Jonathan Blow - Truth In Game Design
58,365
Published 2017-08-15
Description from the GDC Vault website:
We illustrate that games, being algorithmic systems implemented on computers, are biased toward revealing truth, so long as we do not quash the truth in order to force our own high-level wishes into the design. We can use games as instruments, like telescopes or electron microscopes, to observe aspects of the universe that we would not normally have access to.
All Comments (21)
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"The universe has an unlimited supply of generosity and surprise, and we as designers only need to keep our eyes open to what is here." Thanks Jon
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One of Blow's greatest talks, a talk I come back to regularly, and it's only been viewed 17k times.
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This design philosophy seems to corresponds very well to Nintendo / Miyamoto classic philosophy. Pick interesting rules, discover emerging situations, and cherry-pick the best situations arranged in an easy to difficult order so that the player enjoy it. I find very interesting that Jon Blow and Nintendo seems to agree on that despite coming from two different terrains: one very intellectual, and another way more down to earth.
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Jon Blow, the buddhist game dev.
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I think he's deeply correct about games designing themselves or design being a process of discovery. The Mandelbrot set example works well because math itself has a game-like, interactive quality.
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that intro seriously went on for like 4 minutes lol
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27:30 -> “…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…” – Sherlock Holmes
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I love this man so much
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"If you answer the questions yourself then you aren't letting the system express itself and it may end up a little bit dead"
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"authorship is more about having a keen eye for what's interesting.." somehow i'm reminded of stanley kubrick. he never told actors explicitly what he wanted, but he kept doing takes until it worked, even on experienced actors. he didn't want performances, but something emergent.
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This is a really cool point to zoom in on the mandelbrodt set! Usually when you zoom in randomly it seems to lose an identifiable structure but here its obviously interesting
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A very interesting take on game design... be open to the interesting patterns in that already exist in the universe and discover them.
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I havent even started the video yet but I wanna say the into this video is absolutely amazing -- good music choice too :D
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That was DEEP.
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11 years old now
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Brilliant
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"There are an infinitude of points..." lmao my latin teacher used to put odd endings onto words to see if we were paying attention. Words like "staplize" as in the "the papers were staplized"
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7:16 and that's quite a trip Kappa
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💛💚
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It's amazing he already was deep in designing The Witness and building out the team already in 2011? Or is that date wrong?
