der Informatik. Looking forward to more!
As for why people no longer want to get good at what they do... I think it also has to do with the widening wealth gap and increasing resentment in the working class. People don't feel like they are regarded as contributing to society or to the reputation of the nation; they feel like they are regarded as the wage-slaves of billionaires. People aren't going to spend another 10-20 hours/week outside of work studying and improving when this effort will never be recognized or rewarded. Companies will just take and take and take from you, and string you along, and laugh at what a gullible idiot you are if you do free work for the company. Like Kevin Spacey in Horrible Bosses.
2:06:08 That is not what impostor syndrome is. impostor syndrome is not about being an impostor without realizing, its about thinking you are an impostor when you actually aren't; Impostor syndrome is when you are good/successful, but you think that you are only good or successful because you are lucky or because others just haven't "caught on yet" or something. What jon describes is closer to some form of the DK effect, but where the person is somehow cognizant of that fact.
I wasn't familiar with "contact improvisational dance" at 01:55:00 and for those in the same boat as me, it looks like realtime Twister in the 4th dimension.
Can't believe I just stumbled across this now. Wasn't previously familiar with Johanna's work but her questions were awesome and Jonathan's answers (as expected) were extremely insightful. Thanks for making this!
One of the things I really admire about Jonathon Blow is that he understands the reality of not over planning every detail of game development because it completely bogs down the process of moving forward. He Clearly understands that Creativity is an Iterative process, and that making great product is not necessarily "always good for business" in the near future. It's about making a great game. On the other hand, I am still waiting on JAI, so, I would really appreciate some forward motion there.
He has a video on his RU-vid channel where he explains it more indepth. It’s called something like ”techniques for dealing with depression and malaise”.
lmfao, hilarious hearing him talk about Abelson and Sussman. He doesn't have the slightest clue what the goals of Scheme and these other academic languages are. Absolutely no schemer sits down and thinks "wow, if only we didn't have static typing, that would make it much easier to program videogames". Scheme and these other simple academic languages exist to explore different fundamental ideas in the realm of language design itself, including things like formal mathematical models of computation. It would be impossible to teach the fundamental ideas of programming languages in C++, because first of all you'd just spend the entire semester on trivia about C++'s syntax, but second of all because that trivia is the result of C++ being an extremely opinionated language. It's designed as a real working language that imposes restrictions on how you can code based on opinions about what is right or efficient. Lisp, on the other hand, is as close as you can get to pure lambda calculus. If you want to discuss static typing, you can write a Lisp compiler that implements a toy language with static typing in one very realistic homework assignment. The ease of writing compilers and interpreters in Lisp, the ease of implementing different scoping disciplines, and even different formal mathematical models of computation, is the point of the language. It's an academic language, it's made for studying the formal, hard, mathematical aspects of programming. It's not there to exposit opinions about what are the most productive features to have for writing videogames or other software.
My all time favourite and respected game developer and creator Mr J Blow. Thank you for this interesting relaxed interview. Have you played ‘Braid’? I spent over a year listening to the music and watching Johnathan’s interviews before I did. Will remember the opening sequence of that game sitting with my children forever. Thank you 🙏
@@SiisKolkytEuroo They're not orbiting in outer "space", rather floating high in the sky via helium balloons, noone ever crossed the Earth's atmosphere (aka firmament), the moon landings are a hoax and so are 99.9% of 'space' related "facts" (i.e. lies) you are told about what's beyond our firmanent. Almost the entire world's comms is achieved via submarine communications cables and comm towers, not nonexistent "satellites orbiting the Earth in outer space".
