It’s always troubled me how willing people are to accept in-game advertising. Advertising in general bothers me deeply, but whenever I try to explain the problem, I never feel satisfied with my explanation.

Perhaps a little bit of ranting makes all the difference. This week on their podcast, Jeff Roberts and Casey Muratori explained the situation very well. (Both Jeff and Casey are in the credits for Braid, for those looking for a Braid connection here).

If you are interested in the future of games, and for some reason you don’t think advertising is bad, please listen to the following excerpt:

(Yes, David Perry, you too.)

Here’s a direct-download link if you want to save the mp3.

Early in this discussion, Casey refers to Sut Jhally’s lecture “How TV Exploits its Audience”, which is available for a small fee at this link. Or, here is a Sut Jhally web site with some free clips.

If you liked this discussion, you may wish to visit: The main page for The Jeff and Casey Show, where you can download any of the episodes (28 so far!).

As a special bonus, as mentioned in the excerpt, here’s David Lynch’s opinion on the matter:

Paul Arzt conducted this interview with Jonathan Blow in late 2007 at the Montreal International Game Summit. Due to the unpredictability of Web-based freelancing, the interview never found publication until now.

The interview discusses some of the design philosophy behind Braid, why innovation in game design isn’t so important, life as an indie developer, and ideas about where we can go when pushing on the boundaries of game design.

(Note: The MMO project hinted at, at the end of this interview, is not the post-Braid project any more. Since then I had an idea for a project I am much more motivated to pursue.)

Ryan Davis of GiantBomb.com has done a video review of Braid. He does a great job of explaining the game, in just 3 minutes. If anyone out there is still saying stuff like, “That game just looks like a Super Mario rip-off”, point them at this video!

(It looks like this video is going to overlap the sidebar of this blog, but hey, I’ll embed it anyway.)

(Link to the original page, with user comments, is here).

(This is the bug that happens if you try to run Braid from a different console than the one you bought it on, and it thinks it’s the free version instead of the full game).

As comment poster Seth said:

SUCCESS!!
Using Infininja’s advice, I used the license migration tool on xbox.com. Once that was done, I booted up Braid but it was still a demo, well, you have to delete the game and re-download it. Now it runs in full/bought mode!

Wooohoo!

Also, Rob Crippin says:

I have another workaround for the bug…

Let the game start up normally then hit the start button to go to the menu. Go down to “Unlock Full Game,” press A, then just hit B (doesn’t have to be done quickly) to back out of the Dashboard menu. The “Unlock Full Game” option disappears. After that, go to “Exit Game” and then to the sign-in screen to get your save back.

It sounds complicated but it’s safe and only takes a few seconds. It works for me, anyway.

We’re still working on a permanent fix, but that will take some time; even after I fix the problem locally, we need to go through another certification process.

Braid has now been out on Xbox Live Arcade for an entire week, and the week has been a good success. The wave of highly-positive reviews took me by surprise, but the unexpectedly good sales show that this isn’t just a game for critics: a lot of people out there are playing Braid and getting good things from it.

I want to thank everyone for their support over the past week: whether by buying the game, telling friends about it, or just posting here with thoughts about Braid, it has all contributed to a successful launch. I hope this will serve as a useful data point for other independent developers: we can make games that are unusual, experimental, or personal, and there’s a substantial audience out there who will play and enjoy them.

Here are some numbers:

As I write this, there are 62,242 entries on the main leaderboards. I don’t have official sales numbers for the full week, but I would guess about 55,000 people have bought the game so far.

18,141 have completed the game (or at least gotten 60 puzzle pieces, since that is what the leaderboard shows).

528 people have completed the Full Game Speed Run. Of these, 238 have beaten the challenge time, and thus gotten all 200 Achievement points that you can get from Braid on Xbox Live.

Thousands of people have been playing the single-level speed runs. There are 5,098 people on the Leap of Faith speed run leaderboard, for example.

Sales are now slower than they were on launch day, but not too much: the sales didn’t just die after the first few days, as they do with some games. As a result, it looks like I will be able to make the next game, without needing to get a job that would interfere with that. (The estimated sales so far of 55,000 are not enough for this, but extrapolating into the future, the situation looks safe). Thank you, once again, for making that possible.

An open question now is whether sales will drop more steeply now that Bionic Commando: Rearmed is the new game on Xbox Live Arcade. I hope not, but we’ll see! If you have any friends who you think may enjoy Braid, please do let them know about it — perhaps while they are playing Bionic Commando, they can also try out the Braid demo.

Inevitably with software, problems happen. There are (at least) two bugs in the current version of Braid available on Xbox Live; I am talking to Microsoft about how to fix them.

The first bug is that, if you play the game on a different console than the one you bought it on, the game may get confused and think it is the free demo instead of the full version. (This might happen, for example, if you unplug your hard drive and plug it into a different Xbox). While playing the free demo with a profile that bought the game, you may be able to get the game to realize that you bought it, but then you are in danger of erasing your saved progress. (This can happen because when a game starts up in demo mode, it is not allowed to load your saved game; if, then, it comes out of demo mode later, it starts saving based on that fresh game). I’m not exactly sure how to fix this, since really Braid is just asking the Xbox operating system whether it should be in demo mode or not; but there might be some nuance to that function call, or some workaround that I can do.

The second bug is that sometimes puzzle pieces can get stuck together when you are in the puzzle screen. This seems to affect only a small number of people; but when it happens, it is pretty bad, since there is no way to fix this problem except to restart the game. I haven’t yet reproduced this bug; if anyone out there knows how to reproduce this and can make it happen at will, please leave a message here. Knowing how to reproduce this would help me fix it quickly.

Thanks, and I apologize for the problems that people have had due to these two bugs.

Giant Bomb: 5 stars (out of 5). “The game’s final payoff is terrific, but it’s the ingenuity of the mechanics that makes Braid so engaging.”

Gamefocus: 9.9/10. “If you like games don’t bother to read the rest of the review, just go and buy Braid.”

GamerNode: 9.5/10. “What you get out of Braid is determined entirely by what you put into it.”

Only the Games: 5/5. “Braid is an intrepidly personal game.”

dietwaltz.com: 10/10. “Honestly, it’s the closest thing to a flawless game I’ve ever seen.”

Destructoid: 9.7. (Average of 3 reviews: 10, 10, 9). “Braid is… a true work of art. Simple as that.”

British Gaming Blog: Must Buy. “On one hand it expertly dishes up inspired puzzles and amazing feats of logic, and on the other it draws you ever closer with an enigmatic narrative and a forlorn tale.”
(Thanks to James for pointing this one out.)

Gamers Universe: 96%. “Enchanting. No other word better describes the awe-inspiring experience that is Braid. From the addictive puzzle-based gameplay to the charming audio and beautifully artistic visuals, this game is a pure delight from start to finish.”

Currently, Braid is receiving excellent reception from game reviewers and critics. Both Metacritic and Gamerankings have Braid rated at 92/100:

That’s a pretty good score. In fact, Braid is the highest-rated Xbox Live Arcade game of all time (out of about 150 games!) Geometry Wars 2, released a week prior, is the second-highest. There are some strong games coming up in the next few weeks, so we’ll see if these positions hold.

But 92 is not just a good score for a Live Arcade game; it’s a good score for any game. In fact, Braid is currently the 10th highest-rated Xbox 360 game of all time — including all AAA high-budget games:

If Braid receives just one more Metacritic point, it will jump to 8th place on this list. (Eran and Alex: Let’s get ready to rumble!)

Of course, it’s possible that Braid’s rating will go down, too. Time will tell!

I don’t want any of this to seem like bragging. I do want it to serve as a clear and useful data point: an indie game made by a very small team can compete with giant games that had huge budgets at their disposal. (I don’t know how much Mass Effect cost, but it surely was a lot. Just licensing the Unreal Engine 3, before even hiring anyone or doing any work to create a game, cost probably 3x-5x Braid’s budget.)

This is important — I have been a proponent of indie and experimental game development for a while, but the attitude toward it always seems to be that they are interesting toys, but not real games. Well, perhaps that is changing. And perhaps some of the indie developers out there who are making cheap clones of PopCap games will realize that if, instead, they go out on a limb and do something interesting and different and important to people, their work will be recognized.

Now, about sales. They are surprisingly good!

I have noticed people on forums looking at the number of entires in the leaderboards and multiplying that out to get a total income for Braid. That doesn’t work, for a number of reasons. There are thousands of free copies of the game given out to the press, and once someone buys an XBLA game, other profiles can play from the same xbox and they get leaderboard entries. So the leaderboard is always an overestimate.

However, vgchartz.com has Braid at 28.5k sales currently, and that seems to be in the right neighborhood.

This is a very good sign, for a few reasons! First of all, it means that in addition to getting recognition from critics, Braid is also being played by a lot of people. We’ve all heard of games that are critically-acclaimed but that hardly anyone plays. That doesn’t seem to be happening with Braid so far. But, that could change — a lot depends on what happens to sales on Wednesday when Bionic Commando: Rearmed is released on XBLA. Will Braid’s sales keep up, as with Geometry Wars 2, or will they drop off?

But right now, Braid is selling as well or better than any massive highly-anticipated XBLA game by a major publisher. So, that is very cool. I would like to thank everyone out there who purchased a copy of Braid, for supporting independent and experimental game development.

People have asked me how many sales Braid needs in order to be profitable. The answer is, a lot more than it has gotten so far. (There are many reasons for this, which I may be motivated to talk about in the future). However, things are looking promising now — if Braid keeps selling, I’ll be able to afford to make the next game, and that will be good.

Could someone who edits Wikipedia please remove the massive Braid plot spoiler that was added today? Not only is it a spoiler, but it is wrong (and it is against Wikipedia policy, since it is POV.)

I would do this but Wikipedia has my IP range blocked for some reason.