Jonathan Blow

Lore & Background

Blow became interested in game programming while at middle school. He studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, but dropped out to start a game company. After the company closed following the dot-com crash, Blow worked as a game development contractor. He co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop and wrote a monthly technical column for Game Developer magazine.

Blow gained prominence in 2008 with Braid. He used its financial success to fund his next game, The Witness, and formed a company called Thekla Inc. After a lengthy development period, The Witness was released in 2016, and like Braid was critically and financially successful. During its development, Blow became frustrated with C++, the programming language Thekla used to create the game. He began designing and creating a new programming language.

Full-time work on the language, code-named Jai, and a new game implemented in it began after the release of The Witness. A compiler for the Jai language is currently in beta release. Blow's games are known for being artistic and challenging. They are made with custom game engines, and have larger budgets and longer development times than most independently funded games.

Blow was featured in Indie Game: The Movie, and is known for his strong opinions about the gaming industry. Since the 2020s, Blow has come under criticism based on his political opinions.

Reader's Guide

Blow was born in Southern California in 1971. His father worked as a defense contractor for TRW, and his mother was an ex-nun. He is the fourth of five siblings. Blow was raised as a Christian.

He attended middle school in Northern San Diego County, where a VIC-20 computer provided his introduction to programming. His parents bought him a TRS-80 Color Computer, on which he learned to program in BASIC. In high school, he programmed games on a Commodore 64. In 1989, Blow attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, double-majoring in computer science and English.

He spent five years at UC Berkeley but dropped out with less than one semester to go. After leaving UC Berkeley, Blow worked at an enterprise software company for six months, then took a contracting role at Silicon Graphics. In early 1996, Blow co-founded the game company Bolt-Action Software with Bernt Habermeier. They created Wulfram, a 3D action-strategy game.

Bolt-Action Software folded in 2000 due to the dot-com crash. After that, Blow worked as a contractor for game studios, including work on Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief: Deadly Shadows. In 2002, Blow co-founded the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference. He wrote The Inner Product, a monthly technical column for Game Developer magazine.

Blow created a prototype for Braid in December 2004, and the first version was completed by December 2005. He hired David Hellman for the art. Braid was released in August 2008. Blow used its earnings to fund The Witness, which began development in 2008. He founded Thekla, Inc. The Witness was released in 2016.