As one of the architects of the concept of "indie games," Jonathan Blow has always been a game developer of significant interest in the industry. He holds persistent and unique game design philosophies and often shares "controversial opinions" on questions like "what games should be." Precisely because of this, when his new work, The Witness 2, was announced, it was hard for everyone not to notice what unique experience this title would bring.
The convergence of four thematic worlds, inexhaustible puzzles, and an unprecedented AA-level indie puzzle game—even before its official release, The Witness 2 already had considerable "gimmicks" in its promotion, all cultivating the unparalleled innovativeness of this work.
So, behind this work, how did lead creator Jonathan Blow establish his design philosophy, and how did he collaborate with the game's publisher, Arc Games? These became questions of curiosity. Fortunately, at this year's ChinaJoy, we had the privilege, along with other media friends, to interview Jonathan Blow, as well as Jason Park, COO of The Witness 2 publisher Arc Games, and Zeng Zheng, Head of China Region and Global CTO.
Left: Zeng Zheng; Center: Jonathan Blow; Right: Jason Park
Below is the specific content of the interview:
Q: As a puzzle game enthusiast, I have played quite a few puzzle games. Many of them process and create based on traditional puzzle paradigms, such as classic puzzles like Sokoban or path-building, which many players may have encountered early on. Although The Witness 2 also recreates based on foundational puzzles, it has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Regarding how to make classic puzzles feel fresher and more interesting, do you have any insights to share?
Jonathan Blow:As game design has evolved, both designers' creative abilities and players' understanding and aesthetic levels have matured significantly compared to the past. We can now revisit classic puzzle mechanisms with a modern design perspective—deconstructing the truly charming core creativity within the gameplay, stripping away redundant parts limited by the era that hinder the experience, and replacing them with design modules better suited to contemporary player sensibilities.
This is the design philosophy I have consistently practiced in my previous works, and The Witness 2 is the realization of this concept.
Q: You mentioned that the team designed over 3,000 puzzles in total, ultimately retaining only about half—a nearly 50% rejection rate, which is astonishing for puzzle games. What were your core screening criteria?
Jonathan Blow:Screening a large batch of puzzles is a massive undertaking. In the early stages of the project, our screening criteria were relatively lenient, and many puzzles I designed years ago seemed acceptable at the time. However, as the game continued to be polished over several years and its overall completeness improved, looking back at those early designs revealed that they no longer matched the game's overall standard and had to be discarded.
For this title, there is a core criterion for selecting puzzles: each puzzle must not only be a test of difficulty but also clearly convey a unique design concept. Players should be able to intuitively understand the ingenuity of the puzzle and even clearly explain this idea to others. That is what makes a qualified puzzle.
Q: What is the essential difference between a good puzzle worth keeping and one that gets cut?
Jonathan Blow:If the core concept of a puzzle is vague, leaving players confused and unable to grasp the design highlights, we will rework it. If the puzzle idea itself is brilliant but the solving process leads to excessive ineffective actions and frustrating player experiences, we will simplify the level layout and restructure the flow to ensure players can directly access the core fun.
To give a specific example: one type of level features a core mechanic of using magic mirrors for long-distance teleportation, allowing players to perform movements previously thought impossible. This kind of clear, surprising design is the quality puzzle we aim to retain.
Q: In your value system, where is the precise dividing line between clever difficulty and malicious obstruction?
Jonathan Blow:The key distinction between clever difficulty and malicious obstruction lies in whether the player's attention focuses on the level's core creativity while stuck. When stuck, if the player constantly ponders how to implement the level's unique mechanics (such as how to use mirrors for ultra-long-distance teleportation), with their thinking revolving around the game's exclusive designs, then it is clever difficulty. However, if there are numerous irrelevant obstacles or meaningless repetitive pushing/pulling actions, forcing the player to expend energy dealing with unrelated clutter and completely deviating from the core creativity the level intends to express, then it is malicious obstruction.
In the later stages of development, we thoroughly clarified this boundary and boldly cut out all meaningless硬性obstacles.
Q: The demo for The Witness 2 did not showcase the world convergence mechanism at all, yet you repeatedly emphasized in interviews that this is the game's core design, where the collision of four worlds produces "never-ending combinatorial consequences." Did you choose not to include any convergence content in the demo because you were worried that early leaks would spoil the surprise of the full version, or because you wanted players to experience the maximum shock when encountering this design in the final release?
Jonathan Blow:We released the demo in two parts—the first version indeed contained no world fusion content; the second version included a few related hints but did not fully expand on them.
The core limitation is that the game's volume is too massive. The demo has limited capacity and cannot fully showcase the vast array of combinatorial gameplay generated by the intertwining of four worlds; otherwise, the demo itself would equate to the full game.
The Golden Room in the second demo is the雏形of world convergence: the protagonist's native world does not have large bodies of water, but water element interactions appeared in the demo, which is the雏形of other world mechanisms intruding. Upon the official release, players will unlock magic mirrors from the Mirror Archipelago and various elements from other worlds, achieving deep multi-world linkage.
Additionally, this type of game requires gradually building player cognition. If we skipped early basic tutorials and directly opened up the world convergence mechanism, players would be unable to understand the rules, significantly diminishing the experience. Currently, the demo includes approximately 135 puzzles, offering a very substantial amount of content. We had to make trade-offs, prioritizing complete tutorialization of the basic gameplay.
Q: From previous demos, we learned that the difficulty across the four different regions in The Witness 2 progresses gradually, a smooth transition that many players appreciated. Puzzle games always face the balance between difficulty and sense of achievement—if the difficulty is too high, it discourages some players; if too low, it reduces the sense of accomplishment. How do you balance this?
Jonathan Blow:Everythinggj still returns to the unique core creativity of each level. If a level piles up numerous objects unrelated to the core creativity, simply adding redundant operations to raise difficulty, it is a failed design—the player's attention will be distracted by clutter, and they won't feel the true ingenuity of the level.
In the past, many puzzle games deliberately raised difficulty to extend playtime. However, The Witness 2 already has substantial content volume, so we took the opposite approach, eliminating all valueless artificial difficulty. But the difficulty cannot be too low either, otherwise players would breeze through without deeply understanding the game's design or feeling a sense of accomplishment upon completion.
Q: In your speech "Preventing the Collapsing of Civilization," you expressed deep concern about the loss of underlying engine knowledge, which was one of the deeper motivations for developing the JAI programming language from scratch. However, a decade-long development cycle is almost counter-trend in an industry of rapid iteration. Looking back, what exactly did creating the language and engine enable for The Witness 2 that Unity and Unreal Engine fundamentally could not achieve?
Jonathan Blow:Many effects in the game are difficult or even impossible to achieve using Unity or Unreal Engine. Take a直观 example: the game's large map features seamless zooming, transitioning smoothly from a third-person walking view directly to a global overhead view, with fluid visuals and stable frame rates throughout. Implementing such seamless camera transitions in general commercial engines often results in severe stuttering and frame drops.
Of course, commercial engines are comprehensive, but most features are completely useless for this title. The bloated and redundant functional modules make the engine heavy and sluggish, like a heavy truck; a self-developed engine can be highly streamlined and optimized specifically, like a lightweight sports car, offering higher execution efficiency. However, it is not suitable for carrying massive amounts of complex AAA art content, limiting its applicable scenarios.
Q: Was there ever a stage where you seriously doubted the cost-effectiveness of developing the JAI programming language from scratch?
Jonathan Blow:I have never struggled with the "cost-effectiveness of self-developed technology." Developers who constantly doubt themselves and weigh the pros and cons of giving up rarely complete long-term projects. However, I maintain periodic reviews—every few months, I梳理current development progress, assess the actual value of self-developed tools, and微调subsequent development directions, always moving forward.
Q: For today's young developers, would you advise them to delve into underlying technologies to understand them, or to focus on using existing tools to quickly validate their creativity?
Jonathan Blow:Advice for young developers falls into two paths: if the goal is to quickly implement ideas and validate gameplay prototypes, mature engines like Unity or Unreal Engine are the optimal choices, saving on underlying development costs; if you aim to deeply cultivate a specific genre over the long term and existing engines continuously constrain your design visions, it is worth investing time to study the underlying technology and build proprietary tools tailored to your work.
Neither approach is superior; they simply suit different creative goals.
Q: The Witness 2 is a very special work. How did Arc Games and Jonathan meet and reach this publishing agreement?
Jason Park:We were introduced to Jonathan through a developer we had collaborated with previously. At the time, we tried an extremely early prototype of The Witness 2 and were immediately attracted by the depth and creativity of the work, leading to a smooth finalization of the publishing partnership.
Jonathan Blow:As an indie developer, I have interacted with many publishers. My core selection criterion is that the publisher must truly understand game creation, rather than treating games as commercial lotteries based on luck. They need to be able to communicate design philosophies with me as equals and customize exclusive marketing plans for the work. After reviewing Arc Games' past publishing list, I confirmed that they understand games and respect creators, ultimately choosing to collaborate.
Q: Perspectives on evaluating a game are becoming increasingly diverse, encompassing game quality, sales figures, community reputation, and more. In your views, how should one evaluate whether a game is successful?
Jason Park:From a publisher's perspective, our core mission is to act as a "magnifying glass": uncovering the game's inherent charm, precisely pushing the work to the right audience, and maximizing the expansion of its global player base. For The Witness 2, our core goal is to convey a clear positioning to global players—that this is the largest, most ambitious, and highest-quality puzzle masterpiece in history—ensuring target players clearly recognize the work's value.
Jonathan Blow:At the inception of a project, creators must harbor a unique core creativity worth spending years polishing. The development process is full of variables, and many concepts cannot be perfectly implemented.
For me, as long as that initial, unique core创意 is ultimately preserved intact and presented to players, the game is a success. Sales are certainly important, as stable revenue supports my continued development of new works; but even if sales fall short of expectations or exposure is limited, as long as my creative vision is fully realized, I still consider it a successful work.
Q: Arc Games has undergone three major identity shifts: from Perfect World North America, to Gearbox Publishing under Embracer, and now to management buyout independence. As the head of Arc Games China and someone deeply involved in Chinese operations, how do you define the post-independence Arc Games? What kind of publisher is it? What are its core competencies? With the AA and indie game publishing sector being very crowded, how does Arc Games differentiate itself from mature indie publishers like Devolver, Annapurna, and Team17?
Zeng Zheng:We greatly respect peers like Devolver, Annapurna, and Team17, each possessing distinct and unique brand labels. Arc Games' unique advantage stems from our complete industry履历: having experienced being the North American branch of a large company and subsequent group acquisition, we have fully mastered the entire industrialized system for AAA titles, long-term online games, multi-platform console/PC publishing, version compliance, and long-term operations, possessing mature global publishing experience.
After completing the management buyout and becoming independent, our decision-making chain has been significantly shortened, and project evaluation freedom has greatly increased, allowing us to quickly finalize collaborations with creative works we admire.
In terms of self-positioning, we are a mid-sized publisher with full global industrialized distribution capabilities. We are neither a giant publishing factory solely chasing revenue nor a small indie team with limited resources. We are willing to allocate significant resources to support indie and AA-level creative works.
Q: After becoming independent, what essential changes occurred in Arc Games' selection criteria?
Zeng Zheng:The underlying values for selection have never changed. Beyond track热度and commercial data, we重点evaluate two things: whether the work possesses irreplaceable unique creative value; and whether the creator has a clear, firm creative vision and can persist with their design philosophy throughout the process.
After becoming independent, we have more proactively sought out creators with strong expressive desires, providing full-process publishing resources to help them fully realize their ideas, thereby increasing our investment in indie games and AA creative works.
Q: China's game market is growing rapidly, and we were fortunate to interview you both during ChinaJoy. How do you view China's game market? Did anything leave a deep impression on you during this visit to ChinaJoy?
Jonathan Blow:I visited China in 2018, and the changes after many years are significant: the number of both indie developers and large companies in China has grown, and the quality of their works continues to improve. In recent years, many Chinese games have successfully gone global and gained worldwide popularity—something rarely seen in 2018. When I communicated with Chinese developers back then, everyone hoped their works could reach the world. Now that vision has materialized, representing a very positive industry change.
Zeng Zheng:In terms of commercial scale, the domestic game market exceeds 350 billion RMB, with a player base surpassing 680 million, a very large foundation. The market structure is upgrading: PC single-player and cross-platform works are experiencing an explosion, and player aesthetics are continuously improving. In the past, the focus of player discussion was "is the game fun and worth buying?" Today, people delve into design philosophies, narrative, level architecture, publishing models, and other deeper content. The player community is becoming increasingly professional.
On the supply side, Black MYTH - Steam Edition: Wukong established the reputation for domestic AAA titles, with several buy-to-play single-player games selling over a million copies, proving that domestic teams are fully capable of creating world-class works. The steady issuance of publication licenses has also brought sufficient market confidence to overseas publishers.
For Arc Games, the Chinese market is not a multiple-choice question of "whether to enter," but an essay question of "how to deepen implementation." Our goal is to introduce top-tier global quality content, present it in a localized manner accepted by domestic players, and grow together with the domestic industry.
The most直观impression from this year's ChinaJoy is that attendance has明显increased compared to previous years, with nearly half of the attendees being overseas practitioners. ChinaJoy and CGDC have grown into global game exchange platforms, with industry influence radiating across Asia and even globally.
Q: Indie games typically have limited budgets and smaller scales, while AAA games boast high industrialization but dilute authorial voice. The Witness 2 attempts to carve out a third path: highly authorial expression combined with AA-level publishing investment and massive content scale. From your respective perspectives, is this model commercially sustainable? If this game succeeds, will it spur more collaborations between top-tier indie designers and professional AA publishers?
Zeng Zheng:This model is sustainable, but the barrier to entry is extremely high. It must simultaneously meet three hard conditions: the creator possesses an unwavering, clear, and complete long-term creative vision; the project development maintains strong discipline, with all manpower and financial investments serving the core creativity, avoiding meaningless feature bloat; and it matches with a dedicated publisher who deeply understands the work and rejects templated marketing, customizing targeted distribution strategies.
If The Witness 2 performs well in the market, similar projects will increase, but they will not emerge in bulk. Jonathan Blow is a creator difficult to replicate, so this model will not become widespread. However, it will broaden the industry's approach to evaluating projects: in the past, manufacturers prioritized validating tracks and mature gameplay; in the future, there will be more focus on the creators themselves, valuing the "must-do" creative初心.
Q: Will Arc Games proactively incubate more high-risk, high-acclaim author-driven projects in the future?
Zeng Zheng:We do not define such projects as "high-risk," but rather as "high-conviction projects"—seeking creators with extreme creative obsession, matching them with our full suite of professional publishing resources, and leaving the final work's reputation and market performance to be judged by players.
This collaboration model is not just for overseas creators; we are also very optimistic about imaginative and creative domestic developers, willing to support original Chinese works in reaching both domestic and overseas markets.
Q: In the future, is it possible to see Arc Games, Chinese developers, and international creators like Jonathan engaging in deeper exchanges or collaborations?
Jonathan Blow:Game creation knows no geographical boundaries; good creativity is always core. In recent years, I have witnessed the rapid growth of China's game industry firsthand, with many thoughtful and executable development teams emerging. I remain open to creators from diverse backgrounds. If there are aligned creative directions and valuable opportunities for collaboration, I am happy to exchange ideas with Chinese developers.
Zeng Zheng:This is also a very important direction for our future layout. Arc Games possesses both global publishing resources and experience, while also深耕the Chinese local market, naturally positioning us as a bridge connecting Chinese and foreign creators. On one hand, we will continue to introduce top-tier overseas author-driven works to the domestic market; on the other, we are actively monitoring high-quality domestic development teams. In the future, we do not rule out facilitating deeper collaborations—whether through joint development, international publishing, or exchanges and联动among creators, there is significant room for exploration.
Q: In the next three to five years, what kind of publisher does Arc Games aspire to become? How do you most want developers and players to perceive Arc Games?
Zeng Zheng:In the next three to five years, our core positioning is to be a "publisher that understands the work." While commercial data and track prospects are important, we place greater emphasis on the meaning of a game's existence and the creator's original intention.
For developers, Arc Games adheres to three principles: fully respecting creative intent, maintaining transparent communication throughout, and ensuring stable and reliable execution. On this basis, we grant creators ample creative freedom to help them fully realize their ideas.
For domestic players, we hope to build a publishing brand worthy of long-term trust—so that after experiencing our high-quality titles, players will actively look out for new releases upon seeing the Arc Games label.
In the long run, we do not wish to be simply defined by players or developers as an "overseas publisher," but rather to become a partner that accompanies the domestic industry and consistently delivers high-quality games. The ultimate standard by which we are judged will always be each game we publish, not our verbal plans.