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Talk:Jonathan Blow/GA1

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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay, planned on getting this up on the weekend, but ran into real-world stuff. Anyhow, overall the article's in good shape. Comments as follows:

  • Prose:
    • In 2002, together with Chris Hecker, Doug Church and Robin Hunicke, Blow co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference. It'd be nice to get an explanation of what the Gameplay Workshop is here, besides just its creation.
    • The Braid section doesn't actually tell us anything about the game, neither its plot, nor even what genre it is.
    • Blow hoped to release The Witness in 2013 as a launch title for the Sony PlayStation 4 but the game was not released until 2016. Redundant with the mention of the year before; makes sense to structure this more chronologically.
    • No info on how the Witness was received?
      •  Done Originally the article contain this and a lot of other game-specific info, however the copyediting guild removed it a couple of months ago; I added some of it back. Neuroxic (talk) 18:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • In 2020, when asked about the name of the language he said that in many projects "people put all their effort into the cool name" before working on the project, and that he was "doing things in the opposite way". I don't really know what this means, since Jai is apparently not a placeholder name?
    • a game engine written in Jai, and a sokoban game built in that engine, began If Sokoban is a game, why is it not capitalized throughout?
    • As of 2023, the Jai compiler is currently in closed beta and reached beta version 100 in December 2021 more weird chronology stuff.
    • "high dynamic range" what does this mean?
    • and ensured he could provide the game in the future there's an (unreffed) note for this, but I think it really should be made clearer in the body what is meant here.
    • The lead mentions Jai and its compiler making beta version 100, which a) doesn't seem important enough for the lead, and b) seems pretty unimportant in general? It's source to Blow himself, so it suggests it wasn't important enough for serious secondary coverage, and version numbers are ultimately arbitrary so it's not really a huge deal.
    • In general I think there's a bit too much overuse of quotes and primary sources for the coverage. Blow isn't exactly the most succinct at explaining himself, apparently, because a lot of his quotes I don't actually find edifying but more confusing. I also want to hear more about what people say about him than his own talks and similar.
      •  Done (Or at least done to the best of my ability.) I've gone through the entire article and removed / trimmed quotes that I didn't think were essential – I agree that some unnecessary quotes were being used for coverage. As for including more about what people say about Blow / his artistic practice, I remembered some lines I had omitted and swapped them in to the article, but in general I think there are hardly any secondary sources covering these topics (let alone good secondary sources). I think this is for two main reasons. First, there is virtually zero academic scholarship on the craft of Blow's puzzles (and almost none on specific puzzles in videogames more generally). Second, while Blow is prominent enough to have profiles in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NBC etc. and has done heaps of interviews, I haven't been able to find comments on his specific game design practice outside of interviews. (And annoyingly, I haven't found other game designers discussing his puzzles either.) In some fields like art history, famous artists like Jackson Pollock have had hundreds of academic articles analyzing their work, but I'm not aware of anything similar in videogames. Looking at other GA BLP videogame developer articles like Jenova Chen, Neil Druckmann and Andy Schatz, I think this is sadly the norm: for the equivalent artistry sections in these articles, I mainly see interviews with the subjects being used to construct these sections. In summary, I would have preferred to use secondary sources covering Blow's practice in the article, but I don't think they exist (yet). Neuroxic (talk) 20:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Media:
  • References:
    • Blow often identifies trends in games he thinks do not strengthen the medium and restrain it from reaching its potential, or are unethical. need an explicit source for this.
    • By 2010, some other indie games had become commercially successful, leading Blow to co-found funding organization Indie Fund in 2010 This implies no indie games before Braid had been commercial successes, which I think needs a better source than the used one, which I don't think adequately supports that assertion.
      •  Done Oooh, this was a subtle one, great catch! I've rephrased it to remove this implication, there was certainly other indie game from around that time which also found financial success. Neuroxic (talk) 17:37, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • You've got inconsistent formatting on websites/publishers for certain citations, some are missing publisher info, some have them. Joystiq in ref 35 isn't italicized when other websites are, etc. Jonathan Blow is given as "John Blow" in some refs, which isn't how you spell his name, let alone the random shortening.
    • Spot-checked statements attributed to refs 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 22, 25, 35, 38, 42, 54, 58, 59, 66, 77 and 80.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@David Fuchs: Thanks for the detailed review! I've gone through and attempted to address your concerns. Of course please let me know of any further suggestions, or further improvements I can make if you're not satisfied with the improvements I've made so far. Neuroxic (talk) 20:26, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Most of what I brought up looks good; I'm going to do one more pass. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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