Braid Postmortem is Expectedly Deep

Like the game itself, this little postmortem on Braid from Jonathan Blow is more than its title suggests. Braid, to me, is more than just a game. And this chat is more than just a postmortem. It may ultimately be him whining about the whiny backlash about some of the things he said pre-release but he nails a lot of my feelings about the industry dead-on.

I like games that are interesting, that give me something to think about or to be well-engaged in, that give me the benefit of the doubt as being an intelligent person. Fewer games like that are being made these days — an awful lot of games are just about ushering the player through a fake experience, letting him win, making him feel like he is clever and strong without actually requiring him to be anything but a couch potato. I’m not interested in playing those games, and as a result of that (and other long-term design trends) these days there aren’t many games that I enjoy.

That very nearly brought me to tears and definitely sums up my opinion of 99% of the action games out there. Yes, I still play some of them but they’re becoming less and less enjoyable every time I pick up a new one. On the broader topic of media reception and public perception he eerily hits on some other thoughts I’ve had lately. Talking about pre-release coverage he says that,

when people actually read the piece, and often they barely skim the write-up or transcript, or else just read someone else’s summary about it on an aggregator blog somewhere and didn’t even follow the link; so ultimately the understanding that builds in peoples’ heads has little to do with the actual reality.

Then I look at all this and think, hmm, there is nothing special about my situation — this must be true for most public discourse most of the time. It’s pretty sucky.

Just like Braid, this somewhat poetic write up hit me on more levels than I expected. We are all victims of media overload these days and  I, for one, take many blogger’s impressions of an article at face value. I rarely have time to hit the Read link and really absorb the content and it’s really been bugging me lately. But is it better to have some idea of what’s going on than perpetually be lagging behind? I try not to get too swayed in any direction by anything I read (except for being genuinely excited by it) but it’s easy to get caught up in the reigning culture of internet sarcasm and smarmy blog posts.

Thanks for listening. Posting this actually makes me feel a little better somehow. I’m gonna stop here before I get just as philosophical as Jonathan Blow. So, go read a whole article for a change and, in the immortal words of LeVar Burton,  don’t just take my word for it!