1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,540 What do I do to maximize the probability that this time this project 2 00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:13,520 succeeds, right? And there were many things. I was like it's time to get serious and stop playing around on all these little projects. 3 00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:27,020 Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Braid Anniversary Edition podcast. 4 00:00:27,020 --> 00:00:32,920 Braid Anniversary is an updated version of the classic game Braid that came out way back in 2008 and 5 00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:36,760 The remaster has improved graphics and sound and new puzzles 6 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:41,240 But in addition to that, it's got a bunch of very deep developer commentary 7 00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:49,600 Over 15 hours of commentary survived the editing process, but this came from over 60 hours of initially recorded audio 8 00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:56,720 Thus this podcast as these episodes proceed will have different people doing the interviews and our friends 9 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:03,520 And our first interviewer is Casey Muratori who many people may know from his computer enhanced sub stack where he teaches programming 10 00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:06,640 And from his popular YouTube series handmade hero 11 00:01:06,960 --> 00:01:12,520 If you don't know Casey, you'll get to know him by listening to what he has to say in the interview. So let's get to it 12 00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:17,000 So I 13 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:19,400 Guess I don't really know 14 00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:24,200 But I know you've said that the you got the idea for Braid in late 15 00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:26,600 2004 16 00:01:26,600 --> 00:01:29,800 Yeah, and it was your idea actually. 17 00:01:29,800 --> 00:01:33,520 And and I've always been a little confused by that 18 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:35,480 But I mean, I guess I sort of know what you mean 19 00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:39,960 But so why don't you walk us through exactly what that means? 20 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:43,440 Because obviously there's the email that I wrote that I think you're referring to yeah 21 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:50,320 But I think there's a deeper through line there because that part is just one piece of it 22 00:01:50,320 --> 00:01:52,680 There's the whole thing with like invisible cities 23 00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:56,400 Oh, yeah, there's all these other lineages that are like involved there 24 00:01:56,400 --> 00:02:02,040 And and I don't really know in what order these start gelling together. It's obviously not just like oh 25 00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:07,600 There's this one email and everything happened after the email. There was like a bunch of things. I feel like so yes 26 00:02:08,920 --> 00:02:10,880 well 27 00:02:10,880 --> 00:02:15,520 It's a little there are many factors that it's hard to place but 28 00:02:16,240 --> 00:02:17,920 before the email 29 00:02:17,920 --> 00:02:19,920 Sort of the background that was percolating 30 00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:22,120 was 31 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:24,280 invisible cities was one of my favorite books and 32 00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:28,480 there were other works at the time that were 33 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:33,540 Obviously influenced by that right and one of these was a book called Einstein streams 34 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:38,760 By someone who is a physicist in his day job Alan Lightman, right? And so both of these books 35 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:47,160 take the form of a bunch of little vignettes that are three or four pages each that explore some 36 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:52,680 different idea that is a little bit absurdist or 37 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:55,280 somehow 38 00:02:55,280 --> 00:03:00,920 Obviously not the case. Okay, like not literal explorations and not logical exploration 39 00:03:00,920 --> 00:03:04,520 So in invisible cities, you know, there are cities where I 40 00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:09,640 don't I'm not gonna remember any of them well enough to like do do justice, but 41 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:12,160 You know, there's a city where 42 00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:17,640 Every point above it's like on the water right like Venice and 43 00:03:18,160 --> 00:03:22,080 Every point of the city above the water has a corresponding point 44 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:24,000 below 45 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:31,200 Okay, and but it's also conflated with the reflection in the water and like people are spying on each other 46 00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:34,320 And there are no secrets because from every point of the city 47 00:03:34,320 --> 00:03:40,400 You can see every other point by looking in the reflection. I'm completely butchering it but okay. It's things like that 48 00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:46,960 It's things that like don't they don't exactly map to reality a hundred percent, right? 49 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:52,680 Right the one that my company is named after which of course, I remember the best 50 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:53,760 Okay 51 00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:55,120 is about 52 00:03:55,120 --> 00:04:02,240 It's a city built by just looking up at the stars and seeing what the structure and the architecture is and like, okay 53 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:04,880 let's let's copy that down here and 54 00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:08,160 It always seems to be perpetually under 55 00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:13,640 Construction and never completed. Wow. Okay, which is maybe a little bit of a bad omen 56 00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:17,480 That's great. Yeah, but appropriate for a game development 57 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:25,520 Sadly life cycle. Yeah, sadly and then Einstein's Dreams was like that but different it was you know every 58 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:29,360 many people know the story that Albert Einstein was a 59 00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:32,080 lowly not 60 00:04:32,200 --> 00:04:34,200 particularly respected patent clerk 61 00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:37,720 before he did all his good stuff and 62 00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:43,880 Einstein's Dreams is about him going home every day after the office and 63 00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:49,400 Doing his physics at home and like just falling asleep thinking about 64 00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:56,120 What is the answer to how it could be that light behaves? Right, right and 65 00:04:56,760 --> 00:05:01,080 You know, so on the one hand, this is like maybe there are different topologies 66 00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:07,840 To the universe if there's a fourth dimension, what is it and how it behaves? Yeah, but it's also used to it's like transposed 67 00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:09,600 onto 68 00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:16,360 Let's say the idea dimension of like what people are and how they behave and like how their relationships go and stuff, right? 69 00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:19,240 And so in a certain kind of universe 70 00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:25,280 Maybe light goes kind of slow and that makes everything cold and people are cold to each other or something again 71 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:28,040 Okay, okay. Okay. Well like that's the basic idea 72 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:31,360 And so it's sort of like it's it's like a very ex 73 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:39,120 It's like a very like microcosmic thing where all the different parts are exhibiting the same sorts of like 74 00:05:39,960 --> 00:05:41,960 of change so 75 00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:47,560 We make one change, but we kind of pretend that change ripples through everything even if it wouldn't necessarily make 76 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:53,800 Quite logical physical sense that that was true. Yeah, sometimes it varies a little bit 77 00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:58,440 what I would say is that there's a constant use of 78 00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:01,560 laws of physics in an 79 00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:09,320 Analogical way like to make analogies with like ways that behavior could be and and sometimes that's more literal and sometimes 80 00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:11,320 It's less literal, right? 81 00:06:11,320 --> 00:06:15,720 Now that even it's very clear to me now and maybe it even was then 82 00:06:15,720 --> 00:06:21,400 But that actually owes a lot to another set of calvino stories called the cosmic comics 83 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:26,440 Okay, which is very explicitly about that too. It's like 84 00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:32,840 There's different so so one of the early cosmic comics stories is like there's a guy who's just like 85 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:37,640 rotating in space around like he's in a certain part of the galaxy and 86 00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:41,880 His life is just many rotations of the galaxy 87 00:06:42,520 --> 00:06:46,200 He's very alone and once in a while he passes 88 00:06:46,200 --> 00:06:50,760 Maybe a mark that somebody else made and he wonders like 89 00:06:51,080 --> 00:06:54,760 What is this and who made it and where did it come from and all right? 90 00:06:55,000 --> 00:07:00,200 That kind of a thing or another one is it's at many different scales. So another one of the stories is 91 00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:03,160 You could imagine the moon 92 00:07:03,160 --> 00:07:07,800 Being much closer to the earth and with a more eccentric orbit such that sometimes 93 00:07:08,120 --> 00:07:12,760 It comes a lot closer and sometimes it's further and gravity's a little bit different 94 00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:19,720 So that like maybe the ground kind of melts up like cheese a little bit and on 95 00:07:20,520 --> 00:07:27,320 There's like an expedition where it it comes so close at a certain time that like we're gonna cross and we're gonna go to the 96 00:07:27,320 --> 00:07:30,680 Moon by like throwing ropes up there and like climbing up there, right? 97 00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:36,680 It's that kind of story and they're very entertaining and I recommend them to anyone who's interested because 98 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:39,880 They're all very readable because the stories are often very interesting 99 00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:46,600 because they're all very readable because the stories are often very short and and they have an enjoyable idea that they get to very quickly and 100 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:50,840 actually, um in the u.s. There's like two different 101 00:07:52,040 --> 00:07:55,640 You know things get published and cut up in different ways in the u.s 102 00:07:56,180 --> 00:08:02,360 Originally as I read them there was a collection called cosmic comics and then a sequel collection called t zero, right? 103 00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:04,120 And then later 104 00:08:04,120 --> 00:08:09,240 I think I also have a volume called the complete cosmic comics that contains both of those and then a couple more 105 00:08:09,240 --> 00:08:11,240 Stories, okay, but all of this 106 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:14,840 You know, I had read as much calvino as I could get my hands on 107 00:08:15,480 --> 00:08:17,240 and all of that was 108 00:08:17,240 --> 00:08:21,960 influential on what Braid was although don't blame him if you don't like the text 109 00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:25,800 In the game because it's very different from anything. He would have written right? Okay 110 00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:28,680 Part of what I was consciously doing is like not 111 00:08:29,380 --> 00:08:33,800 Copying right? Like let's make this its own thing even though it's heavily influenced 112 00:08:33,800 --> 00:08:40,520 But so so all that was flying around sort of in my mind at some point like I wanted to do a game 113 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:47,560 A game version of what I liked about these stories, right? And what's the earliest you remember thinking about that? 114 00:08:47,560 --> 00:08:49,560 I mean how far back are we talking? 115 00:08:50,440 --> 00:08:52,440 I don't really know 116 00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:54,200 possibly 117 00:08:54,200 --> 00:08:57,800 A year before I actually did Braid but it would have been a very vague idea 118 00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:04,040 So it wasn't like the first time you read calvino you were just thinking it would be cool to make a game like this sometime 119 00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:09,640 No, it was it was actually much closer to the actual time of making Braid that you first started thinking like hey 120 00:09:10,520 --> 00:09:13,800 Yeah, it would be neat to do something like that those books that I read 121 00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:18,520 Yeah, and and specifically what I was thinking was well, you know in a story 122 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:23,240 You can just sort of postulate whatever the laws of physics are like, okay 123 00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:26,760 The moon comes really close and it pulls the ground up and stuff, right? 124 00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:29,480 It doesn't exactly work that way in a game 125 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:33,000 Especially like the more systemic the game is 126 00:09:34,120 --> 00:09:38,680 The more you kind of can't just cheat that sort of thing. You you have to more 127 00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:44,040 Make a system that exhibits those properties and that to me is more magical 128 00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:50,840 Right, right. I was like there's something cool. And if it's hard it seems very hard, but if you can do it 129 00:09:50,840 --> 00:09:58,120 It's a little bit more groundbreaking than just doing a story about the thing right? Yeah in the field of games 130 00:09:58,200 --> 00:10:01,080 It's a thing that very few people had done now. There were other games 131 00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:03,060 that did 132 00:10:03,060 --> 00:10:06,760 Analogies of this sort. All right. So one of the earliest ones was uh, 133 00:10:07,480 --> 00:10:09,480 rod humbles game the marriage 134 00:10:09,800 --> 00:10:11,800 Which I had shown at egw, right? 135 00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:16,120 Like there's two people in this relationship and they're just colored squares on the screen 136 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:19,240 And you move them around and some stuff happens and right, you know 137 00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:25,400 Um, and then jason roher actually had done these two games passage and gravitation. I think 138 00:10:26,040 --> 00:10:30,360 Both of which predate Braid substantially if I remember correctly 139 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:33,000 Although maybe hmm 140 00:10:33,320 --> 00:10:37,160 I might have to look that up. I'm not sure how much they predate it by but let's just say 141 00:10:38,200 --> 00:10:44,520 They they also engage in this kind of analogy where there's a system of rules 142 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:46,840 And those rules are expressive 143 00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:48,360 expressive 144 00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:49,880 about 145 00:10:49,880 --> 00:10:51,880 The situation that the game's about right? 146 00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:57,320 It's not just the plot and the fiction that the game is about but the rules of the universe that are being set up 147 00:10:57,960 --> 00:10:59,000 are 148 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:02,600 Expressive of what the game is about and so I wanted to do something like that 149 00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:08,360 And I wanted to do it about physics because you know quantum mechanics for example is pretty weird 150 00:11:09,560 --> 00:11:11,320 As is relativity 151 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:15,400 right, and I thought it would be fun to take that weirdness and instead of 152 00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:20,920 You know conflating it with human scale things in a fiction kind of way like those stories do 153 00:11:21,560 --> 00:11:27,560 Let's conflate it with human level things by just making the phenomena happen on a human scale 154 00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:32,600 right and then just like seeing what happens and seeing how to make a game out of that and 155 00:11:33,320 --> 00:11:35,480 That'll be fun and interesting like 156 00:11:36,040 --> 00:11:42,600 You know if there's quantum superposition or something and something's at multiple places until the waveform gets localized 157 00:11:42,600 --> 00:11:49,000 That's one idea right or one thing that comes up in physics a lot is time being bidirectional, right? So 158 00:11:49,560 --> 00:11:52,840 which is even true back in Newtonian physics, but also 159 00:11:53,640 --> 00:11:56,120 in relativity and stuff and so 160 00:11:56,680 --> 00:12:02,040 What does that mean? How do you make a game where time is bidirectional? It's challenging because it seems like 161 00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:04,840 Almost you can't make anything happen 162 00:12:05,160 --> 00:12:10,280 Right, right because it would have to be a completely pre-recorded sequence for you to go forward and backward 163 00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:16,680 And so what does that mean? And so those questions were just in the air. I see and kicking around in your head 164 00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:18,920 growing over time 165 00:12:18,920 --> 00:12:25,480 Somewhere in the 2003 2004 kind of yeah, it may not have even been that they may have been just a few months before 166 00:12:25,480 --> 00:12:29,800 I don't know. So like 2004ish times then. But you can see like how these are very 167 00:12:30,360 --> 00:12:33,320 They're both difficult questions to answer. Yes 168 00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:37,800 And also not very actionable until you have a good answer 169 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:43,320 Right. Yeah, you're not really going to be able to do much until you get some thing to hold on to yeah 170 00:12:43,640 --> 00:12:48,520 But then so there's this mailing list conversation that happens and I don't know if that's on 171 00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:55,000 Game tech or game rants or it was one of the lists that chris ran. It was it was the game design one 172 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:59,160 So it would have been game rants. Is that what that was called? Yeah. Yeah, and so my 173 00:12:59,880 --> 00:13:03,880 recollection of this was there was some discussion that probably started with 174 00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:08,040 Prince of persia sands of time had come out or something. Yes 175 00:13:08,040 --> 00:13:12,360 And so you guys were talking about rewind in games and I to my recollection 176 00:13:12,360 --> 00:13:17,000 Maybe I contributed to this conversation a little bit, but I was not really 177 00:13:17,480 --> 00:13:21,240 I was not really one of the people with the strongest opinions in it 178 00:13:21,800 --> 00:13:26,600 But there was there was a lot of conversation about like did this game do a good job? 179 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:29,640 And then what is rewind? 180 00:13:29,640 --> 00:13:34,360 Ability mean for games going forward right and what I remember you saying was 181 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:40,520 Well, this should just be this is obviously a technological feature like rewind was for vcrs 182 00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:45,800 Yeah, so it should just be in most or all games. Yeah as something that you can just do right? 183 00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:52,120 And then other people objected to that. I think I remember some of who they were but I won't dox them in case it's wrong 184 00:13:53,080 --> 00:13:55,880 But it's like other people were like well, you can't do that 185 00:13:55,880 --> 00:14:03,720 Because you're removing consequence from games, right and consequences important and like the all this and 186 00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:08,280 The conversation kind of went back and forth on that for a bit, but I was like 187 00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:17,480 You know, nobody really implemented anything right? Right? And so there then I was on vacation and I was thinking about this physics thing 188 00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:21,560 Or maybe I think a little bit before the vacation 189 00:14:21,560 --> 00:14:26,040 I was like, you know what being able to rewind maps onto this bi-directional 190 00:14:26,920 --> 00:14:31,480 Time thing that I was thinking about it's sort of the same idea from a different perspective, right? 191 00:14:32,280 --> 00:14:39,480 And so I kind of been wanting to make this calvino lightman inspired game. So I started to have an idea like 192 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:46,040 Okay, this is actionable if I actually program rewind, right then it's both 193 00:14:46,040 --> 00:14:51,160 Contributing to that discussion, right with an implementation, but also 194 00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:57,480 Answering this question of like what can I do about this physics game? That's actionable now even at that time 195 00:14:57,480 --> 00:14:59,800 I didn't think the whole game would be rewind 196 00:14:59,960 --> 00:15:04,200 It was just like here's some manifestation of one of the lines of the game 197 00:15:04,200 --> 00:15:10,200 And I did because invisible cities as many different cities and whatnot. I was thinking it would be a lot of different worlds 198 00:15:10,200 --> 00:15:16,600 And one of them would be the rewind world, but like another one was like the quantum superposition world or something. Right? Yes 199 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:23,320 And then there's one more thing playing into all of this, which is you know, another another way to phrase 200 00:15:23,320 --> 00:15:25,320 The thing that you were saying is like look 201 00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:29,160 This is really fundamental. It should just be there 202 00:15:30,040 --> 00:15:33,880 It shouldn't be like a weird game design gimmick like for people who don't know 203 00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:39,240 Prince of Persia sands of time, which i'm sure most people these days don't it was not really even that popular at the time 204 00:15:39,240 --> 00:15:42,120 It was all right. It was it was a medium level popular game 205 00:15:43,160 --> 00:15:44,360 it 206 00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:48,920 It had sand that you would use to rewind time and you had a certain number of charges 207 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:52,840 And when you ran out of rewind charges, which you could pick up on the map 208 00:15:54,360 --> 00:15:57,480 Then you start losing lives when you die, right and also 209 00:15:57,480 --> 00:16:03,720 For people whose main like touch point for this is playing Braid when we say rewind 210 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:08,040 We don't really mean Braid rewind. It was like a really crappy like 211 00:16:08,600 --> 00:16:11,000 10 seconds of rewind tops or something 212 00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:15,640 It was it was not a technically good like the sound didn't go backwards and the animations were all screwed up 213 00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:17,000 And it was very limited 214 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:21,000 So you could not like rewind all the way back to a lot to the beginning of the game 215 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:24,200 And then you could just go back and rewind and then you could just go back and rewind 216 00:16:24,200 --> 00:16:29,000 So you could not like rewind all the way back to a to the beginning of a long level or anything like that 217 00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:33,000 No, it was like they had some ring buffer with character positions in it 218 00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:34,920 And then they made the rest up or something 219 00:16:34,920 --> 00:16:40,280 Yeah, it was it was and it was not really the kind of gameplay thing that it is in Braid where it's 220 00:16:40,980 --> 00:16:44,360 expected to always work and always go all the way back and all that stuff. 221 00:16:44,600 --> 00:16:49,320 Now there was one other ingredient that your position on that argument reminded me of, 222 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:51,800 which was 223 00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:57,320 I had been in person earlier at Brian Moriarty's lecture at the GDC "the secret of psalm 46," 224 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:01,560 which is one of his more famous lectures, and if you're curious about that, it 225 00:17:02,040 --> 00:17:06,120 exists in its entirety in "The Witness," which you can (although it's hard to get to) 226 00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:12,200 But if you get to it you get to listen to the whole thing. Yes, you can also read the transcript online 227 00:17:12,360 --> 00:17:14,360 I don't know if the audio is online 228 00:17:14,520 --> 00:17:15,800 um anyway 229 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:22,440 If you're serious about it, you will beat the entire witness and find the yes, i'm gonna watch it there. Yes, if you just 230 00:17:23,160 --> 00:17:27,320 If you're a gamer, you can go read it online. Yeah, so 231 00:17:28,280 --> 00:17:30,280 one of the things that he was saying 232 00:17:30,760 --> 00:17:32,680 in that speech 233 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:34,040 is that 234 00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:35,560 like things that are 235 00:17:35,560 --> 00:17:39,160 Powerful like things that are fundamental are generous, right? 236 00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:43,400 Like the i'm gonna paraphrase really badly because it's been a while since I listened to it 237 00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:50,200 But like the world is just generous in a certain there's like a lot of air for you to breathe and there's like a lot of 238 00:17:50,920 --> 00:17:54,280 there's a lot of surprise and a lot of situate like and 239 00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:57,640 part of what he was expressing in that talk was 240 00:17:58,420 --> 00:18:01,960 Frustration with sort of the limited thinking of game developers, right? 241 00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:06,600 The way that I make you care about stuff is artificial scarcity, right? 242 00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:13,000 Which is weird though because he's also talking a lot about this masquerade thing, which sort of is artificial scarcity 243 00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:18,840 There's something in that talk that I never fully resolved for myself about exactly what side he was on, right? 244 00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:27,080 but the point being like like he has some line where where he's like and this isn't the exact phrase, but he says something like 245 00:18:27,800 --> 00:18:32,280 Profound things are generous. The magic is right there 246 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:36,760 Yes, if what people want is invincibility just give it to them 247 00:18:37,640 --> 00:18:38,840 right 248 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:43,080 And he said that a couple years at least before this conversation happened, right? Yes 249 00:18:44,040 --> 00:18:48,200 I really liked that speech and that had been floating around in my head also like as a 250 00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:54,120 again, I didn't know how to action that I mean, obviously you could make a platform or where the character is invincible, but like 251 00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:59,560 Okay, how why is that good? Right, right, right, right. And so um 252 00:18:59,560 --> 00:19:04,280 Those were all the seeds of this thing and they came together at this time 253 00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:07,240 um and I was 254 00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:08,120 I 255 00:19:08,120 --> 00:19:10,920 I think that before the vacation 256 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:14,360 I had enough of the idea that I might want to do this that I 257 00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:15,560 You know 258 00:19:15,560 --> 00:19:20,920 I had all this code laying around from previous projects and I think I did the thing where you strip it down to like the 259 00:19:20,920 --> 00:19:25,080 Minimal running executable that still has all my usual game code 260 00:19:25,080 --> 00:19:28,680 So it's got like the vectors and whatever it opens windows 261 00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:34,360 It opens windows and it does some sound but like and it loads bitmaps, but like there's no game there, right? 262 00:19:34,680 --> 00:19:37,080 I think I prepped that before the vacation 263 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:41,160 And I was like, maybe i'll work on it. Maybe not. I don't know and then during the vacation 264 00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:47,080 I ended up working on it for like a whole week. And where was this vacation to I uh, it was in thailand, uh, 265 00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:52,760 Mostly around chengli which is like capital but then uh some other places nearby 266 00:19:54,040 --> 00:19:56,040 So you go on this vacation 267 00:19:56,040 --> 00:20:01,800 Thinking maybe i'll work on this but one of the interesting things I didn't hear that was actually a very 268 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:08,680 Coherent series of like ideas coming together. So it's like very understandable sort of how that worked out 269 00:20:08,680 --> 00:20:11,720 Yeah, what I did in here is why is it? 270 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:15,080 Like a 2d platformer 271 00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:20,040 From like because you know, there are many things you could have done 272 00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:25,800 You could have done something more like a top-down sort of thing or you could have decided it should have been in 3d 273 00:20:25,800 --> 00:20:31,480 Or you could have so there is something that made you pick that was that just hey 274 00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:39,080 Random first guess and then it's stuck or were you like there's a reason there are two reasons two lines of reasoning that came together 275 00:20:40,520 --> 00:20:43,580 One was hey when I first went into games industry 276 00:20:44,760 --> 00:20:48,280 Didn't even feel like the industry at the time but doing this bolt action stuff 277 00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:53,000 Yeah, we did some really hard challenging thing and we only had two programmers like 278 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:56,200 Imagine anyone by the way again to bring this up again 279 00:20:57,320 --> 00:21:01,960 Imagine anyone in the year 2022 saying i've got a two-person programming team 280 00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:04,600 We're going to build our own game engine 281 00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:10,920 That doesn't even use the graphics api and it's going to be drop in drop out client server 282 00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:16,040 Narrow bandwidth action game and we're going to make it in like a year or two years. It's like 283 00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:21,960 Nobody these days would even try that and like we somehow did it without even being in games 284 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:27,480 right right without I would like to make the point and this is off what we're talking about a little bit, but 285 00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:33,720 It's important. I think um the culture back then was even importantly different than it is today 286 00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:41,000 Okay, um in the way that information was shared right right so we mentioned our korea talk that we went and did and 287 00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:45,480 Uh, even before that like when mike abrash would go give a speech 288 00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:50,040 I think even karmak gave a speech one year at gdc. He didn't do that very often 289 00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,040 I do think he did do it one year. Yes 290 00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:56,760 It was extremely rare and that's one of the things mike abrash did while he was at it is actually like 291 00:21:57,320 --> 00:22:02,520 Share the information. Yeah, not because karmak didn't want it shared but because he just never took the time 292 00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:07,320 Yeah, but we said this a little bit about how he published the secrets of the six cycle texture mapper 293 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,880 That was an incredible piece of technology, right? Yeah 294 00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:17,640 But there was a conscientious decision back then I think that we all decided to cooperate and just share 295 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,840 everything we figured out and not really have trade secrets and 296 00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:29,160 That is very different from how some other cultures decided to approach it. So for example in japan, which was also had its own 297 00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:37,480 Relatively separate video game culture very separate at the time. They were much more about trade secrets and competing with each other, right? Really? 298 00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:39,560 Every 299 00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:42,360 Encounter that I had it seemed that way. I don't know 300 00:22:42,360 --> 00:22:47,640 And I do think there was a time like, you know, if you think about the nintendo days or whatever 301 00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:49,880 Japan was dominating games 302 00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:55,960 Yeah, and then I think as things went 3d and got complicated. I think america won for a while. Yeah 303 00:22:56,520 --> 00:23:03,320 And I think it was mainly because we were sharing information openly with each other and solving these problems at a very fast clip 304 00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:05,960 We don't really do that anymore 305 00:23:06,520 --> 00:23:11,080 And again, I mean well not in the same way like there are definitely people who are trying to do that 306 00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:14,920 Same way like there are definitely people on the internet who are very open. Yeah, but like 307 00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:19,240 In doom back in the day was like the biggest game 308 00:23:19,800 --> 00:23:23,880 Yes, everybody wanted to know how doom works and then they just told you yes 309 00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:26,520 And then later they released the source because why not right? 310 00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:32,120 What are some of the biggest games today? I don't know grand theft auto online, right? 311 00:23:32,360 --> 00:23:35,320 Those guys ain't telling you nothing about how that works, right? 312 00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:39,800 Now that said there's nothing that's that technically challenging about it relative to other games 313 00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:45,240 I don't think but if there were they would not tell you right? Okay, like apex legends, right? 314 00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:48,600 Whatever like most of these games 315 00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:51,480 You don't hear much about them 316 00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:53,080 right 317 00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:54,200 and 318 00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:59,320 Is that really true? I mean, I guess I don't know but like i'm just thinking, you know, they're at least 319 00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:04,200 Maybe it stopped at some point, but at least at some point there was just you know 320 00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:08,600 Hey, here's the frostbite team published 10 pd 321 00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:11,720 There is some of that here's how we do the things but it's just like 322 00:24:12,360 --> 00:24:19,340 There's not much to say because these things are so huge that what the secret of how you ship battlefield 323 00:24:20,360 --> 00:24:23,480 You know one. Yeah is just that somehow 324 00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:30,040 We freaking shipped battlefield one. There's no there wasn't like oh, here's how the texture matters. No one cares 325 00:24:30,120 --> 00:24:34,840 Yeah, well, I think that is a second part of it. Yeah, which is very true, which is like 326 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:40,280 Like not everybody has the same problem anymore or the problem is not even that definable 327 00:24:40,360 --> 00:24:43,400 But yeah, but it's true as you say, I don't mean to say that nobody does this 328 00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,680 But there are some people who do a lot of it and other people 329 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,400 The majority of the industry who really does none of it 330 00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,600 And then the third thing that happened is you're very correct about rockstar separately 331 00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,840 By the way rockstar in particular is notorious for never talking about anything they do. Yeah 332 00:24:57,400 --> 00:24:58,200 Yeah 333 00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:04,120 and then the third thing that happened is of course the internet's gotten much bigger and more occupied and 334 00:25:04,120 --> 00:25:05,560 and game 335 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,920 Development is more democratized and all these things 336 00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:13,400 And so there sure are a lot of people who want to tell you how to make games on the internet 337 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:18,040 But most of them have not really made games themselves of any note or at all, right? 338 00:25:18,120 --> 00:25:23,480 and so there's a there's like a noise floor that's been coming up right the whole time and 339 00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:29,320 It just all makes for a very different environment than we had in those days. Yes 340 00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:32,440 anyway, so 341 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:37,320 Why was I on that topic? I'm not sure because my question was why is the game 2d? 342 00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:43,240 It sounds like that was part of the answer part of the answer why a little bit why it was just 343 00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:45,560 Why it was trying to be simple? 344 00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:52,280 So I get getting 3d out of the mix but now there are many different types of 2d games. There's top down 345 00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:56,360 There's isometric. There's yeah, let me go back to that for a second, right? 346 00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,800 So like I said, i'd had a hard time firstly with bolt action 347 00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:04,040 But we made a game we made several iterations of it. It shipped to people 348 00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,280 It was grueling, but we did it and we were poor all the time and all that 349 00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:10,920 After that, like I said, I was kind of burned out 350 00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:17,960 I worked on other projects like gallstaff and there was probably other 3d stuff before gallstaff and like everything I did was trying to be 351 00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:19,960 3d in some way 352 00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:25,640 You know the air guitar game was trying to parse 3d space. Right? Yes, like that's even harder 353 00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:32,520 Yeah, I definitely noticed the pattern and and you know, so happy cake for example as we discussed was completed and 3d 354 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:34,280 3d 355 00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:35,160 It was a lot of work 356 00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:36,040 We got it done 357 00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:40,680 But also the delta between that and a game that I would have liked was like still pretty big 358 00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:43,480 right, and so I had a good taste for 359 00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:45,640 how 360 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:47,880 Hard 3d was I knew that I could do it 361 00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:53,480 But I also knew that it it was going to take a lot of time and energy to do it both technically firstly 362 00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:57,640 But also in terms of design just getting things to feel good in 3d is harder 363 00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:05,400 Solving issues like oh, there's just visibility problems here or collision doesn't feel good or whatever it is 364 00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:11,080 Those are all easier just from a design standpoint in 2d than 3d. I see right and so 365 00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:17,400 What I was saying to myself was you know, I would have envisioned that I would have done a big 366 00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:23,640 Um, uh groundbreaking meaningful game. I was about to say important, but I don't know what important means 367 00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:29,720 And I don't think I would have said said it that way but like I wanted to really make my contribution to games 368 00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:31,480 and 369 00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:32,760 I hadn't 370 00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:34,760 Made a game that was like that yet 371 00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:39,000 Okay, right even the so happy cake didn't ship to anybody 372 00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:43,880 The bolt action game was played by a three or four digit number of people, right? 373 00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,480 You know and then didn't continue after that, right? So 374 00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,800 It's like what when am I going to do this thing? And what do I? 375 00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:58,040 What do I do to maximize the probability that this time this project? 376 00:27:59,060 --> 00:28:05,720 Succeeds right and there were many things I was like it's time to get serious and stop playing around on all these little projects 377 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:08,840 Now we've talked through a lot of the consulting that I did 378 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:15,080 We talked through a few of the projects that I did but like there were a lot of little projects and when we skimmed over like 379 00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:22,360 Game developer magazine, right? I did that for like three or four years. Yeah. It's like 20 to 30 little projects 380 00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:29,320 Yeah, that whole thing. Yeah, it was nuts. Yeah, so I was like, okay. Let's stop messing around and make 381 00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:32,200 a game that's really good so 382 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:37,800 Firstly eliminate technical challenge and design challenge by being 2d 383 00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:41,960 2d okay, what kind of 2d there's lots of 2d games. This is this is sort of the 384 00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,760 The bullseye of the question, which is I wasn't quite sure how you ended up with 385 00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,400 Well, I already knew like okay, we're gonna screw around with time 386 00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:56,760 Okay, right at least and maybe we're gonna do this other quantum stuff. It's unclear but 387 00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:03,560 What what is the form of it? Well, we know from the calvino influence. It's about going between different worlds 388 00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:05,480 and 389 00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:11,980 The rules change in every world right and that's what's cool about it. Like maybe in this world there's superposition 390 00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:16,600 Right, maybe in this world there's time goes backwards. Whatever right? 391 00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:23,480 But it's interesting that you part of the entertainment value or the knowledge you take from the game is seeing 392 00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:26,920 and understanding those 393 00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:28,760 Changes, right? 394 00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:30,760 How do you do that? Well 395 00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:32,200 somehow you're 396 00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,200 Comparing them with the baseline 397 00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:38,920 If you don't have the ability to compare them like hey, we've got this cool superposition thing 398 00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:44,520 How do you understand why the superposition is interesting and how it's cool and how it affects things? 399 00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:47,320 Well, you know how the things would have been without the superposition 400 00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:50,120 And then you add the superposition, right? 401 00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:52,760 And so I was thinking hey 402 00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:59,240 The value in this game is supposed to come from the cool reality bendy stuff if 403 00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:05,880 If the rules of the game are really complicated and then you apply some reality bendy stuff 404 00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:07,880 You might not even know 405 00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:09,080 like 406 00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:15,240 How some interaction would have resulted in the vanilla one if it's complicated and and then you're going to be 407 00:30:16,180 --> 00:30:22,600 Uncertain and unclear and then especially if it's a puzzle game, which I was pretty sure it was going to be okay if it's 408 00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,440 If it's unclear, what is the local? 409 00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,900 Reality weirdness effect and what is the base rule set? 410 00:30:30,540 --> 00:30:36,700 That's a level of uncertainty that you don't want on the ground level when like trying to solve puzzles, right? 411 00:30:36,700 --> 00:30:41,820 That's going to mess up the puzzle solving and so I knew all this without having designed the game at all 412 00:30:41,980 --> 00:30:49,180 Which just I think tells you that i'd been thinking about this kind of thing for years in the egw and elsewhere, right? 413 00:30:49,260 --> 00:30:51,260 Right. Okay. So 414 00:30:51,340 --> 00:30:55,660 What are the simple kinds of games? I just thought through them and 415 00:30:55,660 --> 00:30:58,940 The mario game came to mind very quickly, right? 416 00:30:58,940 --> 00:31:05,580 Whereas some games in that genre have like a lot of creatures and a lot of characters with different abilities and all this stuff 417 00:31:06,860 --> 00:31:08,860 very clearly the 418 00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,160 prototypical mario game is 419 00:31:11,820 --> 00:31:16,220 There's one monster that just goes in a straight line and you could jump on his head 420 00:31:16,460 --> 00:31:18,460 like that's the minimum for the 421 00:31:19,020 --> 00:31:24,700 Right that genre right and then you could dial that up like you could add more monsters if you want them if you need more 422 00:31:24,700 --> 00:31:27,100 Complexity and so I could figure out later 423 00:31:28,620 --> 00:31:32,060 What is the weird stuff and then gauge based on? 424 00:31:32,780 --> 00:31:34,780 That how much more? 425 00:31:35,580 --> 00:31:40,140 Can the game sustain and I knew all this before literally typing any code? 426 00:31:40,700 --> 00:31:46,940 Okay. Yeah, so basically the the selection of mario was largely driven by 427 00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,300 wanting the simplest possible 428 00:31:50,300 --> 00:31:53,900 Visually understandable mechanic that people would just go 429 00:31:53,900 --> 00:31:57,900 Okay, the the baseline one is obvious to me 430 00:31:58,380 --> 00:32:05,340 So that when it starts getting modified, they're not like what the heck happened. They could clearly see like oh, right. It's this 431 00:32:05,340 --> 00:32:12,220 Yeah, okay. Now you can think about some other games that are simple like asteroids is simple, right? 432 00:32:14,220 --> 00:32:18,460 Robotron is simple and yeah, it's just thinking through those 433 00:32:18,460 --> 00:32:25,660 It's like well like I could so so the mario game has this element of like it's a guy 434 00:32:26,220 --> 00:32:32,220 Right. Yeah, and that brings it to a human scale like the mario games mario is a character 435 00:32:32,780 --> 00:32:38,780 And that's a little bit like the humanity in in the stories that I wanted to like 436 00:32:39,100 --> 00:32:42,780 I wanted to bridge to that if you have like a little arrow-sized spaceship, you're not 437 00:32:42,780 --> 00:32:48,140 Getting that right, right. So was that a concrete thought you had when evaluating these? Yeah 438 00:32:48,140 --> 00:32:51,100 I mean, I'm sure I thought through a bunch of them 439 00:32:51,100 --> 00:32:58,780 And in fact, this was probably the genesis of the idea that there were going to be a bunch of retro games in Braid as well 440 00:32:59,580 --> 00:33:04,940 Of other genres. Right, which we'll have to talk about since that did not actually happen. It did not actually happen. We should talk about those. 441 00:33:04,940 --> 00:33:12,940 Yeah. 442 00:33:12,940 --> 00:33:16,940 That concludes the first episode of the Braid Anniversary Edition podcast. 443 00:33:17,500 --> 00:33:21,820 Thank you for listening and if you want another episode come on back next week. 444 00:33:22,300 --> 00:33:25,360 Braid, Anniversary Edition comes out on may 14th 2024 445 00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:34,480 You can pre-order it now on Steam, and you can buy it on game consoles pretty soon. In this episode, Casey Muratori asked questions. 446 00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:55,520 Jonathan Blow answered questions. Jason Brisson produced, and Will Torbett edited. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.