This will be Friday, February 12th, starting at 1pm Eastern (10am Pacific) and going for ...  a while?

I have made a new reddit account with the fabulous name of "Jonathan_Blow" for these purposes. (Note the underscore! There are some other accounts with similar names!)

Maybe we can also get some other people from the team in there answering questions.

The thread is now up.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

(I didn't name this speech; the title given here was picked by Creative Mornings after the speech was given.)

Here's the interview.

Jeff asked me about this part of the iOS App Store's Developer Terms of Service:

We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store.

And here is what I said:

I think this is the wrong attitude about games, but look, ultimately it is game developers' fault, not Apple's. Apple is treating games as shallow commercial entertainment experiences because they have been taught by game developers that that is what games are.

If we had built a world where games routinely work with serious issues in ways that people care about, Apple would not be able to take this stance, because it would not make any sense.

Why do they say "If you want to criticize a religion, write a book"? It's because it's obvious that banning books is bad, because there have been a lot of books that people find important (and we have had many cultural cycles involving people attempting to ban books, and culture has worked out ultimately that this is not a good thing). Games do not have this history. Right now Apple thinks a game is Angry Birds or maybe Infinity Blade. So who can blame them?

Apple may be badgered enough to change their policy someday, or they may not. But that doesn't matter very much because really it is just a reflection of the general cultural idea about what games are. The only way that idea will change is if a lot of developers make a lot of serious/deep/honest/touching/intrepid games for a long time. I don't know if that will ever happen. How many games can you think of to which you can seriously apply these adjectives? Certainly to none of the top-selling games on the App Store, and certainly certainly to none of those big free-to-play games that are raking in all the cash.

So, game developers are just sort of reaping what they have sown. What else would you expect?

I have not played Endgame: Syria but maybe it is a step in this direction. But to change these attitudes we need a lot of steps, consistently, not just a token step now and again.

Even the idea of UFCS is just a massive overcomplication. It only seems simple compared to baseline C++.

I should say that the biggest problem I find with the idea of member functions is that they are extremely anti-code-reuse. I know this may seem paradoxical, because the whole point is to encapsulate code in an easy-to-reuse way, but I'll give an example.

Let's say you have some basic data type like a 3D Vector called Vector3. You want everyone to be motivated to use Vector3 so that there's no friction when passing data between the main program and various libraries, etc.

All that is necessary for compatibility in a fast program is that everyone agrees on the data layout of Vector3. But as soon as you tie member functions to the data, you are insisting that everyone needs to think the same way about the data that is in a Vector3, and operate on it the same way. And that will never be true, because different code needs to think about data types in different ways; and also because programmers express their personality in programs, and different programmers want to think in different ways about the most common data types.

So if you force people to think a certain way about Vector3 or other basic data types, you are motivating them (or *requiring* them) to go against that grain and make their own alternatives. Then the system is fragmented and you have all these data types that need to be converted again. Or, if people don't do that, they just end up passive-aggressively hating the task of programming, which is not what you want.

So in reality, you want Vector3 to define only a common piece of data to be exchanged. You can provide default functions for operating on Vector3, but in a way that people can easily shadow them with their own functions or else use a completely disjoint set. That is just not what most "object models" encourage. Thus they put huge amounts of friction onreuse in this particular kind of case, which is very common and very important.

(I wish people would stop telling me that member functions are good because you can do obj . and get a list of procs in the IDE after typing the dot. You can obviously do this with flat functions too. Please stop telling me this kthx.)

Because this came out as a series of tweets, it is probably less coherent than what I would have written if it were a straight-up essay, but hey, this is how it went.

The original letter went through a few examples of specific issues of certification and how they could be handled better, to help substantiate why I think these processes are so broken. These are not the kinds of details you would expect to make it into a short article for a general audience, but having typed them up, I think some people out there might be interested (especially developers who have not done console games before but are thinking about it). So, below is my original letter (edited a little bit for clarity):

-----

Hi Kyle,

I have gone on record a number of times, saying that the XBLA certification process makes games worse rather than better. But that is a pretty old experience for me now (4 years ago), and they are unlikely to change any of that stuff until the new console comes out anyway. Keep in mind that the Xbox people as a whole do not think of XBLA as a high priority (you can get a glimpse of this from the E3 press conferences, etc).

But, I think the more important issue applies globally, to all of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo (and not just to smaller downloadable games, but to every game regardless of size). The certification processes of all these platform holders were based on the idea that all these steps they test are absolutely necessary for software to run robustly, and that software robustness is super-important for the health of their platform and its perception by customers.

But, look at iOS. There is almost no certification process for iOS, so by the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo theory, the apps should be crashing all the time, everyone should think of iOS as sucky, etc. But in fact this is not what is happening. There is no public outcry for more testing and robustness of iOS software.

Part of this may be that iOS software is so easily patched; so maybe a heavy cert process made sense back in the disc-only days, but as we go into the next console generation it becomes unnecessary. But something tells me that Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo are not really going to let up on cert, even though they say they will. It's just "not in their DNA" as they say. The proof of this is the bizarre over-complexification that already happens with console games today, and is baked into the current certifications, that any of them could easily fix, but none of them do, because they don't care.

For example: every single game is REQUIRED to say on startup, "sometimes this game saves, when you see this animated icon in the corner, DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE, etc". This is something that developers have to implement and that has to be tested, which costs significant time and money, but worse than all that, it impacts the user experience, because the startup of the game becomes just a little more bureaucratized, and also -- this is supposed to be a fun experience, so why are you issuing warnings and strict instructions? (Just one thing like this may not seem like too much, but combined with everything else, it is a lot; I am using it as just one specific example).

Why is this DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE warning there? It's because if the game is saving a save file, overwriting an old one, and you turn off in the middle, you might corrupt the saved game. Well, guess what... the solution to this is to IMPLEMENT A MORE ROBUST SAVE SYSTEM. You save the new file next to the old file, flush the I/O, and only delete the old file once the integrity of the new one has been verified (or just don't remove it, and keep two copies of the save at all times). On load you just make sure you load the intact save file if one is corrupted. This is not hard to implement; I did it in Braid. But if consoles cared about this kind of thing, it would be built into their basic save-file API, so that it would always work perfectly and no developers would ever have to think about it.

If they did this, there would be fewer things to certify, certification would cost a little less and take a bit less time. Let's say you save 3 days of development and testing per game (this is conservative; the real amount can be substantially higher when you factor in the discussions and coordination about how the save notice should look, etc). Now add up how many games have been released just on the Xbox 360, multiply that number by 3 days, and what you get is probably OVER A DECADE OF DEVELOPER TIME that was wasted. Just on this one little requirement. For something that should just be built into the system by one person in a couple of weeks. Okay, that was only the Xbox, so now add in all the PS3 and Wii games, and see what a huge waste of time that represents.

Like I said, just this one thing by itself would not be too bad, but it is only an example. Another example that all three certification processes have is the "title-safe region" restriction. This basically means that you are not allowed to draw text or gameplay-critical information near the edge of the screen (about 10% of screen width in a margin around the edge) because you don't know if the user's TV is displaying the whole picture (even modern HDTVs often cover the edge of the display with a bezel or else just crop it entirely, which is completely stupid).

Okay, so at first blush this seems to make sense, so to make sure players can see everything, we have to go through each screen and each mode in every game we ever release and certify that important things don't get drawn too far toward the edge. Well, as you can extrapolate from my previous example, this also has wasted DECADES OF DEVELOPER TIME (probably many decades, because dealing with title-safe probably takes a lot more time than save/load). And it is also something that these consoles could handle at the system level if they actually cared about the problem. Just put a screen calibration menu in the dashboard, and then initialize it properly so that players would almost never need to use it (when they are using HDMI output, initialize the settings using the display's EDID; if they are outputting a different way, just default to shrinking the display a little bit).

10% at the edges of the screen may not sound like much, but it is actually huge. Suppose a game is rendering at 1280x720... you are only really able to use the interior 1024x576, with everything outside that just being decoration. 1280x720 is 921600 pixels; 1024x576 is 589824 pixels, in other words, you only get to use 64% of the screen area for real! Everything outside that is only allowed to be decorative. You know how the 360's new Metro interface seems to use an absurdly small amount of real estate in the middle of the screen? That is due in large part to title-safe region. You know how games always seem to have their HUD elements placed too far inward when they could be nicer, further off to the sides? Same.

This would also have the benefit of saving work for most people who implement 2D games. In Braid we had to program a screen calibration menu. I notice there's one at the beginning of Dyad, and one at the beginning of PixelJunk Shooter. For God's sake why??

This makes all games worse all the time, and makes developers have to do a lot more work, but ultimately could be fixed very easily by any of the platform holders. They just don't care enough to do it. I think they will have a hard time getting rid of these rules because bureaucracy is in their DNA.

These are just two examples of many... I am going to stop ranting here, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most certification requirements are like this.

The edge that both Apple and Valve have going into the future is that they both genuinely care about the end-user experience and want to make it as good as possible. (Their end-user experience is already way better than any of the consoles and they are always working to improve it). Which coincidentally seems to be the place that these consoles are handicapped due to their corporate culture. Can anyone look at the current 360 or PS3 dashboards and legitimately say that those are products of an entity that deeply cares about user experience?

A question a lot of developers have is: When the 720 / PS4 get launched, how many people are really going to care and buy games for those systems? Obviously some people will, but if it is less than bought games this generation -- which a lot of developers think is very possible -- then look for a "peak oil" kind of crash where a lot of too-big publishers and developers fight over a shrinking market. If the actual way the next-gen consoles work is much like now, they will be a functionally archaic in the marketplace (keep in mind that they have to compete with the iPad 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Have you got any idea what the iPad 5 or 6 are going to look like, how powerful they are going to be, what other user experience benefits they are going to have? I sure don't.)

-----

A few days after having written this letter, I just have one more thought to add: I know that Microsoft thinks they are fixing these issues with their next console, and creating an environment more suitable to free-to-play games and downloadable things in general; I assume Sony is thinking similarly. I will be very surprised if either of them succeeds in fixing these problems. Large institutions always undercorrect; they always think they are being radical and risky when in fact they are doing something tame that is just a modified version of the status quo. When large institutions need to change course by 95% in order to do well, even if they know it's an emergency and are totally panicked, they can probably only manage about 35%. For recent illustrations of this, look at Nokia and RIM (or, uhh, look at the large governments of Earth in dealing with global warming).

So I would bet that Microsoft and Sony believe they are streamlining their online stuff, because they are implementing an expedited, simplified cert process for patches and content updates, or something, and that because of this they will be in a great position to compete with Facebook and Apple and Steam and whoever. Whatever they do is very likely not to be enough. Their competitors are not stopping either. (Steam, which was already pretty painless in terms of updating games, recently revamped their system; the new thing is way better than the old thing, which was already way better than what the consoles do.)

The talk's about 38 minutes long, with about 40 minutes of Q&A afterward. Here's a slideshow:

If the above embedded player doesn't work for you, or you prefer to download the files directly, here they are:

audio track
slides (ppt format)

The final result is published in Edge issue 223. I am very happy with it. It is probably my favorite interview I have done during my 15 years in the game industry. I thank Edge for the opportunity to do the interview and for their hard work in writing it up.

Because I like the interview so much, I should be happy when other news sites spread the word about it, right? Apparently it is not so. CVG just published online an article about the interview titled

They fill out their article by pasting in somewhat-out-of-context quotes to support this statement (and nothing else). To believe their account, it was a highly anti-Microsoft and pro-Sony interview. [I am not going to link to CVG's article, because I don't want to give them hits; go find it on a search engine if you want to see it.]

CVG's article is a deceptive, manipulative piece of sensationalist crap meant to drive hits by stoking the argument between Sony fans and Microsoft fans. It misrepresents the content of the interview almost entirely. (Chris Hecker, who was half the interview, doesn't even appear in their write-up. This alone should make it clear that they have no interest in truthful and accurate communication.)

Chris Hecker: Half the interview! He's even in the foreground in this picture.

For the record, here's a list of the subjects Chris and I actually talked about:

• Overall trends in indie game development -- where, and for how long, will indies be able to find Braid or World of Goo-sized audiences for their games?
• How it's easier to make indie games, on the technical implementation side, than ever before.
• Small indie games versus big indie games -- punk-rock-esque one-offs vs deeply exploring game design subjects.
• Indies ought to step up and produce higher-quality work rather than so many bad games and a few good ones.
• Braid is structurally a traditional game in many ways.
• The idea of game design as a stream of focused communication rather than a set of rules.
• Even the highest-selling games right now essentially sell to a niche audience.
• Innovation in mainstream games and how it helps drive the industry.
• When is an indie game really finished -- how much work should you put in?
• Problems with the way video game education is set up right now.
• Most people who use the phrase "game mechanic" don't seem to know what it means.
• How to see your game from the perspective of the player.

In the middle of all this, there is one bit about the way Microsoft and Sony, respectively, handle their portfolio strategies with regard to indie games. There are positives and negatives mentioned regarding each party. Sony does come out a bit ahead, but our discussion was much more even-handed than the confrontational CVG headline would have you believe.

From CVG's write-up, you would barely even know that I talked about my company's upcoming game The Witness.

Is it the case that I said the things that CVG quotes? Yes! Are they an honest representation of the content of the interview? No! They are a dishonest and manipulative way of driving hits to CVG's web site.

Chris recently wrote about this kind of treatment at the hands of journalists, so rather than repeating him, I encourage you to go read that article. I do want to point out, though, that this is not a victimless crime.

When this kind of hack-job is written, it hurts indie developers: it harms our relationship with our business partners like Microsoft or Sony when they think that we called an interview just to trash them in public (or when they know we didn't really do that, but they have to deal with the PR fallout of the public thinking we did, which is just as bad.) It harms my reputation with players because they think I called an interview just to make a big deal out of bashing Microsoft and generally being negative (which I did not do!) It does an injustice to people who want to read about thoughtful discussions in video games; it does this not only by failing to point out the thoughtful parts of the interview, but by injecting extra noise into the sphere of discussion, making it harder for everyone to find anything thoughtful.

But perhaps worst of all, CVG is crapping on their fellow journalists at Edge by depicting Edge's hard work as tabloidesque junk.

Damage is clearly done, and CVG are doing this damage just so they can make a little bit of money off a few more web hits.

I encourage everyone out there to stop reading this kind of stuff. It's just misinformation; it's worse than worthless.