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Braid creator rips on WoW, talks artificial rewards and social gaming

by Samuel Axon Sep 13th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Culture, Game mechanics, Interviews, Opinion

In an interview with Gamasutra, game designer Jon Blow (who created the critically acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade game Braid) had a few things to say about World of Warcraft. His criticisms could be just as easily leveled against any Diku-based, WoW-like MMO.

He began by saying that WoW employs "artificial rewards" as opposed to "natural rewards." In other words, players play WoW for achievements like leveling up that have little real meaning, and they'll sit through a lot of boredom to reach those goals. That's not an unfair analysis; leveling up is a very empty and artificial kind of catharsis. Perhaps the most controversial statements he made were related to the social aspect of the game.

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Tags: artificial-rewards, blizzard, braid, community, design, designer, gamasutra, interaction, interview, jon-blow, microsoft-game-studios, natural-rewards, number-none, relationships, rewards, social, world-of-warcraft, wow, xbox-live-marketplace