State of Play with Brandon Bales: Jonathan Blow, Part Five

I think you have good questions, but when you talk during the interview I think you are a bit under prepared, or may be nervous, and I think it shows.

For instance, when you said "I wish I was a publisher", "no you don't", "ok no I don't". It may be something small, but that could have sparked a nice debate, is it good to be a publisher?

You need to practice being more eloquent and be able to answer and respond on the fly, and may be create a conversation between the both of you.

Maybe you want the person to feel really comfortable, but some questions can be hard, and that's normal.

I've read several of your reviews, and although I mostly disagree with you (specially with Ghost Trick), I think you're really fluent with the writing.

May be it's just a matter of practice or something, but it would improve the show a whole lot.

Your questions led to some really interesting answers from mr. Blow, so kudos for that (again, with time and the writing you seem very comfortable).

Looking forward to seeing how the show grows, maybe receiving some questions from fans on the future?

Hey Carlos,

First off, thanks so much for watching the show. It means a lot.

Second, I appreciate your comments. Thanks for taking the time to do that.

Was I under-prepared for my interviews?... Not exactly, in my opinion. Was I nervous? Of course! I did a (soon to be aired) pilot episode before the three I've been posting, so Jonathan's was technically the second interview I've ever done - a pretty tall order, if you ask me, considering his strong opinions.

Anyhow, I absolutely agree with you that I need more practice being eloquent, and the only way to truly do that is do more interviews! So yeah.... I learned so much from doing the interviews and I learned so much AGAIN going through post with them. Season Two won't be without its bumps, but I think it'll be a great deal smoother.

Think on it this way: look back to the early days of Jimmy Fallon, or before that Conan O'Brien. They were clearly only semi-comfortable with the form. Compare it to now, and they are usually Professionals with a capital 'p'.

So, I think you're right: Practice!

As for my writing, thanks again for reading my stuff! I do care to pen the review from time to time. As far as GHOST TRICK, I'm sorry that our opinions differed so greatly. That was one game that I was extremely thrilled about playing. While I wouldn't say it disappointed me, it really didn't turn out to the be the game for me, I guess. The animation and characters in that game are AMAZING. I wish more games looked like that. For me, the story went just too far off the rails for the clever gameplay to redeem. I don't play portable games in long bursts like I used to when I rode around on the subway in NY years ago. The game may have been different for me then. As it stands now, I use my DS for perhaps 20 - 30 minutes in a stretch a few times a month. At that rate, the story was too bananas for me to be able to invest in it. Does that make sense? It wasn't the game, it was me.... Heh.

Anyways, thanks so much for the comments, and I hope you enjoy the future episodes!

-Brandon

I agree with the interviewee about the state of gaming. As somone who has played video games for over 30yrs and is 40ish now, im not finding new titles very interesting or exciting. It may be my age, or the fact that there isn't very much that is compelling in the games themselves. Its probably both, but the fact that many games are similar-looking based on the underlying software/hardware interface like Microsoft DirectX that is, in my opinion, to blame. Trying to maximize profits, developers produce and market products that will run on xbox 360 and playstation3, which are, essentially, DirectX 9 games. They are now only ported to PC as an after-thought in increasing amounts. I think the excitement will build as the consoles get updated and programmers are given a chance to produce more visually compelling games using the (now old) capabilites of the hardware that pc users have been anxious to see used to their capacity. It would have been nice, for example, to see Crysis 2 reach new levels of realism last year, but the market and economic realities produced a title which, in my opionion, went backwards in terms of the visual experience.