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Jonathan Blow: Game design: the medium is the message

Jonathan Blow's CreativeMornings talk arguing that business models shape game design, drawing an analogy between 1970s TV and HBO and between free-to-play and premium games. He calls for games that inspire awe rather than chase constraints.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN cites it repeatedly in debates about in-app purchases and monetization corrupting games.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
CreativeMornings HQ
Topic
game design
Format
talk
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
7
HN mentions in dataset
7
Recommendation years in dataset
2013–2020

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Jonathan Blow (Braid and Indie Fund) recently gave an amazing presentation on the evolution of Television, and he made an interesting parallel to the evolution of games: [VIDEO]

    DanielRibeiro on Hacker News · 2013-11
    In On Game Development

  • If anyone wants to see a good example of why you can't just toggle off IAP you should check out Jonathan Blow's talk about "Free to Play" games and how the business model deeply corrupts the game through the metaphor of bad 70's TV shows …

    po on Hacker News · 2013-12
    In The case for an IAP off button in mobile games

  • Jonathan Blow -creator of Braid and working on The Witness- also has a very nice critique on the problems with games that are designed around micro-payments. The whole talk is interesting, but he starts discussing the issues around the 20 minute mark: [VIDEO]

    wsc981 on Hacker News · 2014-02
    In How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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