Jonathan Blow

I am digging through some old emails, for a presentation I am giving in a few days ...

"Anyone who played any games on the first Sega or Nintendo consoles saw and got tired of this kind of game play fifteen years ago. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement...

...I was hoping for a chance to do some good work for a game that would be cool enough to get noticed. Okay, so I'm being brutally honest. Apologies, but the game industry is not forgiving."

"This level of game cannot keep the interest of adults, so it would be best to make it a Children's game with Children's themes." "The time-rewind thing may be a programming help in the development process but I find it confusing and annoying if part of the game itself."

(All those comments are from one guy who I was trying to get to do the art for the game. There are many more!) People have no idea (a) how much work it is to get a game done (b) how hard it is for many people to understand the thing, if it's not a thing they already know.

(c) Peoples' perception of the quality of a thing depends very much on surface-level features, even if they are supposed to be a professional whose job is to see beyond these. (e.g. the first phone conversation with the Steam guy who rejected the game in a fairly demeaning

manner, which is why the game launched on XBLA and didn't come to Steam until way later). If your game doesn't look good and sound good, most people will assume it's had little effort put in, so will not see good design or unusual ideas; they will just seem weird and unappealing.