A Refutation of Joseph Anderson's "The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play" 

Yeah, that measuring scale implies that all happiness and joy derived from any media in your whole life is exactly equal. I think it's not a good defense of the price of The Witness to say "he spent 50 hours on the game!" when you could spend 50 hours playing Snake and that would not justify a $40 price tag. This is coming from someone who thinks the price of the witness is totally fair; I just think the point isn't well made.

Thank you for your comment! I think what you're saying is totally fair. I'm an incredibly frugal person to my core and that absolutely influences the way I think about pricing. But I think (for me and my argument) it comes down to the form of entertainment, not the value of the art. Perhaps comparing movies isn't the most useful here, because as you said measuring movies by time isn't helpful or indicative of their value. It's more the time spent at a movie theatre just to be the first person to see Avengers 7 or what have you, that isn't worth the price for every single movie. (And depending on the book I would be mad that I spent the same amount of money on 2 books and one of them had much less content! Hahaha. But books vary so much it's hard to say.) I'll still stand by my argument for games though. If you pay 50 bucks for a game and only play an hour, that was a very expensive (and probably not fulfilling) hour. If you aren't having a good time, get a refund. Don't play 50 hours of a game and complain it wasn't worth the price tag. To Kyle in the other response: I'm not sure it goes inversely. No, you wouldn't pay 40 bucks for snake, but you're also not expecting an emotionally or narratively fulfilling experience from snake that would take 20+ hours to reach. (...unless I'm playing the wrong version of snake. 😆)

​@@AllironTalks I'm still not sure. Edith Finch would be worth it to me at twice the price, and it's already expensive per hour. Meanwhile, I have definitely sunk hours and hours and hours into grindy games and then looked back and realized I was playing them compulsively, getting nothing out of them. I wouldn't call those latter games better than Edith Finch just because they got me closer to the grave for less money. In fact, if anything that's a point in Edith Finch's favor: I got more out of it in less time. I'd happily pay more, not less, for that. Time is precious!

​@@AllironTalks I don't think it even goes in the forward direction. There are many frugal people out there who even go out of their way to donate to creators who make well made but short and "free to play" games. The game just might be an hour long, but the value it adds to enrich you as a person can be worth even a ridiculously high sum like 50 bucks. The original comment is perfectly right about the "dollars per hour" thing being a little off-base.

I mean amount of content (which is related to time) is a big part of how valuable a game is.

Yea, and then you try a few times and realize you were wrong and go on, rather than sunk-cost yourself for a few hours. Lol.

@@NukeCloudstalkertheres a lot of puzzles in the game where even the introductory section takes some people a while to understand, how is this any different?

There's a difference between problems in 90% of game content that majority of player will experience and 10% for the most devoted. The Witness has very strong core with majority of puzzles being rather accessible and clear, and 10% are more complex and maybe sometimes "controversial" because they are content for people that resonate with game a lot and want to dig deeper and so it's not very fair to say that these things affect the game for most people. Of course these 10% (or even less) puzzles should be subject to critique and analysis, just like any artistic expressions. But there's a difference between saying "this late game puzzle has some problems let's talk about them" and "game bad because puzzle that 99% of people won't encounter has problems". In other words, we can discuss if 999 collectables in Zelda BotW is good or bad thing, but it wouldn't be fair to say "it is a significant problem that this big game has so much obscure collectables and gathering them all is a joyless chore".

Thank you for your comment! I'd like to share my thoughts a couple of things you mentioned: 1. Like I said, this was the ONLY video I've seen from Joseph Anderson and his views may have changed in the last six years. I'm not familiar with the chronology of his youtube catalogue, so I couldn't tell you his opinions of puzzle games before or after his video on The Witness. But going off of what he says in "A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play" alone, he doesn't seem to like puzzles or being challenged at all. He refuses to find something in this game to walk away with. 2. I'd be interested in what contradictions I brought up that you disagree with, as well as "you assign to him opinions that he never states"! (It's hard to convey over a text conversation, but this is genuine and not condescending.) 3. I didn't bash him for not getting concepts. Puzzle-wise he gets (almost all of) the concepts, he just complained that they were "mean" or "unfair" because he hadn't seen the beginning of the concept. I specifically said I don't blame him for not having a sense of pitch and for not understanding the sound puzzles. 4. I shared my reactions, saying "this is the point upon first watch through where I thought he was an idiot", but in the beginning of my video I said "it's not my intention to call him an idiot" so I apologize if I didn't make that clear. 5. People ARE of course allowed to promote things on their channels. My issue is that he makes SEVERAL /writing/ mistakes that someone trying to get you to buy their WRITING should not make. Mistakes like grammatical errors and phrases he believes are clever that absolutely turn people off to his writing. I would not buy a book from someone who used the phrase "like a fish with epilepsy, you can't even begin to grasp it". I know that my comments might seem cruel, but... It's inexcusable for someone who makes their money as a writer to make these mistakes AND refuse to engage with a text beyond a surface level. Speaking of which: 6. I claim he is a fundamentally incurious person because he REFUSED to engage with the concepts beyond a surface level, not because he didn't find them interesting like I did. I don't care if someone continues to watch Gangaji's videos after playing the Witness, it was the fact that he absolutely refused to see beyond the one idea he got in his head about her video. 7. I said in the video that his interpretation is not necessarily wrong, but that it's only one of many. 8. I can accept that he and I enjoy things differently. Unfortunately, his clickbait title and his strangely cruel comments about "something is rotten in this game" and "proof that jonathan blow is f*cking with us" are a call to action beyond a subjective review that come about BECAUSE he didn't enjoy it. 9. "he doesn't want to incite witch hunts" is fair, but it would be very easy to at least say exactly that (if that was his purpose in not bringing up evidence at all), but in this case I'd block out names and other identifying information. My thoughts are kind of scattered here, so hopefully this all makes sense as it's a youtube comment and hasn't been through the editing process hahaha. Thank you again for your comment!

I was about to write out something very similar to this, thank you. I also quite enjoyed the witness, while simultaneously agreeing with a lot (though not all) of Andersons points. What really irks me, is that this video comes across as someone feeling personally attacked by Andersons video and reacting a lot more abrasive, mean spirited and at least as subjective towards Anderson than he was towards the game, making a lot of the criticisms kinda hollow. Andersons video never soured me on the game or Jonathan Blow, while this video kinda did.

1. I don't think that's a very valid point. It's fine if you didn't watch an entire person's catalogue and made a video only about a specific topic, but then you shouldn't make a sweeping generalization not only about their own body of work, but their character as well. 2. A lot of the things you brought up as contradictions weren't really. Like the ship puzzle. He's saying he couldn't find a way to work through it with the pieces given and you show examples of him bringing up different aspects of the puzzle which he claims he wasn't able to work through in a way which cohered to him. You could say he's wrong, but the point isn't contradictory. Or you claim it's contradictory for him to say he isn't making a review, but that's just you misinterpreting what he means by review as opposed to critique. 3. That rings hollow. You said it wasn't a big deal, but then still criticized him for it, including mocking a person who doesn't write music for a living's incorrect terminology just for the sake of it (I do not believe you can't understand what "raise" and "lower" would mean when a layperson is talking about pitch). 4. You spend an entire review calling him stupid, obstinate, fundamentally incurious, and a shitty writer. A single disclaimer at the start doesn't erase the complete mean-spiritedness of the text you've written. 5. You can't make the claim that hectoring over grammar is just elitist guff and then spend a significant portion of your review harping about minor grammatical issues. You've made several in your comment and I'm sure there are several as you write scripts, because it's a normal and natural part of writing. Is it some flaw in his writing that he doesn't meticulously check every graphic that appears for only a few seconds in a 40 minute video? I hardly think that's fair. Sometimes you read a little bit too fast and your brain fills in the gaps. 6. It seems you've made the mistake of conflating what a person puts in a review with the sum total of their opinions on a given topic. You clicked on a video about The Witness by Jonathan Blow. If it was a video about Spira or Gangaji, I'm sure he would elaborate on his opinions to a greater extent. It's just not particularly pertinent. Unless you think nobody should be allowed to criticize either figure, this is just asinine. 7.You said that he was stupid and simple-minded because of his interpretation. For what it's worth, all the interpretations you listed were also basically just the same as his with minor changes (A game dev team creates a game is not a meaningfully different read than a game dev team creates a simulation). 8. It feels kind of ridiculous to talk about "strangely cruel" after the video you wrote. Neither of those things would make the short list for things you've said in this video. They're also not even that mean. It's only natural for people to make art that reflects on both their previous work and the reactions to it. Thinking Jonathan Blow is making commentary on his own fame and reception isn't that insane. @@AllironTalks

Exactly! He doesn’t have a problem with stories whose stories are ambiguous or open ended, he has a problem with games that are ambiguous or open ended only for the sake of it, and use it as an excuse to not have to think of an answer

Joseph Anderson is just a contrarian bordering on a troll

@@bestsnowboarderuknow Someone got their feelings hurt by a game analysis vid...

that's a really stupid criticism considering pretty much the entire theme of the game is philosophy and self-examination. i don't even see it as an obtuse story considering there's zero evidence leading you to the actual story (about the game dev waking up from his playtest gone awry) up until where it's explicitly told, it's just not really a game with a story. & when the goal of the game is to make you able to process and understand a different philosophy i think it would be worse if they weren't turning it around on you sometimes and being like "okay, what do you think?"

So his problem is that a game about being faced with difficult questions and attempting to find answers (which then reveal themselves to possibly be false / incomplete answers / rules), is bad, because the narrative has the same form. He really didn't get it. The narrative is a puzzle, and whether you believe you found the true solution - the line that connects start to finish -, or whether there are several such lines, is dependent on whether you truly sat down and made sure you ruled out all other options. Even then, the answer may be incomplete, and that's part of the point of the game. Refining or outright discarding previous understanding of the underlying things at play, when they are incompatible with new evidence. The times this game got me realizing I had misunderstood a subtlety of the rules, led me to appreciate that the story is like that. It's utterly consistent with the theme(s) of the game. And he just. Didn't. Get. It.

Agree with all of this. The first part of the video is great, but repeatedly smugly insulting someone's intelligence just isn't my idea of a good rebuttal. Like oh great, he's too stupid to play puzzle games, doesn't understand his own feelings on puzzle games, he doesn't understand how to play puzzle games, he doesn't understand value (literally says he doesn't review based on value), he brings up subjective points in an art review (????). I just get the sense that she's trying to prove that he's an idiot, it's a bad video and I've felt that way for a long time. Was disappointed to see how quickly downhill it goes.

@@fink7968 After reading you reply I re-watched the video again and it re-affirmed how I first felt. Felt increasingly intellectually dishonest to mix an analysis of his review with an analysis of his character. Left a bad taste in my mouth again.

It really puts things in perspective and I think reflects positively on Joseph's character that he doesn't resort to personal attacks, even towards the people criticizing him. Compare that to this video and that other rude one and it's night and day.

@@redstar587o7 Anderson doesn't resort to personal attacks, but accused Jonathan Blow of lying about his game and making it to deliberately troll people, and called two of the people featured in the movie theater section of the game 'insane' and a whole lot more besides. Right.

You described my feelings, totally agree with this comment

Seriously, fumbling that after 40min of smugness is so off-putting. Actually seems disingenuous as i can't fathom her not understanding this context.

This video is a pretty decent rebuttal and highlights some of Joes weaknesses (at least 2016 Joe’s weaknesses), but 40 mins and I feel its just way too mean spirited.

Okay, but in her defense, consider how the statement reads in its full context. Anderson states, "The fact of the matter is that if you're interested enough in video games to be watching a video on my channel then you've probably heard of Jonathan Blow, and that alone is significant. How many other game developers have you really heard of more than once? I'd wager that most gaming enthusiasts would struggle to name the same amount of game directors as the equivalent person could about film. These names are rarely brought up in discussion. Assuming that I'm wrong, Jonathan blow is the guy who made Braid." It's a paragraph of spoken word, and it's horribly organized (he scripts these and clearly reads from his scripts). My first watch of his video I also did a double take when he said "assuming I'm wrong." He had rambled so far off of his central point ("you've probably heard of Jonathan Blow") that I also didn't immediately recognize what he was assuming he was wrong about. Anderson's delivery was so confusing that she, rightfully, was confused. This could have been corrected easily on Anderson's end by moving the sentence beginning "Assuming I'm wrong" to immediately follow "that alone is significant," or by changing it to read "Assuming I'm wrong, and you have not heard of him, Jonathan Blow is the guy who made Braid." That some of you deciphered his meaning as is doesn't make it inexcusable that others did not. Anderson's failure to write a clear script for his video is at fault (and is particularly ironic given that the bulk of his video is devoted to talking about how unclear the mechanics of the Witness are, in his opinion). To be clear, I do think this video refuting Anderson's would be stronger with fewer moments of snark (though I admittedly did get a chuckle out of the Assassin's Creed line). The time AllironTalks spends on this particular point disappointed me even before I realized what Anderson had meant when he said "assuming I'm wrong." Even if he misspoke, that's not the point of this video, and the video's overall message (which includes many strong points and is delivered well) is weakened, particularly with those who come in predisposed to defend Anderson.

I also noticed that so I made a comment saying the same thing. I would delete it and just credit you but I was mad so I wanted to be just as snarky as she was. Take a 👍🏻 though lol

Yeah saying he hates puzzle games is a really broad generalisation. Like he adores portal 1 and 2.

His favourite kind of game in the whole universe is variant sudoku

Imagine depending on a random video for you to be able to appreciate a game. I can't take your comment seriously.

​@@LuisManuelLealDias if you think looking to the perspectives of others for alternate ways of appreciating art and the world is invalid then I really don't know what to say to you, lol

@@crtchicanery9605It wasn't a perspective, it was an idiotic rant.

@@LuisManuelLealDias no, I was talking about *this* video as another's perspective. going by your other comments, you seemed to like this one.

Why don't you try watching someone else play the game in real time? This might be a random suggestion but it's inspired by the fact that I'm doing that exact thing lol. Currently enjoying the playthrough from Cracking The Cryptic from a couple years ago.

It's no wonder reddit loves this video lol

Thanks for saving me the time with this one. I read the video description: "In which I lose my mind that a review channel with 600k subs misrepresents a game/its developer and calls it criticism" and immediately got the sense the presenter here is hostile (and a tad salty). I'm not sure I'll put myself through it, to be honest.

@@slicedtopiecesDon't rely on a random comment to confirm your own beliefs

Anderson referred to the game's creator as "Jonathan Blown" so he doesn't get to be immune from searing criticism over his contradictory statements and dumb behaviour and outright bias. She could have been twice as toxic and I would not have minded.

Anderson is so bad faith in his own critique and his arguments are so weak that I think the digs are completely warranted.

She reviewed his critique on _The Witness_ which includes a lot of bad writing that she gave examples of and then inferred from that his own promoted books would not be worth paying for. I think this is entirely reasonable. Life is short.

@@____uncompetative but the main example she gave of bad writing (the “assuming I’m wrong” bit) was actually written just fine, and she just misunderstood it.

​@@S3rios If we grant Anderson one mistake we can grant her this mistake. Anderson still makes a slew of mistakes. Factual misrepresentations about the total number of non trivial panel puzzles which could undermine sales as they directly go against the claims of the game's Steam page and are tantamount to allegations of false advertising. Anderson demonstrates a consistently clear bias against the game. Why? Presumably he wanted to be thorough about what he thought would be an important and much talked about game, and therefore felt he had to engage with the optional content that other players are free to skip. The Psalm puzzle is annoying and I didn't do it. I didn't watch any of the videos. I cheated my way through 50% of the puzzles. I still enjoyed the game. I didn't make videos critiquing it as it wasn't for me to contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. Now, I made a 12 hour critique of _Zack Snyder's Justice League_ because I felt all criticism had been swept up in a silly SnyderGate debacle which needed that long of a video to historically unpack the origins of. I saw it wasn't for me as I really don't like puzzles. I never played _Braid_ so I was not a fan of Blow's games, or his opinions on games, or programming language design, which I fundamentally disagree with. However, to not see the huge effort that was put into the environment marks this out as something unique and rare and deserving of contemplation as something very carefully architected invalidates Anderson's opinions on any other game. This is probably the game that has had the most effort put into it for what it is. Call it pretentious and obscure all you want, but it is virtually flawless in its execution and its existence is an anomaly. Consequently, this game should be celebrated and cherished even if it doesn't appeal to everyone. _The Witness_ is not art. I went to Art College. It has art in it, but the game is an example of game design, so that makes it design not art. It doesn't get to pull a magic trick and somehow transcend distinctions to become art, it's impossible for a functional interactive system to be art as a dynamical space of possibility constrained by (unknown) rules can not intersect with what is intended to elicit an emotional response, unless you are going to be very broad and start saying that architecture is an artform, in which case you shouldn't have to worry that it not collapse under its own weight so long as it is beautiful. Is a banana taped to a wall an example of art? What if it is in an art gallery? Does the context elevate it beyond food into what the self identified artist has described to be a temporary installation of a conceptual artwork? What if it is then eaten by someone? What if they have themselves eating it filmed as a work of Performance Art? What if the gallery then claims on the insurance? Was there any fraud perpetrated here? Was this all a set-up to bring attention to the gallery even if it was fame through notoriety? What happened to the skin? Did it become a slip hazard? Did anyone try to slip on it to claim for an injury? At some point we all have to draw our own boundaries about what we include as art and what we exclude from that definition, and I consider architecture and games as design (and I am a game designer). Anderson says something about "Jonathan Blown" and yet there are many fanboys in the comments here defending his slanted critique which didn't need to get personal and insulting like that just because he chose to have the game frustratingly waste his time because he wanted to make a comprehensive critique of it. His funeral. He started the armchair psychoanalysis by claiming Blow was trolling players with the optional shipwreck puzzle which isn't a gate that unlocks another area and had two minutes of silence in between the sound sequences, and so she therefore gets to do the same to Anderson as he lowered the tone below that of the aesthetic, dynamic and mechanic deconstruction of the work divorced from its creator. Of course, she could have taken the high road, but it was her video to make that way and I found that Anderson was being insulting and I was pleased that she did this. She was right to pick up on his bad grammar when he is pushing his own book, and to mock his cringe writing style: 53:42 "...in order to appear deep. The result being something close to trying to hold onto a fish with epilepsy, you can't even begin to grasp it..." That's ambigious. Is he hypothesizing a someone who has epilepsy unable to begin to grasp a fish, or an unafflicted person trying to grasp an epileptic fish? Do fish get epilepsy? Why bring up epileptic fish / epileptic fish handlers? What is he trying to say here? 53:08 *this is right after he finishes talking about his complex versus simple story chart* "This idea of complexity equals worth can be infectious, the idea takes root in order for something to be worth your time that it has to be difficult to understand in some way these people are missing the point. The complexity needs to be worth it for something in the book not for the sake of complexity itself, so you have so many stories that are intentionally obtuse they're only giving you information they might even say that the mystery and wonder of knowing will always be more enjoyable than really finding out which I think is bullshit since it's already enough to wonder at in the world, although again I am certain that some exceptional stories could pull it off, but the worst part of all of this is how it leads to experiences that are impenetrable in two ways: comprehension and criticism. They're light on details and might even contradict themselves in order to appear deep. The result being something close to trying to hold onto a fish with epilepsy, you can't even begin to grasp it. Which is when you're left forming your own opinion. Your own interpretation, because what could be more powerful than that. You get all this information and get to decide what it all means to yourself to you and you create this whole narrative that you like because of course you're going to like it you made it so any nagging plot holes can be dismissed all the while you're building a positive association with a piece of art that's making you do this. It's like forming a twisted relationship in a way you're feeling so smart, part of creating it and if you like that sort of thing then alright. I really don't. If I want to use my imagination to create a story then I'll go do that on my own when blah blah blah blah meaningless gishgallop rant..." I transcribed what she sped through and he says vacuous, baseless critique. As he likes _Catch 22_ and _Finnegan's Wake_ then in principle is is okay with what he says is a bad combination as they are, to him, an exception case where that combo unusually works. Say why it's that this combo doesn't work in this game, but it seems he fundamentally didn't enjoy it. He thinks it could be on iPad and be much the same. He is revealing himself to be an ignorant Philistine. It is fine if he doesn't like the Buddhist guru wankery and audio logs. I wasn't at all swayed by that content. I was dreading the end, and then it turned into self parody, and I thought "Okay" that could have been cringe, but Blow is cool to poke fun at himself like this and spend $7,000,000 doing so. He makes a very personal weird game, primarily for him, and I doubt anyone else would have been perfectionist enough to make it, so I tolerate the wankery for the island. I'm not even a fan of the puzzles. I play _Call of Duty_ (2019). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BHca8xcKUko.html "no moral" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fpPRPThlbL8.html "formal patterns"

@@____uncompetative you’re ranting at nothing, and in defending the game you somehow managed to insult it more than Anderson ever could by calling it not art. “I went to Art College” give me a fucking break lol.

@@S3riosLOL should be in block capitals as it is an acronym.

I agree and also he recently played the zero scapes series and those games have a bunch of puzzles and he fairly enjoyed those . I don't think Joe perspective of the Witness should be invalid even if he was a complete outsider of the puzzle gaming genre his points about the narrative call to me cus I thought the game had a good overall lesson and interesting stuff to say but fail in communicating those in a clear manner and was perceived for guys like Joe as shallow.

Yeah, he detests ambiguity and interpretation. He enjoys complicated mysteries presented in a straightforward manner with clear, objective and satisfying answers but hates having to fill in the blanks with his own ideas, or even attempt to understand themes and ideas a game might be presenting more subtly. That isn't to say that he always misses the point or themes of a game, or that he isn't capable of comprehending what a game might be saying, but more that he really doesn't care because it doesn't interest him. While this mindset can be useful for dissecting stories like Uncharted 4, where the themes are simple and clear and the characters and story are ripe for picking apart, it fails tremendously when approaching something like the Witness, where almost everything is conceptual and left up to the player and there's no real plot to speak of. For context btw I love Joes videos and he's probably my favourite streamer, but this is a flaw in his analyses I've noticed.

I really like this response because while I do appreciate this video as it’s own thing I definitely think there’s a huge problem with her implying her experience with the game should be universal and people who don’t think the exact way she does are idiots or don’t have patience. Like others have said the subjectivity is implied and then she goes off stating what comes across as Objective statements on her behalf about another persons experience with the game. But I don’t wanna shit on this video either as I think some insights about deafness and colourblindness were interesting things I haven’t thought about before.

I'm honestly baffled anyone could think that was an introductory puzzle. It's clearly a lock. You've already come across locked doors that require specific knowledge to unlock them at that point. The tetromino door comes _after_ a rather complex black/white tile door, so it's clearly not a tutorial sequence. You've already seen plenty of tutorial sequences at this point as well. They don't have multiple unrelated symbols in them, the symbols flash to indicate what you got wrong, and the first panel is always completely trivial, you can solve it without understanding anything. This is not a case of the game failing to telegraph its intentions to the player. It telegraphed them very clearly, and Anderson either missed it or ignored it.

Not sure if you are referring to Anderson's video, this video or yourself here 🤔

@@SETHthegodofchaos 🤮🤕🙁🥴😮‍💨🤧🥶🥶🥶🥶🧐🤮🤮

I mean, the snark in this video is very clear@@SETHthegodofchaos

Also just putting a link in your video description, which a lot of people don‘t even look at, is the bare minimum and has nothing to do with "pride"

He's a hack and his writing is terrible. His book sales would be nonexistent had he not made video essays and bolstered an audience. The subject matter is generic (wizards, bounty hunters) and an over-reliance of adverbs.

​@@KoopDeGrace do you mean he's a hack as a writer or as a game critic? does someone's competence as a writer determine whether or not they're a hack?

@@KoopDeGrace irrelevant to the discussion at hand or the video hosting it. it sounds like you might have some conflicts related to your attachment to him

He's a hack at writing which directly influences his ability to write game criticism.

2. Each of the zones are about one type of puzzle. The town is about combining those types in interesting ways. You're not expected to realise this when you first come to it, but it becomes pretty clear. Once you've done the colour zone, that colour puzzle in the town is obviously impossible as it stands. From the colour zone, you learn that when that happens you need to look at it with a different filter. From there, it's pretty straightforward to look for a nearby coloured piece of glass. This puzzle took me a long time but in the end it was completely reasonable and logical and I'm sure some people immediately made the connections. As for the ship puzzle, there are two entrances, two exits, but crucially, two colours of pacman dots. Different coloured pacman dots means different coloured lines. Different sizes of pacman dots means different pitches. These rules aren't used much, but they are established and never broken. Besides which, the fact that there's a mirrored invisible line is immediately obvious when you crash into it. This puzzle frustrated me a lot, but In hindsight, nothing about it is unreasonable or surprising

You should reconsider your first point. It doesn't really make sense. You didn't understand the claim and are confused by it. your second point was dealt with by the guy bfore me quite well. You third point is... A blatant poof you lack basic listening comprehension. She referenced the point where this concept came up and how he could've known by that point. Also, an invisible mirror line is not that difficult of a concept to grasp, what do you expect, a text directly describing how to solve it? That would be kinda too easy, don't you think? After all, a puzzle game is not only deefined by it having a lot of puzzles but also by you having to figure stuff out to solve them and apply what you learned later on, which is exactly what was complaineed about. Basically the complaint about invisible mirror lines is a complaint about not being able to get puzzle games as a concept.

lmao the mention of "Consumer" really exposes this kind of crap comment for what it really is: you're voicing being mad at a game because it didn't "deliver" the "product" of an "experience" of "solving puzzles" and so on. Except that's not how any of this works. Puzzles are hard for a reason. Some times, a puzzle is really hard for someone and really easy for another person. Should games then cull all puzzles that are hard for anyone? No, that's absurd. And the problem here is that the one person who was making the call about how hard the puzzles were was... someone who hates puzzles. And was definitely terrible at them! I'm sorry, none of this is serious. Yes, things like "mirrors" and so on that are kind of "invisible" (especially to people who are terrible at puzzles) will mean that some people will not be able to solve them. Tough luck! What a crappy generation this is, one where you have to be led like a blind donkey to every scrap of puzzle solving technique! Yes, there were a couple of puzzles that were a bit beyond my own ability, so what? I enjoyed the HELL out of solving all the others that I was barely able to solve! All the eureka moments that game gave me FAR SURPASSED my annoyance at not 100percenting it! All I could think was, "next time, I'll solve them!" And THAT'S TEH POINT.

Have you played The Witness? because it sounds like you haven't played The Witness. There are a few type of puzzle panels in the game and they are all pretty clearly telegraphed to the player. I can think of three: tutorial sequences, locks, and vault doors. Vault doors are a type of lock (they are literally attached to a door) but are separated from any other puzzles, both physically and sequentially. They don't have any puzzles leading up to them, and they require you to synthesize multiple lessons throughout the island in order to solve them. They are literally the boss fights of this game, and they are readily spotted. It's not a surprise that the ship door is extremely difficult and requires you to remember tricks from other parts of the island. That's clearly telegraphed assuming you've found the other vault doors littered throughout the island.

@APaleDot I not only played it, I streamed it to people watching.

Idk man. The video just displays his outright hypocrisy and seeming lack of self-awareness. He's inconsistent in the points he makes. Even if I grant you the least generous interpretation of the motivation behind this video (which I don't), all those points still stand. He really doesn't get it - he doesn't even get the points he is making and the obvious contradictions with himself. It's straight up equivalent to thinking that 2+2 is simultaneously 4 and 5. Having seen his video, and had many gripes with it that were mentioned in this video, I see it more as being tired of his inconsistency and trying to reason about what led him to this inconsistency - what's going on in his mind to make these ridiculous contradictory statements? And I think she's largely right, frankly.

Another thing I’m mentioning in a reply because this is more my personal opinion but I don’t get why you were so condescending and hard on Anderson for not using pen and paper the whole time. At least for me, I am not a fan of breaking up my game experience by writing things down. Not only does it break my immersion a bit, it feels like I’m conceding to the game. It feels like I’m admitting I am too stupid to solve this with the tools the game provides and must go outside them. Sure I’m still solving it with my own power but it makes me feel stupid that I can’t solve it with the tools the game has provided. It feels like being stuck and looking up a derivation for a part of a physics problem I’m stuck on, even though technically, I should be able to do the derivation myself from the base equation. Not a perfect analogy but I hope it gets my point across that it feels like admitting to myself that I am not as smart as the game thinks I should be. Perhaps this is the wrong approach and a mindset issue on my part though, hence this is in a reply, not in the main comment.

I think while Jo often expresses that his opinions are subjective, in his reviews he often states he also tries to give critiques toward the game. For many this implies objectivity and while I believe many critiques are primarily subjective, expecting some level of objectivity is not outlandish.

@@ronthomp97 Can you name one critique that is objective?

@@messanger9219in this critique or jo’s?

@@ronthomp97 any

@@messanger9219 When Joseph says the puzzle "doesn't build on any other past lessons the game taught you".

You must absolutely hate No Man's Sky since it's impossible to complete scanning every plant and animal on every planet on every solar system.

@@misterkite haven't played. Also there is a difference between something that is possible to do and a task in the game. Also if something is infinite that is different because you physically can not complete it, so its not a task left incomplete its more akin to a high score.

@@hellocanyouhearme The tasks in the game are dynamically generated. Plus whenever you land on a new planet, you get a marker in the log that you've scanned 0 out of X animals and 0 out of Y plants for that planet.

Yeah I’m also usually pretty lost on the “just skip the shitty optional content” argument for most games. Unless I know already that it’s bad, I don’t get how it’s my fault for struggling through a side quest only to find out it’s not worth my time.

He wants to feel like he is rebelling against the game, while staying entirely within its rules. Classic midwit moment.

I don't think that's exactly fair. He played the original game pretty close to what I imagine is intended and came away really loving the experience. In Echoes of the Eye he encountered a couple weird bugs that really changed the way he played the game, but he was still trying to interface with it. Plus it goes without saying that a playthrough you're making in order to write a critique later is going to differ greatly from one you're doing to entertain a live audience

​@@crungusbungus2519 which just makes it a bad critique, given that he gives a self-contradictory critique of the game. He couldn't make a game half as good if he tried, and he missed the point of the game entirely with a great deal of the points of critique, which could be summed up with "I don't understand the game and therefore I dislike it". That's a fair opinion to have, not all games are made for every person. Accessibility stuff for one, is just plainly stupid taken to its extreme (you cannot make games for the blind or deaf, without giving up design-space, meaning some games simply cannot work with "accessibility options"). It all made it look like he was looking for points to take issue with, for the sake of it. "Because muh critique".

He doesn't critique Outer Wilds. Unless you're talking about The Witness, which is not a contradictory critique at all. He thinks it's a good game with some frustrating elements. It's fine to not be a game developer and critique a game. Not everyone has to be Godard. Most critics won't make their own game and probably never will. That's fine. There's more to art critique than just an understanding of the technical elements of how something is made. Are you not allowed to criticize Anderson because you've never written a youtube video before? It's also fine to critique something for being hard to parse, especially in a game that prides itself on being able to transmit tutorials wordlessly.@@NukeCloudstalker

@@crungusbungus2519 >It's fine to not be a game developer and critique a game. The issue is that he has an incomplete understanding of the game, not that he isn't a game developer. My point is that he cannot prove himself right by counterexample - he couldn't even if he tried, because he cannot make such a game, because such a game cannot exist. > Most critics won't make their own game and probably never will. That's fine. That's far from ideal. It'd be like a sports journalist never playing the sport they're reporting on, it's just on its face ridiculous in other fields, but not in games, because the bar is so high. Frankly, I don't listen to or think highly of people who criticize things they have made no attempts to partake in themselves in the first place. The reason being that he is taking issue with design that is necessary for the game to work on all the levels it does. He takes issue with optional stuff, and all sorts of other vapid complaints about issues he's already explained the solution to (and mentioned that the game teaches you). > There's more to art critique than just an understanding of the technical elements of how something is made The technical elements of how it is done is not my point at all man, that is not what I wrote. The technical elements inform the art, but the composition ultimately is the end-result, this guy could not compose even if his life depended on it - not that he has tried. >Are you not allowed to criticize Anderson because you've never written a youtube video before? Are you implying there is anything special that he is doing, that requires any level of insight that comes from experience and deep thought? I assure you, there is not. And I have made written videos before, some with fair success. I appreciate the effort that goes into it, from script writing to recording to cutting things together. I think his production suffered from him stringing mutually exclusive opinions into a single work, which is a telltale sign of a dishonest or disheveled mind (e.g. bad production). But my issue was never with his video as a video - my issue is with the content of his arguments. Whatever case you're trying to make here, it's just plain stupid. Ironically, you're trying to defend his incoherent arguments, by trying to attack me for incoherence that isn't there in my arguments. > It's also fine to critique something for being hard to parse, especially in a game that prides itself on being able to transmit tutorials wordlessly. Which is tantamount to not getting it. He didn't learn the lesson, and when he realized he was being stubborn instead of getting on with his life, he cried about it online. That's what it boils down to. He himself said as much (that the tutorial teaches you not to do X and Y, but rather Z, to which he then bitches and moans that he was trying to do Z). He was faced with new info in a game, tried for an hour rather than taking a hint. Honestly, I'm tempted to say he is just unintelligent, it's that, or he is stubborn to a fault with a lack of self-insight on that fact.

It's pretty clear very early on that some puzzles have an effect and others do not. Sometimes cables light up, sometimes doors open, sometimes nothing happens. One of my absolute favourite moments in the game was getting to the end of the line of white and black squares puzzles and realising that nothing happened - their entire purpose was just to teach a concept. After your first laser you can go up the mountain, see what the effect was, deduce how many lasers you need based on the closed latches, and even see where most of them are. The game has exactly what you're talking about. It's doesn't yell about it, but it does try to make it as obvious and clear as possible within the design language of the game.

yeah i feel like the bit at the end is the worst. like saying that telling you to wait for an hour while pressing the button is just "teaching you patience" is so weird. like i get the idea, but that feels just as hand holdey as whatever those annoyong tutorials etc.

Criticism does Not equal hating the game.

Literally the same experience, i was looking forward to the video but i dont care to watch someone shit on a game i enjoyed. I know it is flawed, i just dont need someone overly emotionally explain everything i know to be bad about it.

I played the game even after watching his entire video (though it had been over a year since I watched it) and I enjoyed it more than he did, but also I didn't attempt to 100% it like he did. When he does videos, with the exception of Elden Ring which he wanted to get a video out about quickly to make sure he didn't miss the hype train, he usually does multiple playthroughs, at least one of them being a 100% playthrough, because the dude is ridiculously thorough even with games he dislikes or has mixed opinions on. That he praised a lot of the game despite having many gripes was enough for me to want to try it. To be honest, it's like dunkey said, a critic having a consistent voice is valuable even if you end up disagreeing with him.

How do you see the puzzles in TW as anything close to jokes? This is like saying that crossword is in the structure of a joke. Perhaps if the puzzles had comedical elements then I could see it but moving a line across a square does not scream "comedy gold" to me

I agree with "Anderson's critique is fair to people that could feel like him, especially him. His critique has a right to exist and be expressed." but Anderson himself is not giving you that option with a title like "A great game you shouldn't play" .

"Joe really does have a problem with presenting his subjective views as facts." he literally had to put out a video reminding people how reviews work and what makes a review worthwhile called "Subjectivity is Implied" when people got upset about his short essay "Why Horror Games Don't Scare Me." He says in his video that if he had to cushion every subjective opinion in language to indicate it's subjective, the writing would be unnatural. He wrote that entire video like that to prove the point. He doesn't have a problem with presenting subjective opinions as fact, he has a problem with choosing to review games that are either people's darlings and then tearing into their real flaws so no one is willing to listen to him, or review games that are for children who are hung up on needing literal "I think" and "I feel" indicators in order to be able to parse a piece of text. Or worse, doing both at the same time whenever he reviews a Nintendo game. Man that Mario Odyssey video was contentious. He was correct about like 98% of what he said in there but it was still a fiasco.

Joseph doesn't like puzzle games is a hilariously bad take to have when you only have to click on his youtube channel to figure that out. The other horrible take is that the he contradicts himself with the red door. He doesn't. He says it takes many leaps of logic. Which it does.

I can't speak for Allison but I can tell you that I didn't find the red door puzzle as hard as most people seemed to, and working it out was a logical process. I figured out it was a symmetry puzzle because I drew the line into its invisible counterpart, which prevented me from moving, and I recognised the small, medium and large hexagons from the jungle area, which made me pay attention to the ship sounds. From there I didn't find it tricky to work out how I needed to draw the lines to pick the hexagons up in order, classifying the sounds as low, medium and high pitched, but I also felt the jungle was a bit of an easy ride so maybe that's just somewhere I naturally understood how to interpret the sounds. I certainly didn't find the whole game as straightforward as that.

I'm pretty sure that's what happens actually

True. Still weird phrasing. Shouldnt it have been "For those who dont" or something along the lines.

Yeah agreed. The phrasing always stuck out as weird to me.

I dont really agree with the critique of Jo's style of critisism but I understand where it comes from. The way he critiques things often feels like asking "Well, what are the parts of these games and what would have made them do better?" or "If the game was going for ___, than it was seriously missing ___". Like in his fallout 4 critique, Jo praises the game for what he perceives as its successes at what it sets out to do, but critisises what gets in the way of that experience. As an example he will explain the ways fallout 4's story fails by critiquing it primarily through the way it disrupts the bethesda game loop

thank you!!!❤️❤️❤️

He did complete all the shrines, but he didn't collect all the korok seeds, he mentions in the review why you shouldn't necessarily do that in the review of botw. I agree with your points and enjoy his videos and this video does at times feel like a weird hit piece, and is incredibly confrontational over the most minute points and weakens the argument substantially. That said he does have completionist tendencies in games like Mario Odyssey that hurt his enjoyment, but I appreciate his thoroughness.

I would have a lot more of a positive opinion about this video if she chose to respond to the comments criticizing her takes and insults that have MORE LIKES than the pinned comment, instead of "thank you for the kind words!". its been 6 months.

Also: commenting to boost your engagement, because holy shit, more people need to see your videos

Oh, god! Are you telling me that’s the only objective things you can say about a game? And you didn’t just agree with Joseph’s ”Subjectivity is implied”-video, did you? That video is like top 5 worst youtube videos ever.

@@Jungbeck That objectively is the only thing you can say about a game. Every type of discussion about art is subjective by definition. Now as Joe said before, your opinion is always subjective but it might be more justified or not. Its not the same to like a story because of the intriguing narrative it presents, that liking a story because you saw it with someone you like. But both opinions are subjective

​​@@Lemoncit0the rules in the game cant be considered objective? Solving puzzles is the objective of the puzzle game. If the rules are consistent then is that not objective? In turn, the methodologies you use to figure out the rules cant be objective? What you stated are facts about the game. Are those objective?

​@@SETHthegodofchaosHello! I'm here to provide your monthly response! I think that there is a good argument that those really are just about all of the objective statements you can make about the game, and might even be technically generalizing if you want to get pedantic. What you think of as objectivity might not be what I think of as pure objectivity though. I think you are thinking in terms of "reasonable and nearly universal amongst people". For instance, comparing to visual art forms like paintings, the objective things you can say about a piece are all of the purely physical, non-thematic or representative elements. A painting of a tree is never objectively of a tree, in a sense. There are paintings that are more and less representative of trees, ones that maybe even every single human alive would recognize as of a tree and yet outside of human subjectivity there is nothing linking that painting to trees unless the materials were made using trees. This is also assuming that we agree that intent is not an objective element of art. Whether or not you believe that the author's intent has an objective effect, that belief is not objective even by the standard of people generally agreeing about something. And if you include the author's intent as an element of objective meaning, then you could include all of the store page information and anything Jonathan Blow or maybe other developers have said about it (depending on how much authorship one needs to have to imbue objective canon). Still, as a small argument against intent being objectively important, I would say that it can't be simply because it is always outside of the work. This would even be a problem if you put a statement of intent in a piece since the intent of the inclusion of any intent would introduce new elements of intent left unexplained, "Why would they include this intent? Is this intent artistically included within the piece? I.e. is this an objective narrator or a gesture at another meaning?" That all being accepted, The Witness cannot be objectively said to take place on an island, even if it seems quite obvious -- it is even quite highly stylized. There are no objective rules and there is no objective purpose or genre. Rules require assumptions about what counts in a game. I could see an argument for listing every default key binding as a rule in terms of "what buttons are used" but even then that might be making an assumption. Objectively, there are keypresses that the game responds to, so that could be added. Objectively, this would also include the escape and power buttons, even if you could argue that they aren't important in an analysis of the game. Purposes seem quite obviously subjective to me, but just in case, my thinking is that a purpose assumes a desired goal. Look to endings from the Stanley Parable that advocate for turning off the game for an indication of what kind of assumptions we have for the "point" of something. Why should doing everything possible in a game or with a piece of art be the objective purpose? Concepts of progression and ending or finishing a game are all subjectively based or otherwise invoke the intent of the author. Genre looks outside of the piece to the context and tradition of the piece, relying on our perceptual groupings of types and authorial intent. That is to say that to say the game is a puzzle game would be at least a little iffy. If you mean "includes puzzles" then I think that that could work, maybe. Again it kind of relies on some lower assumptions, like the genre of the things represented as panels within the game. But maybe it can be fair to look only objectively at the highest level and not need to penetrate further down into it quite so strictly. If you mean that the game is about puzzles or that the purpose is to solve puzzles or that the main faucet of interaction is puzzles that is again subjective on its face. All in all, you could be even more reductive in an even more pedantic way. The Witness is a computer program. That gets rid of even it's genre of medium. 1080p and 60 fps are subjective in a trivial way: there are computers on which it would not run that smoothly and screens that cannot display at that fidelity. You could pretty reasonably objectively talk about the highest resolution it can run at at all though. Again though, this all depends on what you mean by objective. If you mean "not subjective as an individual" then you can include more, but if you mean "not subjective as a human" or "not subjective as a person familiar with the conventions and tradition of human art forms including video games" then you get less, etc.

Exactly, having some vague concepts linked to a puzzle and the fact someone who solved it can explain their reasoning doesn’t make said puzzle reasonable and solvable through logic by anyone Many players do random and arbitrary things based on vague hints and that’s how they find Easter eggs and secrets meant for the community If a pattern exists (meaning an author thought of it and it wasn’t random) that is correct then a large group of people will be able to solve it no matter how absurd the unspoken rules of the puzzle is. There’s also the human problem (she’s clearly not aware of, she even says in a very snob way her musician bias is out of her judgment, as if you could ever decide to have bias not working on you, and proceeds to say anyone who struggles with the sound puzzles has a broken perception for hearing just like color blind people do with sight). That thing is that everything makes much more sense in retrospect then it does when you don’t know an outcome. That’s the hindsight bias. You can’t put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t have the solution you have. What you can do is determine if a rule can be explained that produces a certain result consistently by anyone who follows it who doesn’t know the outcome. That’s a very strict and common way to understand if a puzzle is structured logically. If it is then you don’t need guesswork or any reasoning beside understanding the rule. For instance: pick the branch with the apple, divide color blocks but only with the filter that makes them less vary and so on. You can just follow the instructions and you won’t need anything else. For the shipwreck puzzle there’s no rule like that. It’s probably a single puzzle for this reason, if there were two we would see there’s no consistency. You need guesswork and someone knowing exactly the hints, the thing you are meant to look at and every information available would still need many tries because he needs to arbitrarily reach a pattern among the many many many others he could equally go through following those instructions. The same goes for the shadow “maze”. You need to arbitrarily choose to consider some shadows and not others which look very similar with no reason why and also exit the shadows in the end. It’s very likely the shadows don’t work as intended (for instance there should’ve been an hint to discriminate which shadows to follow and we cannot see it) and/or the rules aren’t logical.

None of the solutions from any of the puzzles are blind guesses. Every puzzle has a solution based in rules you learn in various parts of the game. This includes the "submarine door" puzzle (it was clearly a ship, but I doubt you care).

@cargnome This puzzle involves blind guessing. Sorry bud. Hate to break it to you.

@@smalltrashman4227 You are actually delusional. The pitch of the dripping water solved one of the lines, and the pitch of the other sound effects solved the other line. It's hard to solve, sure, but it's not guesswork.

@@cargnome It is literally guesswork. Yes, that's true of the solution, but nothing indicates that at all. L.

Thank you, it's from goodwill

Probably better for people who can't visualize things in their head. They like to get out a pen and paper and physically work out the puzzle without the consequences of failure in the game. Of course, in the Witness, such consequences are few and far between.

By "he stubbornly brute force bypassed" I'm sure you mean slightly experimented on ideas he had about the game's mechanics early on and when he wasn't even 'stuck,' and by "complain that the game isn't fun" you mean he frequently describes the game as being really fun and the player's ability to find late-game mechanics early as a testament to the game's good design, and by "choosing to make it that way" you mean deciding to roleplay as someone who hadn't learned the different details he had for absolutely no reason I agree with Alliron's point in the video, but this isn't a very good comparison in my opinion. I do think his criticism of the puzzles in The Witness is extremely unfair, but Outer Wilds is like a key example of him really enjoying a puzzle game because it lets him fuck around and still logically come to an answer in an unintended way. There is plenty to criticize Anderson for with regards to his stubornness, but this extraneous example ain't it chief

@@milkishealthy9662 I'm talking about his Echoes of the Eye playthrough, not his Outer Wilds playthrough. You can find many comments on the stream archive that share my view. He may have complimented the game in some instances, but many times he expressed feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction with the game, directly as a result of his own time spent repeatedly trying to force things to happen without any idea of why they might happen. He literally burned himself on the fire while holding the artifact out of desperation for something to happen, at the very start of the game with no hint at all that that was even something worth trying, before he even found the normal entry method. That is not "slightly experimenting".

@@LB_ I know you're talking about the DLC. He has repeatedly described the sequence breaking as adding to his enjoyment of the game and its DLC, both in the vods and in more recent streams. I don't recall him ever expressing that he felt "lost," or him having any criticism that was a direct result of the sequence breaking, so I'm unsure what you mean by that, though it has been a while since I've seen the vods so I may have forgotten or I may be misremembering. I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong with this point if he demonstrably has. I'm also seeing that other people in the comments have taken issue with his sequence breaking, but from what I've seen they're usually complaining that he's played the game "wrong," which is extremely ironic for a playthrough of Outer Wilds of all things. As for your campfire example, I went and quickly rewatched the point where he discovered that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ultevcFIulk.html It really just seems like reasonable experimenting to me. He knows that the way to progress has to do with the chambers, and is trying to light an artifact with the green fire just like the corpses have. Trying to set the artifact itself in the fire leads him to accidentally die in the fire, and he then accidentally discovers the dream world. It just seems overwhelmingly uncharitable to characterize this as "stubborn brute-force bypassing," especially when dying wasn't even the intended effect of his experimenting or an idea that he's aribtrarily throwing at the wall. What he's trying has logical reasoning to it that he's verbally expressing. Your retelling of this event, that it was "out of desperation" and "with no hint at all," is just frankly dishonest.

@@milkishealthy9662 Regardless of how he describes or self-evaluates his enjoyment, we can never know how it compares to how much he could have enjoyed the game by not breaking it. He completely missed out on a lot of content in his playthrough, and I distinctly remember him complaining about how obscure or unexplained things were. Outer Wilds' base game is very nonlinear by nature, so it's more more difficult to play it "wrong", but there are ways to play it wrong see the video "I was wrong about Outer Wilds" for example. Echoes of the Eye is a much more linear experience by design, and in the Noclip Podcast for the game, the devs explicitly stated that they were very afraid of players accidentally sequence breaking things. It is why the devs have continued updating the game with significant changes to hints and significant area redesigns. Echoes of the Eye is designed to be experienced in a specific way, in stark contrast to the base game, so there are indeed ways to play it wrong. "He knows that the way to progress has to do with the chambers" - how does he know this? Where did the game ever tell him this at this point in his playthrough? He had just made a blind assumption with no backing evidence. I have seen dozens of playthroughs of Echoes of the Eye and while plenty of people try taking an Artifact into these rooms and try lighting it with a marshmallow, nobody just straight up stays there for minutes repeatedly burning themselves until they die while holding it like he did. I called his actions stubborn because he refused to accept that he didn't have the necessary information and just continued trying to get something to happen. This happens all throughout his playthrough, where he repeatedly ignores any sense of not having the right information yet, and just laser focuses on a specific thing he wants to do, even to his own detriment. In many cases he seems to delight in how annoyed he is making people. While that is a valid way to enjoy a game, I think it's a horrible way to enjoy a game that you can only experience one time and never again.

Hm, I have not seen enough of Anderson. Do you get the sense that he is trying too hard to outsmart the developers? As if he has to proof something to himself/the viewers? Or am I on the wrong track?

I think her line of thought is more that liking puzzles only if you're good at it is not really "liking puzzles".