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I think you're getting close to ad hominem. It should be sufficient to point out how little overall people like Blow have accomplished. Blow is a hard worker, a
by torlok 2y ago
I think you're getting close to ad hominem. It should be sufficient to point out how little overall people like Blow have accomplished. Blow is a hard worker, and yet it took him and his team 8 years to develop The Witness, which as you pointed out isn't anything revolutionary. I think there's a weird form of elitism at play here. Working close to the hardware isn't hard. There was a point in my early 20s where I too felt like I'm better, because I know how a computer works, or that making games in pure C is harder than in C++. As an adult this is cringe. I work in embedded, and I can tell you there's enough low level programmers out there to threaten my job security.
- xanthor 2y agoHave you shipped a commercial-quality 3D game engine and game? How long did it take you?
- deanCommie 2y agoThe Witness isn't revolutionary, but it is crafted with the care of someone who cares about the small details of 3D worlds. Besides being easily one of the deepest/broadest puzzle games of the decade, it is GORGEOUS, and filled to the brim with visual scenes that take your breath away. To me it's something more akin to the iPod. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." was absolutely a correct way to dismiss it as nothing revolutionary. And yet it's perfect well-rounded craftsmanship WAS revolutionary. From what it seems, Blow is doing exactly the same thing with his next game too. And there's something admirable about that. I say this as someone who disagrees with 80% of what he says, but VEHEMENTLY agree with the remaining 20.
- torlok 2y agoI'm not dismissing the craftsmanship that went into making The Witness. All I'm saying is that it's cringe to be so critical of other developers when in essence he spends an extraordinary amount of time on his projects, and hasn't shipped anything cutting edge or anything other developers can even use.
- tuna74 2y agoI thought it was boring and not was not impressed by the visuals.
- xanthor 2y agoThat's not germane
- bena 2y agoBlow routinely trashes software he’s never had to write. Single user software that is the sole focused application when it is running. It saves nothing of importance and doesn’t alter any system to any appreciable degree. You know what’s more impressive than The Witness? Any web browser. It has to deal with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, SGML, SVG, etc. An entire runtime environment with garbage collector. A web browser can run VS Code. It can run Doom. It can be made to run The Witness. Blow does not remotely acknowledge the complexity needed to make modern software. He treats his incredibly small domain as the pinnacle of the craft.
- xanthor 2y agoYou take for granted that delivering the user value of a web application needs to be in the form of dealing with "HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, SGML, SVG, etc. An entire runtime environment with garbage collector." There is nothing inevitable about that.
- bena 2y agoNo, I'm saying the web browser itself is an incredibly complex piece of software that has to deal with a lot more than what The Witness does. I actually said nothing about web applications themselves. Don't mistake flash for substance. The Witness may be pretty, but it gets to throw away a lot of complexity. Even as a game, it's not terribly complex.
- xanthor 2y agoThe only point of the web browser is to achieve the user value accomplished by web pages and web applications. My point is there's nothing about that problem which inevitably requires "incredibly complex" software.
- bena 2y agoIf "achieve(s) the user value" by being an entire execution platform. Without the browser there is nothing for those pages or applications to run on. Try writing a web browser that can render even simple, static pages. Then realize you haven't even started writing anything close to modern browsers.