Jonathan Blow Interviewed in Stanford's Pre-Collegiate Summer Program

I had the gumption to ask Jonathan Blow to speak to my Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institute Class on Digital Signals. And would you believe that he came?!? I am very grateful that he came to speak to us and share his thoughts and advice.
This is a video of our conversation.
Please visit www.nicholasdwork.com for other material.

[@BenVisness]

I love that you will sit there silently and let him think for like 30 seconds. That was one of the best and most thoughtful interviews I have ever seen.

[@NicholasDwork]

Thank you for the kind thoughts. :)

[@Johnny-ww9ks]

A fine example of how interviews should be conducted.

[@timwright4513]

Thank you so much for sharing this. There is never enough of this guy spilling his mind

[@user-tt4dy1ti5v]

00:05 (2008) _Braid_ game 00:21 What do you do for a living? 00:30 What is the purpose of what you do for a living? 01:40 You must get alot of satisfaction out of the games you made. 04:15 [Jon discusses CPU technology like out-of-order execution.] 05:55 Why are you cleaning up _Braid_ ? 07:20 Are you gonna re-code _Braid_ in your upcoming programming language Jai? 08:15 Do you have advice for high school students on picking a college and career? 11:05 More generally, how does one choose which path to embark in life? 14:40 [Jon discusses working on creative projects in addition to taking courses.] 18:10 You seem masterful at questioning conventional thought. 22:23 Do you have any suggestions on how to cultivate being in the moment and doing what you're inspired to do? 23:10 What are the downsides to thinking unconventionally? 26:40 Do you like _Braid_ ? 27:38 Do you like _Braid_ more because it succeeded? 31:42 You made _Braid_ by yourself -- is that true? 32:00 David Hellman, did most of the art in _Braid_ 32:05 Edmund McMillen did initial character designs/animations in _Braid_ 32:07 (2010) _Super_ _Meat_ _Boy_ 32:14 Sean Barrett did some final programming on _Braid_ 32:55 For how much of the development of _Braid_ did you work by yourself? 33:05 (2016) _The_ _Witness_ game 33:10 What was the experience like building and managing a team to develop _The_ _Witness_ ? 35:38 What are the qualities you look for in hiring for game development? 39:35 Did you ever hire someone that you should not have hired? 39:40 What did you learn from those hiring mistakes? 40:38 What does 'be careful when hiring' mean? 41:08 You wrote an interesting job description for a game developer job a few years ago. 41:45 I think you risked a whole lot of your money on _The_ _Witness_ after earning alot of money from _Braid_ -- that's a very unconventional thing to do. 42:37 In a sense, you spent millions of dollars to make _The_ _Witness_ -- why did you do that? 44:18 You do altruistic things? 44:48 I think of your games as a gift. 46:04 How do you know when you're done developing a game? When you run out of money? Audience Q&A: 50:15 Do you think the principle of interning at a smaller company would work for any industry, not just the games industry? 51:48 Is there anything to do to exercise creativity? 52:38 How to you compensate for the desires of your audience when you're designing a game? 53:40 Are there any inspirations for your puzzle design? 55:03 [Jon discusses rewind in _Braid_ ] 55:58 [Jon discusses puzzle difficulty and the flow of ideas in _The_ _Witness_ ] 56:30 What led you to build your own engine for _The_ _Witness_ ? 58:10 [Jon discusses the Unreal and Unity game engines.] 59:30 Do you think you are better off to let things go and not strive for perfection? 1:00:30 (2016) _Inside_ game 1:01:35 What are you opinions on (2015) _Undertale_ ? 1:02:42 What do think of (2004) _World_ _of_ _Warcraft_ ? 1:02:58 Why did you say that _World_ _of_ _Warcraft_ is unethical?

[@AsbjornOlling]

jon: " " interviewer: "What is the purpose of what you do for a living?!"

[@PU7MZD]

I've watched half of the video and it's already a great talk. Thank you for uploading this.

[@RedPlayerOne]

thanks for posting this, awesome interview!

[@umito1576]

Fascinating, thank for sharing this.

[@phosphornaut6811]

I gave Clash of Clans on an android phone a go today, instantly saw the 'treadmills' Blow refers to. That term will stick with me now. I'd love to see him visit my University. Great interview.

[@wessmall7957]

What an honor for these kids. Great interview. Great Q&A.

[@ivanbraidi]

Wonderful interview with a wonderful mind. I love Jon so much. Well done Nicholas! ;)

[@ChaosPootato]

Good questions from the audience, cool interview overall

[@vorval96]

Great interview

[@SETHthegodofchaos]

Man, this guy is so smart and shares so many life experiences, while also containing harsh truths. I am really curious what the future will be for Mr Blow in a few years.

[@soulstudiosmusic]

Bad audio, but thanks for posting this.

[@lukeszklarz9674]

fantastic

[@liran9492]

Hi Nicholas, As you may know, most Chinese do not have access to KZbin due to the ‘Great Firewall’, so I’m planning to repost this video to a Chinese video website. I will put a link to this page in the description and state that you own the rights to the video, but please let me know if you have any problem with it. Thanks.

[@NicholasDwork]

Sounds good!

[@liran9492]

Thank you

[@Tribune12345]

21:54 zen

[@johnhammer8668]

1:01:33 who is he talking about ?

[@EricBrill]

Did you use a potato to record the audio?

[@linkVIII]

3 years through school and I still don't understand how people *can't* program

[@0xCAFEF00D]

I think it's about standards. And how (in my experience) school doesn't really aim to teach you how to make software. I help random people with programming very often and it's not uncommon that second year students don't really have the ability to understand how they'd start doing something entirely new. Their own project. Nevermind making something that's of good quality. Because almost all the assignments are targeted at specific things, like 'use this datastructure', 'write a binary search' etc. You rarely find assignments or projects where you actually architect a program and then go write it. Many even 'guide' you by doing things like saying you're supposed to have specific functions or implement things in certain ways. Imo what they should do is just let them make mistakes. And have them ask a lot of questions. Why not make every variable in your program a global variable? On the surface there's no problem. And unlike what people will tell you it's really not a big deal if you namespace it. But the larger the project gets the bigger the problem with it gets. So that's something to learn. You shouldn't tell people 'don't use global varaibles' or simply forbid them in assignments. No real learning is made that way.

[@peterdoria6118]

this gives me hope for the youtube comment section

[@0011usagi]

You got students 5 years into musical studies who can't improvise a 30 seconds song, and we've been teaching and learning music for thousands of years. Now imagine with a 40 years-old or something art. Most schools will be near useless to teach people how to program, it's just the people that get it or not, and "getting it" can definitely take up to 3 years if your mind was wired in a very different way going in.

[@linkVIII]

I saw this reply and thought it was on/from an 8bit music theory video at first. But in my experience it seems like people just don't put in the effort to figure things out beyond completing the assignments in early courses. Then they get to a higher course saying "go make this, have fun", they have no experience doing so. idk.

[@LizardanNet]

John, want an advise that will make you millions? ... make Braid 2 .. boom!

[@microdavid7098]

braid 2 won't work for the kind of fans that follow him. There's no Inception 2 or Interstellar 2 in the same vein