Kolzig

The Witness by Jonathan Blow

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By the way, anyone knows how the Indie Fund is going ?

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I don't know, he may be somewhat pretentious, but who is flawless?

Absolutely. I still like the guy and greatly look forward to whatever he produces next. I certainly won't be dancing on his grave if The Witness sucks... I LOVED Braid, so I'm hoping this will be as good as that.

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new interview feature up at Gamasutra

It just occurs to me how much of a double edged sword it is to have a last name like "Blow" if you're in any kind of business where your name gets attached to a product in an authorial way. The headline writes itself if your project either is amazing or totally bombs: The Witness Blows/The Witness will Blow you away (ign.com) etc.

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They're designed from ground up to be an unholy combination of gambling and pyramid scheme and hello kitty. Evil i don't know. Deceptive maybe.

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They're designed from ground up to be an unholy combination of gambling and pyramid scheme and hello kitty. Evil i don't know. Deceptive maybe.
How is that less evil than almost every console game coming out of EA and Activision being designed to be played over a 2-3 month period and then be thrown away so that you have time to play their next release? As much effort that they put into it, none of those publishers want to make another Counter-Strike or Starcraft. The balance decisions are made to make it immediately accessible, and immediately disposable.

The problem is with the game, not the business model. And while it may be difficult to separate church from state, put the blame where it's due, on the game. There are a ton of games out there using the free-to-play model that are both ethical, and fun experiences on their own.

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He (or possibly the writer of the article) are doing nothing more than splitting hairs over terminology. 'Social' Games Are "Not Very Social", but games like WoW that are social, actually are 'Social'. Sigh.

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The point is that the "social games" are feeding of social networks; and are not providing a social platform for interaction. On top of that they are evil because social network activity translates to forms of currency/credit in those games. e.g. spam about this game and you get a free hat.

A game like WoW or Minecraft is social because there you have social activity within the game. It's part of the game to be socially active.

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Farmville is not built to be disposable, that's the problem. It's built to occupy your thoughts for eternity.

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The point is that the "social games" are feeding of social networks; and are not providing a social platform for interaction.
Leaving aside the evil thing (which I don't disagree with), if you were write in to the OED and politely ask them to change the term to 'Social Network-Based Game', his argument (and your point in the sentence quoted) would be moot. He's arguing about definitions and nothing more.

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Leaving aside the evil thing (which I don't disagree with), if you were write in to the OED and politely ask them to change the term to 'Social Network-Based Game', his argument (and your point in the sentence quoted) would be moot. He's arguing about definitions and nothing more.

It may seem (and actually be) a bad description, but "Social Games" is commonly used term that people recognize (god knows I spent a lot of last year reading about them and discussing them).

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This would've been my excuse to buy PS4. Too bad (for Sony) it's only a timed exclusive.   :P

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Let me drop the ol' fuck this game unfairly and prematurely on The Witness.  I know I will not enjoy walking up to signs and playing Super Mario Bros. World 8-4 pattern memorization on top of a stop sign.

 

That said, the YouTube comments are hilarious; people are convinced that this cannot be gameplay.  Good for them!

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This would've been my excuse to buy PS4. Too bad (for Sony) it's only a timed exclusive.   :P

 

Some of the gaming press decided to pull out their jump-to-conclusion mats and label this as such, but it's wrong. The timed exclusivity is limited to consoles; it'll still appear on PC whenever it comes out.

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Wow, I'm surprised by how gorgeous it looks. I mean, it's basically Myst except instead of trying to puzzle together lots of different systems and understanding how to express your intentions, it's just one complicated one. And also it looks great.

 

Yep, sold.

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Calling it right now: at least one major section of the Witness will be Slitherlink puzzles. Or at least a variant of Slitherlink with fixed start and end points.

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Some of the gaming press decided to pull out their jump-to-conclusion mats and label this as such, but it's wrong. The timed exclusivity is limited to consoles; it'll still appear on PC whenever it comes out.

 

Yeah, it's confirmed (in Jon Blow's description of that YouTube video) to be coming to iOS, PC and PS4.

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While the maze things don't look super interesting, I'm trusting Blow enough given what he did changing up Braid's mechanics.  Also the Myst island aspect will probably be enough itself.

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I find the puzzles to be the most interesting aspect. From what I understand, all puzzles will be the this kind of maze puzzle, and the variation will lie in the ways in which you come up with the solution. It seems to me there will be a lot of the aha! moments of Antichamber and the Myst games. The beautiful Myst-like island is just a bonus.

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