Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow (born 1971) is an American independent video game programmer and designer. He is best known as the creator of Braid, which was released in 2008 and received critical acclaim. His latest game, The Witness, was released to critical acclaim in 2016.

For many years Blow wrote the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine. He was the primary host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop each March at the Game Developers Conference, which has become a premier showcase for new ideas in video games. In addition, Blow was a regular participant in the Indie Game Jam. Blow is a founding partner of the Indie Fund, an angel investor fund for independent game projects.

Early life and education

Blow was born in 1971. Blow says he started to "check out" from his parents as early as elementary school. His mother was an ex-nun who constantly reminded her son about the imminent coming of Jesus and would later disown Blow's older sister for coming out as a lesbian in the mid-80s. Blow's father worked all day as a defense contractor and would come home to be alone in his den, where children were not allowed. Blow would say in an interview with The Atlantic, "Early on, I detected that there weren't good examples at home, so I kind of had to figure things out on my own ... I had to adopt a paradigm of self-sufficiency."