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> Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Intellectual stimulation helps you ship. Yes, it's a good one. Since he star

> Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Intellectual stimulation helps you ship. Yes, it's a good one. Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. Thanks for providing examples that supports the parent comment.

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adamrezich 3y ago
> Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. why do you perceive this as a problem? Braid: 2008 The Witness: 2016 Braid Anniversary Edition (Jai): late 2023 Untitled Sokoban Game (Jai): TBA also, Jai, even in its incomplete state, is a fantastic product.
- raincole 3y ago
  A remaster of an old game in 7 years. So yeah, "hardly shipped any game". > why do you perceive this as a problem? It's probably not a problem for him. It's not a problem for you either, if your studio can afford spending 7 years on a tool that doesn't generate cash flow. Again I have nothing against Blow. But it's a very good example about how much time it takes to make your own tool chain, even for someone who's smart and experienced. For most of us, we'd better utilize boring techs to ship lowkey fun games.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. That's an opinion. Maybe if you looked closer, you'd see: if it weren't intellectually interesting, he wouldn't ship any games, as opposed to a bunch of really cool and fun ones. I can only speak personally. As a game designer, I have never regretted "not" "shipping." Spending the time on design instead, I feel my opinions are far more valued by my design and directing customers, who have bigger budgets and thus will have automatically greater success marketing, polishing, "shipping," etc. anyway. If you think you need to ship in order to find out if something is fun... well, there's your problem. What do you think game design is, an A/B test? In contrast, my former colleagues who emphasized shipping, in the last decade, they have spent 100-10,000x the budgets on putting kind of dull stuff into the App Store. And it was only marginally more stuff. Anyway, I wouldn't ever ask them for an opinion about game design, or whether a prototype is going to be fun, but I would ask Jonathan Blow, so there's that.

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adamrezich 3y ago

> Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. why do you perceive this as a problem? Braid: 2008 The Witness: 2016 Braid Anniversary Edition (Jai): late 2023 Untitled Sokoban Game (Jai): TBA also, Jai, even in its incomplete state, is a fantastic product.

raincole 3y ago
A remaster of an old game in 7 years. So yeah, "hardly shipped any game". > why do you perceive this as a problem? It's probably not a problem for him. It's not a problem for you either, if your studio can afford spending 7 years on a tool that doesn't generate cash flow. Again I have nothing against Blow. But it's a very good example about how much time it takes to make your own tool chain, even for someone who's smart and experienced. For most of us, we'd better utilize boring techs to ship lowkey fun games.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. That's an opinion. Maybe if you looked closer, you'd see: if it weren't intellectually interesting, he wouldn't ship any games, as opposed to a bunch of really cool and fun ones. I can only speak personally. As a game designer, I have never regretted "not" "shipping." Spending the time on design instead, I feel my opinions are far more valued by my design and directing customers, who have bigger budgets and thus will have automatically greater success marketing, polishing, "shipping," etc. anyway. If you think you need to ship in order to find out if something is fun... well, there's your problem. What do you think game design is, an A/B test? In contrast, my former colleagues who emphasized shipping, in the last decade, they have spent 100-10,000x the budgets on putting kind of dull stuff into the App Store. And it was only marginally more stuff. Anyway, I wouldn't ever ask them for an opinion about game design, or whether a prototype is going to be fun, but I would ask Jonathan Blow, so there's that.