Jonathan Blow criticizes Valve

[@clee5653]

It's like writing an academic paper. You work your ass off to make the paper more impressive and convincing. But after getting your paper accepted, you move on and leave everything behind.

[@notiashvili]

Well this is because Valve has so much money, they can afford to not care about these kinds of products. Remember Jeri Ellsworth quoting a Valve manager when she said they could make a few million dollars on her proposed product: "That's zero billions of dollars". At this point, Valve should just become an R&D company like the old Bell Labs, it has the potential with all that Steam revenue.

[@La0bouchere]

Wait I thought Valve doesn't even have managers? And these problems are because everyone just picks what they want to work on. Meaning once the cool problems of the project are solved, everyone just bails and starts working on the next cool thing. The R&D thing seems like it might actually happen with all the neural interfacing research they started doing

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

@@La0bouchere Social hierarchies form naturally. If you can't get the right people behind your ideas you probably won't get far in an environment like that.

[@AdobadoFantastico]

That IS essentially what they are and always have been. It's part of why they have experimented with the lack of formal structure.

[@tapwater424]

​@@La0bouchere Valve has an estimated 201-500 employees according to LinkedIn. Compare this to Ubisoft's 21 000, or EA's 12 000, or Activision Blizzard's 13 000. Having a flat structure has drawbacks but they certainly have productive employees.

[@blueballoon5052]

Apple has so much money, but they sure do advertise their shit.

[@MrD0r1an]

I'm not sure if a product with a 3+ month estimated wait list needs more advertising. And once they can actually ship these in large quantities it may very well sell itself pretty well through word of mouth. quantities it may very well sell itself pretty well through word of mouth.

[@CyberWolf755]

Imo, I think what Valve is doing is perfectly fine in their situation. They released a niche product (handheld x86 Linux PC) that has impressed a lot of people, hardcore gamers and not. If I was looking at the market right now, I'd rather focus on delivering the current years batch of orders, then start advertising during the holiday period again and polish your software and hardware for easier adoption. They either received more orders than planned or could not keep up with the demand until now.

[@fleaspoon]

The coop in portal 2 seems to have the best puzzle part

[@chrisronin]

this is a big moment where jon is really missing the forest for the trees. valve achieved its objective because now they have aya and ambernic trying to chase them on price. the steam deck is meant to drive interest in steam as a portable platform, especially against nintendo. there was already sizzle with the gpd handhelds, but now that valve has proven a market all that competition is going to drive the part prices down by volume, AND sell more steam games. gabe pretty much said they’re eating the hardware cost, and they’re still selling them as fast as they can make them. they aren’t trying to go for pc master race, they’re going for switch owners. i only bought my own switch because at the time there was nothing in the $300-400 range that could play steam games well. now it would be a no brainer. i’ve winced every time i dropped $40 on a switch game knowing i coulda got it way cheaper in a steam sale. i will probably get an aya neo air very soon. that’s a complete success for valve, because they just want their software cut. hardware doesn’t matter.

[@thanksbetotap]

What are Aya and Ambernic??

[@chrisronin]

@@thanksbetotap i meant to say ‘ayaneo’ and ambernic. there are a handful of handheld game device manufacturers that have been making niche handhelds for a while now, but since the steam deck was announced have all been approaching from all sides. ambernic, powkiddy, retroid and a bunch of others have mostly made sub $200 arm based units focused on emulation. gpd, ayaneo and ayn had $700++ range x86 handhelds. there’s tons more. now many of them have announced some form of x86 handheld aiming for the $300-600 range that are all capable of running steam in some fashion.

[@dorbie]

All consoles eat the hardware cost, it's part of the business model. It's offset by monopolistic software taxes but if 3rd party vendors can't see a revenue slice from the software sales that Valve enjoys on Steam then it's slim pickings for them. It costs $billions to launch a hardware product at relevant consumer volume, that's not an exaggeration.

[@chrisronin]

@@dorbie but in this case they have the other vendors doing the work for them. the point being that as long as people buy steam games, regardless of which hardware it's on, valve gets a cut. additionally, because the steam deck does seem to be popular in its first run, a lot of devs have been taking lengths to make it 'steam deck ready' even though it's low spec, it's a nice fixed target system, which will also benefit the other handhelds as well. and true all you said is normally the case, but yet like i said the chinese companies seem to be responding to it. maybe it'll be another 3do scenario. but it's cool to see any activity at all.

[@dorbie]

@@chrisronin You're assuming I meant the reverse of my point. Those other hardware vendors are not getting a cut of anything on a 3rd party store. There's no great incentive or margin to do anything other than mediocre consumer hardware. If you've ever been somewhere that shipped volume hardware with a significant BOM you will realize that the if you're lucky you might get a loan secured against future inventory if it's a name brand etc. If you're some off-brand obscure electronics maker you have a liquidity problem that is eye watering. And for what? So you can scrape out a corner of a niche high competition market to help someone else make money on software.

[@VidCirman]

I agree with everything except that early point about laptops being a viable alternative to the Deck. Normal laptops that people get for work/school (even oldish gaming laptops) are shit-tier for games. Not just the performance, it lacks integrated non-keyboard inputs which means I can't really game unless I'm plugged in (mouse/controller +power) and sat upright facing a screen. Try laptop gaming on a bus or a plane.

[@zip2kx]

hes a nerd that does it, normal people have their phone and nothing else.

[@asdfghjkl7507]

I'm loving this guy's takes, honestly. I think I agree with a lot of what he says but he throws these curveballs in. "Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" I still play portal 2 workshop maps all the time. It is fundamentally a good puzzle game because there are still fresh puzzles being made by the community to this day. I personally like it because I was a huge fan as a teenager, and I absolutely love the first person perspective. The story and art is great obviously, but it's not what keeps me playing. To play a puzzle game that works and challenges the mind in a first person perspective is an absolute treat I'll never grow tired of. As far as the debate over design by dictator or committee/focus group, etc.; I think that Valve, whether by luck or talent, just got it right early on and has ridden that wave of successful design through the committee/playtesting decision making style. Half Life Alyx is the most competent VR title ever made because of that process, but it is not exceptional and does not come close to reaching the ideals of VR game design. I've developed my own ideology on game design, and I've struggled hard with trying to find the balance between making what I think is good design and making what I think will be successful/appeal to people. I think that every artform, by virtue of it's limitations, does have some intersubjective "ideal" that should be endlessly reached for. In paintings, the limitations are the frame and the visible light spectrum. In film, the limitations are the screen and how you choose to arrange a succession of images on it. In video games, those limitations are player input. A cut scene riddled game can be fun for players and be successful, but it doesn't advance game design. It doesn't create a complete experience solely out of what only that medium is capable of. I sort of think that video games are at the point now that cinema was in the 50's. We're coming upon a generation of developers that have been steeped in a relatively consistent form all their lives, and game design is getting stale while the tools have become all the more powerful.

[@Darth_Bateman]

The operative curveball being "Portal 2 Workshop maps" do you replay Portal 2 and Portal 2 alone as it was intended to be made? If the game subsists or is only worth playing due to the mods, it's not a good game. Take Skyrim? Skyrim is NOT a good game. Sure, those events where you meet a guy in his house on the map just chilling and then a dragon swoops in and the guy helps you kill it or dies? Its pretty cool, but it leaves you with a lingering feeling : "Now what?" like, you ran into this thing in the field, this guy, woman, whatever. . . ? So what next? What, repeated dialogue? That's annoying.

[@asdfghjkl7507]

​@@Darth_Bateman Man I really like portal, but I agree that Skyrim is a terrible game, you've actually really got me with that one. I fucking hate Skyrim dogshit ass game.

[@blueballoon5052]

@@Darth_Bateman Portal 2 is an excellent game, it's just not a very good puzzle game. Portal two has an amazing story, engaging gameplay, and fantastic community support. It objectively has everything necessary for it to be a great game. It's just not a very good puzzle game.

[@snowflyer9737]

I agree with Blow here, Portal 1 is a much better puzzle game if you don't include workshop stuff with Portal 2. Portal 2's SP campaign has way too much fluff and story and it distracts from the puzzles heavily. It is also much less clean in its gameplay due to abandoning the pure lab setup and doing an extremely run down facility theme instead.

[@v0ldy54]

@@Darth_Bateman I surely played the story mode more than once, but what does that even imply? It's a puzzle game, once you solve any puzzle it obviously loses replayability, it's like saying sudoku is a bad puzzle because once you solved a board it loses its appeal.

[@rp627]

"portal 2 is not a good puzzle game". hahahahah. thank goodness. that had to be said.

[@Capewearer]

It's too simple, no wonder it's loved by broad masses. Even 8 year old kid will complete the puzzles. I checked it in experiment on the most average child. But what do I despise, is how it's rewriting history of Portal 1 with "humanizing" the mass murderer known as G.L.a.D.O.S. These cheap tricks don't work on me. And stupid Wheatley humour is not fun at any means. The redesign of old chambers is completely ridiculous and breaks the plot (especially when all background crematories are gone).

[@UltimatePiccolo]

Portal 2 is a good puzzle game.

[@Jake-mp7ex]

Not really. The game continually blocks you for the story moments, which ruins replayability. The puzzles themselves are also a bit of a let down compared to Portal 1. I remember feeling like there was always just one way to solve each puzzle, and it was more about finding the "intended" path.

[@UltimatePiccolo]

@@Jake-mp7ex I felt like I had a full story experience after completing portal 2, what do you mean it blocks you from the story moments? What's wrong with having limited solutions? As long as solving the problem is a challenge and entertaining, how is that? Imo Portal 2's puzzles were more interesting than the witness's.

[@Jake-mp7ex]

​​@@UltimatePiccolo Blocks the game for story, not from story Ruins replayability. Also, worse puzzles. Less creativity to solve them.

[@blueballoon5052]

Portal 2 is a great game, but it is not a very good puzzle game. It is a story driven adventure platformed with a bunch of puzzles, most of which are very easy to solve. A great puzzle is not very accessible, and that's a bad thing from the perspective of mass appeal, portal 2 was very accessible, and not very challenging.

[@UltimatePiccolo]

@@blueballoon5052 Who says what a great puzzle game is? It is a game where you puzzles to progress. Those puzzles were enjoyable enough, and while it isn't the hardest puzzle game, it doesn't need to be. It did what it was trying to do well. The problem with Blow's criticism is that he made a worse game, the witness. Braid is better than the witness since it at least did something more interesting with its gameplay than drawing lines.

[@igorgiuseppe1862]

i dont get why people compare it to a laptop. you cant hold an laptop with 2 hands while play with an gamepad, you cant use it properly on a buss, not if you prefer to play with a controller, you cant laydown on bed with your belly up and play on it. i agree with the lack of marketing part, but they cant produce it at scale yet, so it make little sense to make a massive marketing for some demmand they cant fullfill yet, on the other hand, if they increasse their production and dont invest more in marketing, they are shooting thenselves in the foot. as for the monarch design, yeah i agree, if you ask a team what they should make, you lose almost every individuality that an person could have and could bring to the project

[@dorbie]

"I don't understand it." this is the easiest thing in the world to understand. Valve is a software company, getting collections of humans to care about anything outside their core competency / mission is like moving a mountain. It rarely works out even when the message comes from the very top, and with Valve I suspect the vision doesn't really have full support among the leadership. This goes all the way back to WHY Valve reluctantly got into hardware. You have to remember when Microsoft under Balmer shat the bed on the "make the desktop a tablet" iteration of Windows threatening PC gaming while introducing their own store, in what looked like a double barreled existential crisis to Valve. I don't think they'll ever truly commit to any hardware platform, not least because Microsoft's threat of desktop suicide subsided.

[@Lestibournes]

They've been working consistently on developing an alternative desktop gaming OS on the basis of Linux for the past 10 years. Some stuff hasn't worked out, that's all

[@UODZU-P]

Not sure I'm understanding, is the complaint you like the Steam Deck but they don't advertise it enough?

[@lucemiserlohn]

Valve isn't a game development company anymore; the titles they put out from time to time (and this extends to their hardware as well) are not made to make a profit; they're made to promote Steam. Steam is what drives Valve, Steam is where they make their money (much like Office is what makes Microsoft their money; Windows is just the necessary thing to have in order to sell Office). And their whole focus is on Steam. The other products are just merchandise carrying the Steam logo.

[@lucemiserlohn]

And that is exactly why we'll never see Half Life 3 being made; as long as there is the possibility of HL3 being made, it makes Valve money. Once no one cares about HL3 anymore, they have made free money from a piece of vaporware they never invested a penny into. By then, they'll have the next thing to repeat this scheme with.

[@PixLgams]

If you look at it from a business perspective, it wouldn't make sense to put all your eggs in one basket like that. Of course Valve has smart enough marketing (and metrics) to not blow their PR with shitty titles but their existing titles do still recieve decent content updates which keeps popularity and income afloat so to say that it's all Steam now is perhaps a little simplistic. What I've noticed from say 2012 onward is that Valve has increasingly shifted to providing technology for the industry (see their invilvement in Vulkan or their strides to streamline VR using the Index & HL:A). I think they created the Steam Deck as a reference device, essentially the IBM 5150 of Steam machines. To me, their ultimate goal is to establish practically vendor-agnostic game technology standards (except for game distribution ofc). >Windows is a vehicle for Office Yet there's no Linux port of Office anywhere in sight, despite Azure and WSL on one end, and WINE, Office 365 and Mono on the other. I'd say you picked a bad example.

[@yesyes-om1po]

@@lucemiserlohn does it really matter, steam isn't as big as it is because of HL2 or any of that nonsense, its big because its the best and most convenient way to buy games on pc. Everybody else pales in comparison, and the competition naively tries to persuade people to jump ship by giving out a free game or having more aggressive sales, but they fail to realize that those things aren't the reason we stick with steam, its everything else. The titles they put out from time to time are not for profit, they are for "fun", passion projects. That is why they have pumped out so few games, they don't need to, many projects have been started and scrapped, there is no pressure to continue pushing toward developing and releasing a game if they think it might not be a 10/10 game. That is why HL-Alyx was made, a passion project, an "investment" into the future (VR). Something novel, innovation. Valve has been known for innovating in game, the somewhat open ended levels in HL1 and 2 that had so many physics interactive objects and environments. They pioneered that, and of course we can't forget Portal, arguably the best puzzle games ever made.

[@yesyes-om1po]

@@PixLgams They didn't put all their eggs in one basket, they were a game development studio, decided to make a platform to sell their games because they didn't like adhering to publishers, ended up being better than everyone else, and the rest is history. Valve was and is a passion project, created so they didn't have to partake in menial things they didn't want to do at Microsoft.

[@lucemiserlohn]

@@yesyes-om1po Speak for yourself - I remember the days when you bought games in physical boxes, and I personally wish it were still so.

[@Wighen18]

They just put stuff out and never support it further or continue developing it or advertising it. I'm still mourning the death of steam controllers

[@DanielDangerous]

They are still updating the steam link

[@StefanConstantinDumitrache]

The controller was abandoned due to some patent issues. The worst part about it is not having audio output. Once you try the DS or the XB controllers, you can't really deal with the Steam controller.

[@yarghhargh9345]

Refreshing to see a valve hot take that isn't "OMG THEY DONT CARE ABOUT TF2!!!"

[@skycaptain95]

You don't need to market a product that is constantly sold out on a waitlist.

[@KillahMate]

Fun to come into one of these videos after a while and watch Blow be casually and confidently wrong about more or less everything, in a field that's somewhat related to his own so he's pretty sure he has a pretty good idea what's going on. Seems to be a common occurrence among really clever people. In fact the _cleverest_ people are pretty sure they have a pretty good idea what's going on even in fields entirely unrelated to their own! Fascinating stuff, behaviorally speaking.

[@ManuelBTC21]

You heard it here first: Monarchy > Democracy. Maybe he's a fan of Hans Hoppe.

[@koktszfung]

Nothing gets done if everything is decided by democracy, not everyone is capable of doing everything

[@zayag3543]

I agree with some of his points, especially on the hardware side. But it looks like even Blow can't escape his bubble sometimes. When he says portal isn't a good puzzle game he completely loses me, and instead it's success is based on its story. If you put a gun to my head I couldn't tell you what the story to the first portal game was besides waking up in a cell. Maybe it wasn't great to him as an experienced adult who deals with 3d spatial reasoning professionally. But to me as a teenager, playing portal was such a jolt to my system. It stretched my brain and I could feel myself adjusting to a form of problem solving I've never been exposed to.

[@nonyobisniss7928]

He said Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game. He says Portal 2 in pretty much every sentence. I'm not sure how you missed that and thought you could argue against his opinion of Portal 2 by talking about the first Portal. The portal mechanic is neat and novel enough to sustain interest for a short game like Portal 1, but Portal 2 seems to appeal to most people because of its story and "funny" dialogue, not the quality of the puzzles, and this was clearly by design. They focused very heavily on those aspects to appeal to a wider audience and pad out the game.

[@tenhovergonha7692]

@@nonyobisniss7928 this

[@nickfarley2268]

The point of the steam deck is to make Linux a viable gaming platform to insure valve's business if Microsoft kicks steam off windows or windows no longer is a good OS for gaming. The steam deck was not made with the intention of out selling the PS5 but to provide a stable Linux hardware target and to make people buy more games off steam. I don't see how *only* selling a million steam decks per year and the work on Linux game compatibly to be a failure. Valve has also just released a hardware refresh and looks to keep supporting the steam deck into the future

[@xhacker]

Blow: I dont have any real complaints about the deck Blow Look at how much effort Sony puts in to promote their hardware I take it Blow hasnt heard about the Vita.

[@NoLifeBrine]

Imo, even the PSP got its own decent niche. And this was before emulation was a thing.

[@m4rt_]

they didn't just release the steamdeck and let it die. They have dune multiple updates, etc. And they have improved the availability of it too.

[@marcfruchtman9473]

Great design can be achieved by 1 person or many. It is easier for 1 person to enforce a great vision onto 1 game's design than it is for a great vision to be universally accepted by a group committee. The reverse is also true, that 1 person can also enforce poor decisions more easily than a committee because the committee is supposed to act like a buffer against such decisions. Of course, if the committee itself is actually powerfully led by 1 person, that essentially converts the whole thing into a monarchy. Companies and Corporations with great leaders who follow their vision generally do very well. The real issue seems to happen when those leaders step down. At that point leadership by committee is often the best choice because the next leader is almost always without the same vision or quality of greatness. Jon is correct here that, when you have large amounts of cash reserves it makes sense to try to use some of that to market your product to make it more popular. However, those comments don't take into account the current issues with supply chain (2022). So, it is very possible that Valve wants to market more but doesn't want to increase the demand until supply chain issues are ironed out. Just a conjecture, but it is possible.

[@BaDitO2]

to be fair, a "mostly fine" is proabbly as good as it gets for a product review from jonathan blow

[@trugate]

Steam Decks are back ordered since pre-orders came out. I think marketing the deck more at this time would invite disappointment in the more "mainstream" folks that see these products in box stores. Steam Deck is doing great. I think it's a great indicator of their future and trend-setting that encourages further proliferation of Steam, their platform.

[@thegnosticatheist]

"extrapolated beyond correctness" I have to write this phrase somewhere

[@colinclean]

This is probably the result of valve having a certain incentive structure that rewards employees for working on new things more than refining existing products. I think this is why their older games aren't very well supported. On the other hand a company like riot has a very narrow focus on League of Legends, Valorant, so on and trying to maximize the potential of just a few projects while slowly expanding.

[@LukeHarpercouk]

If they actually manufactured enough to sell to the current customers then of course they'd advertise but they still aren't even producing enough at the moment. Advertising a product that cannot be purchased and still over demand is dumb.

[@CCuiu]

Exactly because Sony stopped advertising the ps5 when they couldn't meet the demand...

[@wisnoskij]

I don't really understand this. Valve does not really make games any more, because they (I believe correctly) as I understand it, know they cannot live up to the hype of their original games. And they would rather be a game company that does not realease games and will forever be known as probaby the best game developer of the era than one that continues making games long enough to become reviled. Because every single game has been a humongous success, at least judging by the critical/fan reception. Portal 2 absoutly is one the the worst puzzles games ever produced, but it is a great interactive movie. If all those games were made by committy, well that sort of disproved Blows point. As for the hardware. Maybe, they might be too ethical to compete on an even keel with some of the other guys? They dont beleive in exclusives, or locking stuff down, or shoving ads in peoples faces. Blow makes this seem like a failing we should complain about.

[@Nors2Ka]

Every single game? You sure about that? Alyx is not even in the same weight class compared to what HL1 and 2 was at the time, in fact, it's hardly a VR title with how little they've done in it. Underlords (I think that's the name?) just... died. Artifact... crashed, burned and then died (they're gonna revive it for sure). Their live service titles, CSGO and TF2, are limping along from their past successes. Only Dota2 is hanging around fine, probably because it's developed by an effective monarchy (Icefrog). Their precious baby, Steam, is seemingly slowly deteriorating: I'm noticing more and more bugs, slower load times, worse UI and anemic updates. Their hardware too - SteamDeck has QA issues, recently people found that some units shipped with different cpu fans which were noticeably louder and worse sounding than the other variant. They also silently downgraded some of the models to have worse SSDs and only publicized it after people found out, quoting that the performance difference is small, and that may be true, but come on. As for the others - Index has huge time upkeep costs, SteamBoxes were... a thing, but not really, Link is a coin flip if it works, Controllers were a few iterations from being very good, but Valve didn't believe that I guess. NMS is still not a game that it was promised (and still advertised) to be and people forgave it, taunting it as the redemption story. "Living up to the expectations" doesn't mean jack, it **literally** never did. Valve right now is a corpse that has more money than god, they're indefensible.

[@wisnoskij]

@@Nors2Ka I dont really think Valve releasing some little games I had never heard of really disprove my overall point. Valve not only dont care about game dev, they actively shy away from it. Also, Alex is probably VRs biggest title. If any game had hype outside the VR community, that would be the game. We dont really have any amazing console selling games on VR, but if anything counts as that it would be Alex. I dont think it is fair to complain about TF and CS. They are soo old. They were extremly successfull for far longer than anyone would of guessed, they were never designed to the last team based competative arean shooters that ever needed to be made. If Blow was only talking about this little games released relativly recentaly that no one had heard about, sure. That is how hardware works now. Not all parts will be identical. And no one here is claiming their past hardware releases were a success.

[@zayag3543]

@@Nors2Ka I feel like this comment was more personal vendetta than it was of actual substance.

[@Nors2Ka]

@@zayag3543 Personal and low on substance, maybe, but vendetta? Did I offend you?

[@TheBiomedZed]

Valve is no longer a game company because they don’t need to be. They gained industry recognition for their early titles and then hit the gold mine with Steam. Now they have both clout AND the bankroll to do whatever they want. And now they are focusing on bigger picture things such as putting funding into VR and handhelds to try and push the boundaries of the video game industry.

[@jungwooyom]

I don’t know much about Valve’s hardware products, but Valve have abandoned some console ports of their games(e.g. TF2 and CS:GO) after few patches so I agree with Jon.

[@4.0.4]

Yeah, it's one of those cases where I respect his opinion, but disagree.

[@kuklama0706]

I suspect that Valve deep diving into DOTA and multiplayer after Portal 2 was because their expectations about Portal 2 were completely unrealistic and when they weren't fullfilled, Valve considererd single player to be dead.

[@karlimo4034]

Big idiots then, because if they would ever release Half Life 3, people would be all over it playing the campaign.

[@nomadshiba]

how steam deck died?

[@niks660097]

I agree with not promoting it, steam deck is still not available in many countries and there is almost no marketing, they have so much money, they can ramp up production 100x but they don't, valve makes a good product and let it die without giving it a chance.

[@SilkCrown]

Funny that he says that about Valve, even though he thinks Elon Musk is a genius and Tesla famously didn't run ads for the last fifteen years and yet grew massively.

[@spiveeforever7093]

"Design monarchy", someone's been listening to Curtis Yarvin.

[@FF-FAN9999]

I love the steam deck and is the only platform I play games nowadays

[@6IGNITION9]

Effective Design Monarchies

[@mobugs]

**cries in steam controller**

[@joshuaworman4022]

Valve been drowning itself in its monopoly. Hopefully the competition with nintendo will wake them up.

[@francesco2305]

what? Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game? why?

[@sagitswag1785]

For how much more funding portal 2 got than portal 1, it should have been much better than portal 1, yet it ended up worse. Portal 1 was solving puzzles for the sake of the puzzles. Portal 2 was solving puzzles for the sake of an over the top story that did not need to exist.

[@DemonixTB]

@Dootie lol no, portal 2 just objectively has no actual puzzles, like at all. you just go around and put the cube on the button and then the portal on the wall to go grab a laser cube to make the laser point at the laser target to open the door, 0 logical thinking required. If you ever play actual puzzle games: Baba is You, Steven's sausage roll,... or his games, Braid, The Witness, you're instantly able to tell the difference. He doesn't even say Portal 2 is a bad game, it's just a linear story telling game, not a puzzle game. As a puzzle game it just fails to be one. Apart from the community made test chambers that Valve did not make, that if you search for hard enough have actual puzzles (and very good ones too!)

[@0xCAFEF00D]

Portal 2 gave you almost no freedom in where to place portals. The first game is filled to the brim with surfaces, even where they don't need to be. There's moments in Portal 2 (solo) where there's almost nothing to shoot at. I distinctly remember a moment in the game where I felt like nobody could possibly mess up this puzzle because of it and I felt myself switching from hoping for good puzzles to just thinking of it as a story game. I don't think a lack of surfaces necessarily has to kill the puzzles. The first game could be fine with less but there's some limit where you start to trivialize the game. Some of the custom content shows just how little Valve did with their new mechanics as well. I don't think anyone can disagree with how much more focus there was on story.

[@CCuiu]

It's a fun game in spite of it's uninspired puzzles and artificially complex mechanics. Portal 2 stops being good when it's not about portals and starts being about lasers, goo and not being able to make portals. Why are we in the universe where diluting your core mechanic is considered something to strive for. But but it is still a fun game because other parts carry it through the dips in quality and some of it might just be hope that it'll get better.

[@La0bouchere]

​@Dootie Seems like the most popular opinion about Portal 2 is that it's a good game with weak puzzles. IIRC nearly all the reviews after release mention that the actual puzzle solving is pretty basic and uninteresting, but the story and world make up for it.

[@documentthedrama8279]

1 year later - steam deck did sell itself portal 2 is still the best puzzle game ever made (especially co op) i guess flash graphics mario with the prince of persia reverse mechanic or draw a line simulator are real puzzle games

[@asdqwe4427]

The thing sold out like crazy though…

[@joric]

You are wrong, Jonathan Blow, The Witness is not a good puzzle game. Portal 2 is a great puzzle game, try playing custom maps or something, there's so much more to it than just a story.

[@IgnacioRoca]

"Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" damn Jon, what the fuck.

[@eduflm]

Good points but the "Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" is one of the worst takes ever.

[@ekfliu]

Valve do not support their hardware long term. See what happen to valve index, no new games for it no support for it. Nintendo hardware are old and last gen but at least support are there for long term.

[@ifstatementifstatement2704]

No one is safe lol

[@thewiseowl8804]

"Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" Uh huh...

[@StefanConstantinDumitrache]

Sony let the Vita die with no remorse.

[@BinaryReader]

Hmmm. I like the idea of a product being so obviously good, it sells itself....so i like Valves approach.

[@chrisc7265]

I like that Valve is the exception that doesn't really need to advertise their stuff at all --- it sells purely on the strength of their reputation, which in turn is built purely on actually making top quality stuff basically no one can pull that off, but if you can, ride with it

[@vornamenachname594]

Saying Valve believes in capitalist laissez-faire made a chuckle a bit. While to the outside it may look that way it's more an expression of their internal anarchic org structure. Outcome is similar, I guess.

[@filippocucina7001]

im out after portal 2 is not a good puzzle game

[@yesyes-om1po]

"Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" I fucking hate puzzle games, and I hate puzzles in games, I used to just quit when an action game gave me puzzles because they are always shit, boring, unintuitive, and extremely convoluted and usually just has you guessing whatever the developer wants you to specifically do. I finished Portal 1 and Portal 2 in 2 days. Few games can genuinely keep me playing them like that, and of all games, puzzle games. I also finished HL2 and all the "episodes". I never complained about the puzzles, I enjoyed them. tldr, I hate games with puzzles, but I love portal and HL inspite of all the puzzles.

[@6IGNITION9]

Why is Portal 2 not a good puzzle game? Too easy?

[@chriswilloughby48]

Wow, Portal 2 isn't a good puzzle game. That's a devastating critique. I love the Portal dynamic and world, and I also love Jonathan Blow's world and can see that he is a master and a genius, but hey I love both.

[@DD-co1zn]

Ladies & Gentlemen, meet the world's most relentlessly miserable man.

[@franciscofarias6385]

Valve doesn't want to be Sony. It's a mixture of genuine passion for innovation and doing what makes business sense for Steam as a game store.

[@franciscofarias6385]

They'd prefer other companies doing PC handhelds than they themselves having to support that, with all the marketing and logistics and stuff. Yes, that would make money, but it's not what people at Valve are interested in.

[@BubblegumCrash332]

Valve needs a Don Draper in thier marketing department

[@dizzee2100]

"Portal 2 is not a good puzzle game" is literally the highest rated game on Steam.

[@slothguy_]

portal 2 is a good puzzle game, I think what he means is that portal 2 is not a complex puzzle game.

[@globalistgamer6418]

Half-Life 1 and 2 aren't good games (and weren't for their time except purely on a technological level). They're heavily focused on scripting and quicksaving in a genre (FPS) that thrives on emergent gameplay and has its flow and balance greatly damaged by quicksaves. Where they do attempt emergent gameplay, it often fails due to prominent bugs in areas like AI. I didn't realize until now that they were designed by committee, and didn't really feel like it (probably because the narrative at least was seemingly the vision of one individual writer). But in terms of the final result, they certainly don't bode well for the 'cabal' approach. Portal 1 IS very good, mainly because it uses the Half-Life framework in a very different genre (puzzle adventure game with basically no combat) that it is much better suited to, executes the actual puzzles very well, and improves the story and characters. However, to my understanding it was much more directed in its development (by Kim Swift). I haven't played 2 but from the wikipedia page it credits a specific director (Joshua Weier).

[@DeanEmbry]

Portal 2 is a much better game than The Witness and Blow knows it. If it wasn't for Portal, The Witness wouldn't exist. And sure, The Witness tries to hide it's clear weaknesses behind pretentious crap but in the end it's nowhere near the game (Portal) that it's trying to rip off.

[@forasago]

There is basically zero gameplay overlap between Portal and any Blow game.

[@DeanEmbry]

@@forasago Silent protagonists wandering around a mysterious setting solving puzzles from a first person perspective. Yep no overlap. The Witness has less actual gameplay and story because that's beyond Blow's ability but The Witness was clearly inspired by Portal.

[@CCuiu]

@@DeanEmbry yeah you're right. I didn't see it before but you convinced me. portal 2 was the first game that had you wonder around and solve puzzles. You're quite amazing...

[@DeanEmbry]

@@CCuiu Blow makes a 2D platformer with a Sands of Time mechanic. Then in 2007 Portal comes out and every loves it. 2008 Blow starts development on The Witness. This isn't rocket science. Blow makes watered down versions of whatever is popular at the time.

[@AJ213Probably]

@@DeanEmbry So like, the overlap is that they are both puzzle games? idk, sounds like a stretch to make a claim about something that doesn't matter. Because who cares if a creative work was inspired by another...? Isn't that everything?

[@Crosmando]

As much as I personally dislike the guy, he’s right.