Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow is one almighty asshole of a programmer and designer who works primarily on video games, such as his game Braid, which won the "Game Design" award at the Independent Games Festival in 2006.

For many years Blow wrote the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine. He is the primary host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop each March at the Game Developers Conference, which has become a premier showcase for new ideas in video games. In addition, Blow is a regular participant in the Indie Game Jam.

Ethics

There is no return for your hard, hate filled hours of frustrating effort.

In a speech at the Free Play conference in Australia in September 2007, Blow suggested games were approaching the level of societal influence of other forms of art, such as films and novels. One example that Blow cites is World of Warcraft, which he labels "unethical", stating that such games exploit players by using a simple reward-for-suffering scheme to keep them in front of their computer. In his view, developers need to think about what reinforcement the games are providing players when they reward them for performing certain actions. He emphasized that there was a need for developers to design inspiring new games using "innovative, ethical and personal art."

Education

Blow graduated from UC Berkeley in 1993 with a degree in Computer Science.

See also

• Video_game_developer#Independent_developers

External links

• Jonathan Blow's web page
• Braid
• Gamasutra interview with Jonathan Blow