Jonathan Blow 'Design Reboot' 2007

http://braid-game.com/news/?p=129

"I want to see that Golden Age. I want to see us harness this power to transform society that Daniel [Radosh] also wants to see ...

I'm a designer now, because once a long time ago I was a gamer. I was a little kid who loved games. I played a lot of games. And I feel like I've grown up. I'm a smarter, wiser, more experienced person now. Games are a lot bigger but they haven't really grown. They haven't kept pace with me.

As a player, I have this desire to be transformed ... but I'm not getting it. At least, not most of the time. I get very frustrated by games ... [it] doesn't have anything fundamentally valuable to me that any other game hasn't always given me. I still love games, but it's frustrating. And I think that we can do a lot better ...

So, I'm encouraging all of us to make things that are worth while, or deep, or interesting. But what is worth while? That's a very subjective question. And surely your ideas about that are different from mine, and the games I would make left to my own devices would be very different from what you make ... But with all of our different ideas of what's worth while, we can at least hold the intention to make our games embody those ideas, to be worthwhile. And if you respect the player's potential to live a higher quality life, and not treat players as somebody from whom we're trying to siphon money or attention or fame. And if we do that, for a while, and get good at it, and are diligent, players will feel it, they'll feel the difference, we'll broaden our market, and if we get good enough at it, then someday we'll be able to see where that next step is, to build games up to their full potential." -- Jonathan Blow