With Mald playing The Witness, I figured this would be a good chance to go back to one of my favourite playthroughs of the game to do a brief comparison in mindset between someone with talent and one without.
To give a little background on this streamer, Simon, he is a several time world champion crossword and sudoku competitor, and a master at deduction and problem solving, which shows in his gameplay. It's also worth noting, this is most likely his first first-person game he's played, and this is the first livestream he has ever done, and had no idea how it worked until that point. At one point, he even states with surprise "Oh, people seem to be giving me money". I'd recommend watching just for those reasons alone; it's captivating to see his reactions to the little things we disregard.
The difference in how he approaches puzzles compared to Jason is night and day. Where Jason sees a competition to prove you're the cleverest boy in all the land, Simon sees a work of art that only reveals itself to those who can solve it. Throughout the stream, Simon makes his thought process clear and always assumes the solution is simple, often apologizing for not being able to solve it.
The best example of this is at the 15:30 mark. For those who aren't familiar with the game, this puzzle isn't intended to be solved at this point, and tries to show you that there are times you should learn more before returning to previous areas. Simon manages to complete this puzzle with only his intuition, an incredibly impressive feat, apologizes for taking so long, then discovers the tutorial directly behind him, and learns that the game will teach him the rules first in the future. Compare that to Mald's clips of him going on break before solving a puzzle in The Witness after trying to brute force it, or boasting about solving any incredibly obtuse puzzle in Animal Well with suspiciously no experimentation or mistakes, and the difference is obvious: Jason
finishes puzzles, Simon
solves puzzles.
I'm tempted to do direct side by side clip comparisons between Jason and Simon, but I'm not making any promises because, frankly, I don't know how much Mald I can stomach.
