Joseph Anderson
1 HN recommender · recommended in 5 months, 2021–2025
41:02 · 6.2M views · Mar 31, 2016
Joseph Anderson's long critique of Jonathan Blow's puzzle game The Witness, covering its gameplay, its hundreds of puzzles and its philosophical pretensions. He argues it is a great game that he nonetheless advises against playing.
HN uses it mainly as a critical review of the game, saying it captures a lack of respect for the player, though one commenter suggests watching it after finishing.
6 comments from Hacker News
When you're done playing, I recommend watching this video: this video Games are part art, what's more to understand? There's some fun image out there I can't exactly recall, but it's basically of an interview with some game devs, and one of them saying something like "We wanted to have a pot with flowers on the table here, and when you come back to this room later, the color of the flowers changes. No gameplay consequences. But we cut it for time. Why did we want it? Because we thought it'd be cool." But in a lot of games there's tons of stuff like that which doesn't get cut. Gamedev is full of those "because it'd be cool" or other vague artistic reasons (as opposed to business reasons or researched game testing reasons) for something to be there, or something to be polished well beyond reason.
> "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed" I think the critiques in this video [0] sum up my main feelings about the game. The puzzles are fantastic. The <spoiler> puzzles are fantastic. The movement, environment, graphics, etc are all fantastic. But, the "story" and "message" of the game can be interpreted in many ways. It is art in the sense that everyone gets something different from it. But it is pretentious because, if everyone gets something completely different from your "experience", you really didn't convey anything. That's what most people (I think) are talking about when they say "<art> is pretentious". [0] - this video
How do you compare it to the Portal games or the Talos principle? I find those superior in puzzle mechanics, sense of achievement and playing dynamics. They can be challenging but you never feel aimlessly going around without a purpose like the Witness. There is good review of the game on youtube by the title "The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play", it covers a lot and resonates well with my experience, the panels could've been a standalone mobile/tablet game. Everything else in the game is beautiful but frustrating. this video
Had high expectations for this game, anticipating with great excitement. I loved Braid, was following all the blog posts and videos with great admiration. And the game wasn't that bad, it was interesting for a while, but also frustrating. Talos on the other hand was a revelation, a thoroughly fun and enjoyable experience, very similar to Portal games. I think this was a fair critique of the Witness and why it lacks respect for the player: The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play this video
> he believes time is valuable and should be respected That's what he says , but not what he does . this video Haven't experienced a bigger author disconnect in gaming in the decade.