Jonathan Blow - Truth In Game Design

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2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2018–2022
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80K views · 9 years ago · talk · intermediate · evergreen

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid and The Witness, gives a talk titled Truth in Game Design from 2011. He argues for designing around the discovery of real truths about a system rather than inventing arbitrary rules, with ideas on how complex systems can give more back than the designer put in.

HN people recommend it to puzzle and game designers, and cite it for complex systems that return more than you put in.

Game designDesign philosophy & principles
#jonathanblow#gamedesign#puzzledesign#systems#designphilosophy

3 comments from Hacker News

j
@jrh2062022 · in “Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game”
You might find Jonathan Blow’s talks interesting. This one springs to mind: ▶ this video Also this breakdown by Game Maker’s Toolkit: link
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p
@pdkl952018 · in “Jonathan Blow – Truth in Game Design (2011)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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k
@kristoff_it2018 · in “What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?”
Great article. In some ways it reminds me of Jonathan Blow's presentation titled "Truth in Game Design" [1] The author is saying that Ada deserves the title of first programmer both because she did publish an elaborate algorithm and because she understood the potential of the Analytical Engine better than Babbage and Menabrea. Jonathan Blow's presentation is more about that second point and how computers (or rather, sufficiently complex dynamical systems) can "give you something back that you didn't put in". System theory is nothing new so it might not be exact equivalent of thinking about engines that can compose music in 1842, but it seems to me that it is not a widespread and well-understood concept as it should be, and that the public opinion is re-discovering it mainly through Deep Learning advancements. [1] ▶ this video
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