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[Men_in_Boxes]

First part of the interview is about Blow working on a new programming language. Changed the timestamp to when the "Fixing the industry" talk begins.

 

[mckmas8808]

Interesting. Been waiting for this interview.

 

[HL3.exe]

Thanks for sharing. I'm halfway.

Some interesting notes so far with games being a mature (old) medium at this point that caters mostly to new generations, were rerelease feel 'new' to them, but particularly l agree with his 2008 take with it being the peak of technical/mechanics/systemic innovation, particularly in AAA development, and things becoming more and more homogenized the further the we go as things become to risky.

Edit: finished it, lost me at the end it bit. Lots of 'feels' stuff, he gets into this boring weed smoker-like anti-establishment diatribe and 'i'm 17 and this is deep' type claims without much epistemic backing. But interesting Convo overall.

 

[nowhat]

Nah, I think Josef Fares at TGA had a better idea - fixing the games industry with just blow.

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Listened to this awhile back (I’m a patron) and Blow makes a very valid point of growing staff numbers in order to give off the impression of success to attract more VC money. He also highlights the efficiency plateau businesses reach by adding to their employment numbers.

A worthwhile pod while you’re up to something else, IMO. At points the pair of them dovetail into complimenting each others’ sentiments and stray from topic to topic, but nowhere near as off-kilter as the Moriarty-Jaffe interviews do.

 

[IFireflyl]

I thought this was going to be about cocaine.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I thought this was going to be about cocaine.

nowhat made a better version of this joke 40 minutes before you, Carlos Mencia.

 

[IFireflyl]

nowhat made a better version of this joke 40 minutes before you, Carlos Mencia.

Lick my weiner you gay-ass fish, Kanye West.

 

[Last Hearth]

There is an admittedly fallacy of saying “you’re willing to spend $20 for a two hour movie, yet complain anything over $60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game!”

Because my investment In gaming requires me to buy a $500 console or $1000 gaming pc, plus whatever a nice TV or monitor cost, etc. Movies don’t require any up front investment so the cost calculations are different.

 

[AmuroChan]

There is an admittedly fallacy of saying “you’re willing to spend $20 for a two hour movie, yet complain anything over $60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game!”

Because my investment In gaming requires me to buy a $500 console or $1000 gaming pc, plus whatever a nice TV or monitor cost, etc. Movies don’t require any up front investment so the cost calculations are different.

Movies (if we're talking about going to the theater) have different collateral costs. I have to drive there and deal with traffic and parking. I have a family of four so when we go watch a movie, it's 4 tickets plus snacks and drinks. So it's easily over $100 when I take my family to the movies.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There is an admittedly fallacy of saying “you’re willing to spend $20 for a two hour movie, yet complain anything over $60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game!”

Because my investment In gaming requires me to buy a $500 console or $1000 gaming pc, plus whatever a nice TV or monitor cost, etc. Movies don’t require any up front investment so the cost calculations are different.

I generally feel like the people saying "$60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game" already have the console / PC setup.

The thing no one wants to admit is that most of that 50 hour game isn't nearly as enjoyable as the 2 hour movie. Long games, for the most part, diminish in entertainment value ad each hour passes.

Gamers love the prerelease marketing for a big 50 hour game. Gamers love playing that game for the first time. Their second play session is fun enough. Their 3rd, 4th, 5th playsession gets them thinking about the next dopamine hit game nearing release.

 

[AV]

Interesting. Been waiting for this interview.

Dude your avatar is still Colin Moriarty from a little bet we made nearly 3 YEARS AGO, I respect the commitment

 

[JimmyRustler]

Interesting to see and hear even Blow talk about the golden age of gaming. Man, it sure as hell was. Not sure if I should be glad to have been part of it or angry I was and now have this bittersweet memory.

 

[Last Hearth]

I generally feel like the people saying "$60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game" already have the console / PC setup.

The thing no one wants to admit is that most of that 50 hour game isn't nearly as enjoyable as the 2 hour movie. Long games, for the most part, diminish in entertainment value ad each hour passes.

Gamers love the prerelease marketing for a big 50 hour game. Gamers love playing that game for the first time. Their second play session is fun enough. Their 3rd, 4th, 5th playsession gets them thinking about the next dopamine hit game nearing release.

It doesn't matter that they already have the setup, that was part of their calculation when they bought the setup, in terms of how much can I afford to invest into this hobby, and it is still disposable income that they are no longer able to spend on other things, including more games.
And it is true a 50 hour game will never maintain the high for the entire 50 hour like a movie can for the 2 hours. But that is just common sense, you can't run a 10K race running at the same speed as you would a 400 M dash.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It doesn't matter that they already have the setup, that was part of their calculation when they bought the setup, in terms of how much can I afford to invest into this hobby, and it is still disposable income that they are no longer able to spend on other things, including more games.

Maybe you're right. I just don't think people think about what they've already paid for something when determining future expenditures.

And it is true a 50 hour game will never maintain the high for the entire 50 hour like a movie can for the 2 hours. But that is just common sense, you can't run a 10K race running at the same speed as you would a 400 M dash.

And yet, some games are extremely fun at hour 50, some are fun enough at hour 50, and some games never reach hour 50...plus everything inbetween.

This is a game design issue through in through.

 

[darrylgorn]

Take out the Jonathan and we have a deal!

 

[AmuroChan]

Maybe you're right. I just don't think people think about what they've already paid for something when determining future expenditures.

And yet, some games are extremely fun at hour 50, some are fun enough at hour 50, and some games never reach hour 50...plus everything inbetween.

This is a game design issue through in through.

Films are not immune to that either. I have seen very few movies where every single minute was equally exhilarating. Killers of the Flower Moon, for example, was fantastic and one of my favorite movies of the year, but there are parts in that movie where I wished they had cut out and reduced the runtime. Creative media is always going to be somewhat of a rollercoaster ride, be it games, movies, music, etc. There are segments meant for building tension, there are crescendos, there are segments of levity where not much happens, and there's the payoff where everything comes together.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I generally feel like the people saying "$60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game" already have the console / PC setup.

The thing no one wants to admit is that most of that 50 hour game isn't nearly as enjoyable as the 2 hour movie. Long games, for the most part, diminish in entertainment value ad each hour passes.

Gamers love the prerelease marketing for a big 50 hour game. Gamers love playing that game for the first time. Their second play session is fun enough. Their 3rd, 4th, 5th playsession gets them thinking about the next dopamine hit game nearing release.

Exactly.

If $$$ per unit of measure is the most important thing ever in life, than anyone buying a steak would just buy the shittiest bargain priced cut of beef. You could get 3x or 4x the slabs of value beef than a premium cut. Or buying books, everyone spending $20 on a novel is smarter and should find 500 pagers than a 250 page book to make sure the quantity ratio is as good as possible, as opposed to enjoyment ratio.

So saying a game is great value at lets say $2/hr is pointless because most people dont even finish games they play and most games have lots of filler anyway. And if you get burned with a shit game, that's a waste of $70. A bad movie is $15.

If anyone wants to gun for best bang for your buck in history of gaming, everyone should find a copy of Daggerfall for $5 and enjoy wandering the land the size of England. I forget what the size is without googling it, but something crazy like 100,000 square kms. A gamer wouldnt even finish exploring it all after playing for 100 years.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Films are not immune to that either. I have seen very few movies where every single minute was equally exhilarating. Killers of the Flower Moon, for example, was fantastic and one of my favorite movies of the year, but there are parts in that movie where I wished they had cut out and reduced the runtime. Creative media is always going to be somewhat of a rollercoaster ride, be it games, movies, music, etc. There are segments meant for building tension, there are crescendos, there are segments of levity where not much happens, and there's the payoff where everything comes together.

My point was in trying to assess why people are reluctant to pay for full priced games.

It's because the best part of the full priced game is the time period between first gameplay reveal trailer and 2nd play session. By the time we get to 3rd, 4th, and 5th playsession, the dopamine had worn off and we're trained to obsess over the next big gameplay reveal trailer.

The game industry can solve this problem by making games that are fun at hour 50.

 

[AmuroChan]

My point was in trying to assess why people are reluctant to pay for full priced games.

It's because the best part of the full priced game is the time period between first gameplay reveal trailer and 2nd play session. By the time we get to 3rd, 4th, and 5th playsession, the dopamine had worn off and we're trained to obsess over the next big gameplay reveal trailer.

The game industry can solve this problem by making games that are fun at hour 50.

I think the answer is to ask those people directly. I'm more in Colin's camp where I've never been reluctant to pay for a full priced game that I want. Like I said in my previous post, when I take my family to the movies, it's well over $100 and it's not always a movie I even want to watch. The $70 that I just spent on FFVII Rebirth has given me exponentially more value because I'm 20+ hours in and the game is awesome.

 

[Last Hearth]

My point was in trying to assess why people are reluctant to pay for full priced games.

It's because the best part of the full priced game is the time period between first gameplay reveal trailer and 2nd play session. By the time we get to 3rd, 4th, and 5th playsession, the dopamine had worn off and we're trained to obsess over the next big gameplay reveal trailer.

The game industry can solve this problem by making games that are fun at hour 50.

But there are games like that, there are games that are fun after hundreds of hours t hat I still play, but the game industry doesn't want to make them because if the game is fun at the 500th hour, I won't be buying (or buy less) of their new games, and they can't stand that.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

But there are games like that, there are games that are fun after hundreds of hours t hat I still play, but the game industry doesn't want to make them because if the game is fun at the 500th hour, I won't be buying (or buy less) of their new games, and they can't stand that.

The industry is competitive. The studios who can make games that are fun at hour 50 are outcompeting the studios making games that are not.

Populations migrate one at a time. Hard to observe from an individual level but easy to observe from a 10 or 20 year lense.

 

[Krathoon]

What happened to that one guy who said he was going to kill himself if FEZ didn't sell?

I don't hear much about him anymore.

 

[Impotaku]

What happened to that one guy who said he was going to kill himself if FEZ didn't sell?

I don't hear much about him anymore.

Maybe he did what he said?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

But there are games like that, there are games that are fun after hundreds of hours t hat I still play, but the game industry doesn't want to make them because if the game is fun at the 500th hour, I won't be buying (or buy less) of their new games, and they can't stand that.

Thats the good old Planned Obsolescence business tactic, where R&D makes it so it'll eventually break in 5 or 10 years, as opposed to higher grade construction which is doable. How every parent's ancient lawnmower from 1978 can last 30 or 40 years but a modern day one (like one I bought 5 years ago bombed after one year and I thankfully got store credit from Lowes) bombs fast should make no sense as you;d think as time passes things get built better. But the cash grab is too tempting to make something good to last.

For gaming it's kind of different because a game wont break down like a toaster. But what they also do is kill the servers so every gamer has to move on to the next game. Although to be fair, some companies like Activision dont care. I can still play World at War now with the same 500 gamers online and the leaderboard stats still update. Nobody is buying World at War and any existing gamers still playing surely have all the map packs. But Activision leaves the lights on.

 

[nush]

Johnathan Blow made one good game, that's all and he's been a whiney bitch ever since.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Everything live service with mtx out the ass. 120 dollar retail price. That'll fix the industry.

 

[RedC]

 

[Guilty_AI]

I do think he has a point when he mentioned games not being "the new thing" anymore. I feel part of the reason for the failure of many past games is because they keep trying to capitalize on that.

Personally i believe the game's industry is at a pretty mature stage already. We're at a point where the newest tech or the one with biggest production value don't necessarily sell the most, where the tech is advanced enough for creators to be limited by money and talent rather than the hardware they have to use. People are starting to buy what caters to them more and the trends are being dictated by the times more often than the industry itself.

Still on the previous page, one problem particular to this medium that should be pointed out is that, since making a game tends to take much longer than say, writing a book, capitalizing on trends becomes harder than in other industries, something which i feel is why many devs believe there's a strong element of "luck" involved in producing hits.

I don't think game-time or pricing are as much of an issue as some make it out to be. Some games can still be fun at the 500th hour mark, other's are only really fun for 5-10 hours or so, some games can be worth $70 others not even half of that. Matters like these come down to understanding your own product and public more than anything, then planning accordingly. This is an area i feel most developers, big and small, still stumble through.

Another thing worth mentioning is that "game's industry" has become too broad of a term. There are too many subcategories contained within and understanding where you fit, as a developer, will be a crucial matter for the future. As we stand now with games, its as if we had people who put youtube mini-documentaries in the same categorie as 2 hour long movies just because its all video.

 

[SHA]

Thanks for sharing. I'm halfway.

Some interesting notes so far with games being a mature (old) medium at this point that caters mostly to new generations, were rerelease feel 'new' to them, but particularly l agree with his 2008 take with it being the peak of technical/mechanics/systemic innovation, particularly in AAA development, and thing becoming more and more homogenized the further the we go ad things become to risky.

Edit: finished it, lost me at the end it bit. Lots if feels stuff and claims without much epistemic backing. But interesting Convo overall.

This is nightmare, I know that guy isn't optimistic at all, I despise the talk that make the industry look unsustainable, can't stand on it's feet, every word he said makes it hypothetically correct but lacks a solid evidence to backup his claims, I'm %110 certain there are nice things about the video games industry that luckily never changed through the ages but this guy wouldn't dare to mention it or touch the subject cause it contradicts with what he usually saying, some people just can't distinguish between the work of profession and the lack of moral and positive attitude, there's a clear difference.

 

[T-0800]

He looks like this guy.

 

[hemo memo]

There is an admittedly fallacy of saying “you’re willing to spend $20 for a two hour movie, yet complain anything over $60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game!”

Because my investment In gaming requires me to buy a $500 console or $1000 gaming pc, plus whatever a nice TV or monitor cost, etc. Movies don’t require any up front investment so the cost calculations are different.

2 hour movie is more a fulfilling experience than the 5 hour game stretched to 50.

 

[Wildebeest]

Valve knew that there was very little to go with big single player games that were really technologically exciting or challenging when they made Portal 2 their final game

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Jo Blow is great. He's just the right kind of retarded.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Always a good conversation with Jonathan Blow

Glad to hear he’s got a new game in the works

Absolutely bonkers to me that he’s creating his own programming language

 

[mckmas8808]

Interesting. Been waiting for this inter

Dude your avatar is still Colin Moriarty from a little bet we made nearly 3 YEARS AGO, I respect the commitment

Yeah. I've always liked Colin from the IGN days. But then I noticed people treated me better with his Pic as my avatar, so I kept it. It makes life easier here.

 

[StueyDuck]

Johnathan Blow made one good game, that's all and he's been a whiney bitch ever since.

I'd take his 2 perfect games of art over just about anything anyone else has made in this shit heap of an industry we call gaming.

(He also was a contract developer for a long time before that for publishers, he didn't just make 1 game)

Like apart from outerwilds, the witness and braid are essentially what I would describe as perfect video games.

 

[John Marston]

I thought this was going to be about cocaine.

Stole my gay pornstar name.

 

[Heart_Attack]

This was great. Pretty much confirmed why American AAA studios are shit. They do not hire the best at their position, but rather for diversity. Best point he made, is that kids are spending their time in social media, rather than video games, which is true.

 

[SNPlayen]

Jonathon Blow expressed everything I have thinking about with regards to these inefficient games companies and how things have got to this point, around people who do nothing or very little at companies, DEI, WFH + economy

 

[Kenpachii]

My point was in trying to assess why people are reluctant to pay for full priced games.

It's because the best part of the full priced game is the time period between first gameplay reveal trailer and 2nd play session. By the time we get to 3rd, 4th, and 5th playsession, the dopamine had worn off and we're trained to obsess over the next big gameplay reveal trailer.

The game industry can solve this problem by making games that are fun at hour 50.

- Simple, u can get gamepass for 15 bucks and have access to hunderds of games, u have ea version of it etc
- U have tons of free games on platforms like epic launcher.
- U have 1000's of games on steam at 10-30 buck range on perm discounts etc, spending more u simple moving out of the market.
- Free to play games everywhere, where u can spend money the way u want too
- Games are buggy as hell so waiting is better to get the full experience.
- Games are not complete at launch ( dlc's / expansions ), waiting is better because u can get the complete edition specially if the game isn't that interesting to you wait is easy.
- Games drop in price fast, people probably already have a large backlog so lets wait on a price drop
- Most games feel more of the same, or simple reskins.
- Games don't release on day 1 on the platform, why spend full price
- I don't watch movies i play games, 50 hours movies are not even remotely interesting to me, a 2 hour movie is. But a movie isn't a game.

U look at the market u function in and price accordingly.

Shit goes wrong when company's decide "oke its now time to spend x amount of money for my title because i spend gazillion dollars on it". Doesn't work like that.

 

[mckmas8808]

This was great. Pretty much confirmed why American AAA studios are shit. They do not hire the best at their position, but rather for diversity. Best point he made, is that kids are spending their time in social media, rather than video games, which is true.

Stupid point once again. Over and over let's just blame people of color and the LGBT community for all of every entertainment industry's issues.

Of course diversity is the downfall for everything.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Johnathan Blow made one good game, that's all and he's been a whiney bitch ever since.

Post of the week.

Couldn’t be more correct.

 

[SHA]

First part of the interview is about Blow working on a new programming language. Changed the timestamp to when the "Fixing the industry" talk begins.

Cause we're way past the point of who should and shouldn't make a video game, and I don't know cause there aren't enough right people or it's an ue5 common problem with flipping assets, 15,000 games on steam surely isn't healthy at all, you can't tell from the way games are presented what's worthy or not, the store surely isn't helping and pisses a lot of people off, there should be segmentations to all these games like consoles generations to distinguish the games from different factors, otherwise it's garbage in garbage out.

 

[Guilty_AI]

15,000 games on steam surely isn't healthy at all, you can't tell from the way games are presented what's worthy or not, the store surely isn't helping and pisses a lot of people off, there should be segmentations to all these games like consoles generations to distinguish the games from different factors, otherwise it's garbage in garbage out.

On steam we call them "tags" and "user reviews"

"What's this? I want horror games with immersive sims elements released in the last three years? No 2D stuff either? Easy peasy:"

"Oh but some of these are certainly trash! I should check:"

"Huh, mixed. Maybe this one isn't so good after all. Reviews say it's too early in early access and game is barely 15 minutes. Lets check another one:"

"Hey, great reviews. Could this be the one? Let's see a few gameplay videos on youtube...."

"Oh! Its just what i wanted!"

 

[Crayon]

My point was in trying to assess why people are reluctant to pay for full priced games.

It's because the best part of the full priced game is the time period between first gameplay reveal trailer and 2nd play session. By the time we get to 3rd, 4th, and 5th playsession, the dopamine had worn off and we're trained to obsess over the next big gameplay reveal trailer.

The game industry can solve this problem by making games that are fun at hour 50.

This enjoyment diminishing so reliably their you're working off is just not true. There are games that suck you in for tens of hours. Some for hundreds. They're called great games.

Not all movies are great, either. There's plenty of movies that are boring before they are over. Great movies give you memories and something to think about despite only running two hours. Many more you forget about as soon as they're over.

I think you are making some overly general assumptions that themselves are not based on much.

Most of the aaaa games are just not that good, is the problem. Most movies aren't though. And books. And music. And every type of entertainment.

 

[archangelmorph]

First part of the interview is about Blow working on a new programming language. Changed the timestamp to when the "Fixing the industry" talk begins.

This is so early naughties thinking.

Discovery:

Games curation is a sailed ship. It's not the answer. Take a lateral view. Social media platforms are content platforms today. They are CHOC full of content (billions of videos) and still do very well ensuring engaging content floats to the top, vast amounts of shit sinks to the bottom and users stay engaged and entertained. Games stores have not evolved with the times. They haven't learned the lessons of YT, Twitter, TikTok & Instagram. Algorithms that optimise personalised content based on what you watch and what others are watching can have even stronger analogies in the games market that the main store fronts simply leave on the table. Think about the telemetry you could capture from a fully interactive medium to optimise preferences and therefore purchase probability. Completely behind the times here. E.g. open any games storefront today & try to scroll through to count how many hits you see in the top 100 titles listed that are otherwise trending on YT, socials and/or major games sites. They mostly get lost in the sea of crap and it's really hard to discovery them organically & quickly.


Production:

Game studios are such a strange beast. The only industry in the world that has unilaterally made attempts over the last tthree+ decades to increase product cost & quality, as opposed to decreasing them to increase profit margins.

It's weird as fuck when observed from outside of it's own bubble.

With such a long heritage of this dynamic now though, the industry has made a rod for its own back and is on a longer term crash course towards breaking its own economic model. Hence the mad push by all the pubs towards GaaS. Not because they think that it's The Future™, but because there is no future, unless they can stabilise their balance sheets long term, by lucking out on building a cash cow to then "trust fund" all the passion project work.

There's going to have to be deep investments into productivity in games production to really solve this mess. They need deep investments & advancements in technology to reduce the cost of content creation (whilst maintaining quality) & scaling down the unit costs of high production values. E.g. generative AI has a ton of potential here, but not in the stupid unrealistic way of trying to replace 100s of off-shore Korean, Chinese & Philippino artists with some shitty DALL-E effort, but by doing things like baking it into DCC tools, UE5 & Unity, to automate high quality rapid creation of props, models, meshes, auto-rigging, auto-creation of natural animations, auto-voice creation, auto-landscape creation etc.

This will take about 10 years IMHO but could shave up to 50-75% of costs off of games to bring budgets down to a level where smaller elite teams could ship a Persona 5 for the cost of a PalWorld.

 

[mitch1971]

I had to stop listening to this interview. I mean he's not the most easiest person to listen too. I don't think he finished a sentence before starting another, or going off on a tangent somewhere else with another half finished sentence. I'll wait for the snyder cut where the tail end of the sentences we didn't get to hear get added back.

 

[simpatico]

There is an admittedly fallacy of saying “you’re willing to spend $20 for a two hour movie, yet complain anything over $60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game!”

Because my investment In gaming requires me to buy a $500 console or $1000 gaming pc, plus whatever a nice TV or monitor cost, etc. Movies don’t require any up front investment so the cost calculations are different.

That's not even factoring in the time commitment. I'm older now and affording whatever game I want is a non issue, but the much more expensive currency that must be spent on games is time. So much of the new stuff just isn't worth your time. I'm not putting 100 hours into Starfield to get brow beaten by diversity officers and girl bosses. Especially when there's no exploration payoff in the end. Walking around a nice desktop wallpaper looks cool in videos, but without the hand crafted nature of TES and Fallout, there's no payoff. You're never going to find a cool little hideout littered with environmental storytelling and a great weapon. You won't stumble upon a funny side quest or cool skeleton. Just more empty desktop wallpaper.

 

[BlackTron]

I generally feel like the people saying "$60 is too expensive for a 50 hour game" already have the console / PC setup.

I generally feel like the people saying this simply don't value their time. This is a path to worse games padded with filler just to reach some arbitrary checkpoint of how long it should take to beat it.

Plenty of games I would pay extra to fix it by making it shorter.