(Clique aqui para a versão em Português)
As new games are released on the market, one can notice trends being followed. After all, if one titles is a hit, there's always the bunch of copycats... some of them do really well, and unfortunately the others get the short straw. But people who keep a closer eye on the industry knows that some of the smaller indie studios prefer to use their creative freedom to create something that stands out in the market, and American developer Dejobaan Games is no excepton.
Since 1999, the company has released a bunch of games for the PC and PalmOS; in 2008, "The Wonderful End of the World" had its debut on Steam -- curiously enough, it had a "Katamari Damacy" feel. But their next game - "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity" - had very little to do with anything else on the market, even because it was a very surreal take on a very underutilized extreme sport: BASE jumping. Dejobaan's founder, Ichiro Lambe, has conceded FinalBoss an exclusive interview, telling a bit more about the company's experience on the games industry:
About Dejobaan
FinalBoss: Thanks for taking your time! Please introduce yourself to our game fans.
Ichiro Lambe: We are Dejobaan Games, an indie game development studio founded in 1999. Since then, we've created 13 titles, starting with a Windows puzzle title called "MarbleZone", and working our way through our 13th, which is "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity". We are located around Boston, MA, USA, which is nice, except during the winters.
FB: How did you start your career in game development?
Ichiro: I started in 1988, with a small, commercial BBS doors game, though my first proper job was in 1993, writing online games back when people thought half a megabyte of base memory was a good idea. (It was the best we had at the time, but we've gotten better.)
FB: Do you enjoy playing on your free time? If so, which games and genres are your favorites?
Ichiro: I love games! I love quirky indie games. I love big budget games. But most of all, I love games that can bring non-gamers into the fold. Take "Wii Sports". Or "Rock Band" -- where else can you get people at a formal cocktail party to sit down and play a video game? It's fantastic.
FB: When was Dejobaan founded? How many people work there, and how is a day at the company?
Ichiro: I founded Dejobaan in 1999, and in the beginning, there was just me. But for Aaaaa!, we had 6 people, most of whom were part timers. A day at Dejobaan is as you might think for a small studio -- it's a sort-of organize chaos, where we have (what I hope is) a good overarching strategy, with each of us trying different little things on the fly. Will the game play better if we speed movement up by a factor of two? Interesting! What if we set up some video equipment and film a response to our user's requests, rather than writing them out? And hey, our tech intern just wrote a song about the game -- where can we use that?
FB: Where did the studio name come from?
Ichiro: I tell people it's the Greco-Nordic god of games and entertainment. Most people just nod understandingly, but a few call me out on the fact that the Greeks and Nords didn't share much mythology. The truth is that it was just a nonsense word -- I had hoped that it didn't matter what I named the company, so long as we made good games.
FB: What are the pros and cons of running an indie development studio?
Ichiro: My biz dev guy puts it this way: The pros are that can take risks, do crazy things, drive our own ship, and dream of keeping all the riches since we are "The Man." The cons are that we have to take risks, we are potentially insane, and we sometimes do crash the ship. And the Tax Man still comes calling every year.
About games
FB: You have started by creating mobile games for the PalmOS. What was your first PC title?
Ichiro: Actually our studio's first title was MarbleZone (here's an old web page), a strategy game for the PC. We described it like this:
Twist and turn the broken remnants of the MarbleZone machines to establish a complete path from the marble generators to their collectors. Release the marbles to circulate through your machine. Then watch with pride as it successfully distributes the marbles - or watch in horror as an incorrectly built machine smashes its cargo into bits.
Simple but effective!
FB: "The Wonderful End of the World" felt very "Katamari-esque" in design. What was your inspiration behind the game?
Ichiro: "Katamari" created a genre, and we wanted to see if we could expand on it with a few additions. It's where we twisted and turned that I think we fared best -- for example, there's a level where players begin in a Pong-style game and work their way up into a video game world that people seemed to have liked the best.
FB: There aren't many BASE jumping titles on the market. Other than that, any other particular reason why you decided to give it a shot in "Aaaaa!"?
Ichiro: It started when our creative guy, Dan, saw this video. We fell in love with the concept and tried a few takes on it. The trick seemed to be to get away from a pure BASE jumping simulation and explore something else (ergo the "hugs" and "kisses").
FB: In "Aaaaa!", what led you guys to opt for an abstract audiovisual style instead of a more traditional simulation?
Ichiro: AAA studios have massive teams of artists and audio engineers. At Dejobaan, The janitor holds those roles, while managing the accounting and game development. This meant that to compete, we would have to go in an entirely different direction, 180 degrees away from realism. The hyper-unrealistic graphics are (we hope) visually interesting, without competing with on the same footing as (say) Crysis.
FB: We've noticed a great deal of attention to your games' soundtracks and voiceovers. You've tackled many different genres. Did you ever consider creating music-based games?
Ichiro: Yes. We've dabbled with the idea, while looking at the success of games like RockBand and Guitar Hero. One thing we're prototyping now is (again): how can we investigate this while not moving in the same direction as the big studios?
FB: Who came up with the unlockable extras ideas, such as the relaxation / anti-relaxation / piglet stuff? That's so wonderfully off-the-wall, we had to ask that.
Ichiro: It's our special sauce! :) Every member of our development team contributed to those extras in some way. Dan and I tossed the Piglet sequence back and forth; our tech intern, Tamlyn, wrote Nebin's newscasts, and our art intern, Ryan, started with a skit on baking cookies.
About the current market and future developments
FB: So, what's next for Dejobaan?
Ichiro: I can honestly say that you know as much about this as I do. :) We can promise that, in concept, it'll diverge 90 degrees away from what folks might expect from us (an Aaaaa! isn't in the works yet, for example) -- we're prototyping a handful of tiny things to figure out what sticks.
FB: What is your take on current consoles (360, PS3, Wii)?
Ichiro: They're great -- no previous consoles have brought non-gamers into the fray, the way that this generation has. We would love to port our games to the consoles, especially when you consider the benefits of motion activated controllers and people BASE jumping in their living rooms.
FB: What's your take on current portable gaming systems (DS, PSP, iPhone)?
Ichiro: Also great, but in different ways -- things like the DS and PSP still seem to be geared towards the traditional gamer, but something like the iPhone and Android are portable came consoles that appear in everyone's pockets. Will our games translate to those platforms? Let's find out!
FB: So far, most (if not all) of your titles were sold via digital distribution... are there any plans for retail games?
Ichiro: No. Maybe. Hell, at the right price, we would personally deliver games to people's doorsteps. With that said, retail sales offer indies very very low profit margins. Its similar to what happens with most musicians not making much from album sales.
FinalBoss' Classic Round of Questions
FB: Which game made you think "I wish I had created that", and why?
Ichiro: Chess or Go, for simplicity of rules that play out in ridiculously complex ways.
FB: Which other game developers do you look up to, and for what reasons?
Ichiro: There's a special place in my heart for those developers of 8-bit games during the '80s. There wasn't much that came before them, so they were all trail blazers. Two that I admire particularly are Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson, creators of a fantastic Atari title called "Alternate Reality". They're part of why I do what I do today.
FB: Have you ever been to Brazil? How well do you know the country?
Ichiro: i've never been, but Cambridge / Boston is a fairly international area, so we get huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge numbers representing Brazil during holiday seasons and soccer/football events. Since I'm food-centric, I'm also happy to say that we have some (though not enough!) Brazilian cuisine represented here. More barbecue!
FB: What's your advice for people interested in getting into game development? Please leave a message to our readers and game fans!
Ichiro: Let me answer both at once: Do it! Start with a small game -- no, smaller than that! -- write a tiny game. Work your way up with a team you trust. Iterate. Get yourselves involved in your local game development community, if there is one near you. If there isn't one, move! (Easier said than done, I suppose.) There's something to be said about being immersed in a group of like-minded individuals.
We at FinalBoss would like to thank Ichiro Lambe and the gang at Dejobaan Games for showing how to creat simple and fun games without necessarily following the industry trends, and doing so with a sense of humor and creativity. If you come to Brazil, the barbecue's on us! Stay tuned for our next interviews!
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8,0
Por Jars (Par De) em 18/09/2009 às 17:27
Que caras malucos! =)
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Por fredlennon (Filho de John e Yoko) em 18/09/2009 às 23:31
Massa. Tiro o chapéu pra todos, trabalhar em um grupo de desenvolvimento indie deve ser um desafio muito grande (principalmente pelo caos).
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Por Boss (Eu sou aquilo que perdi...) em 19/09/2009 às 12:21
Faltou perguntar quem caiu da cama e deu esse nome extremamente ridículo ao último jogo deles.
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Por Boss (Eu sou aquilo que perdi...) em 19/09/2009 às 12:24
E essas letras laranjas me deram vontade de tomar Fanta Uva.
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Por Iposeno (We are the world lá nas paradas) em 19/09/2009 às 14:19
Muito boa a entrevista, o jogo é bem divertido mesmo (e eu adorei o nome)... Grandes ideias saem de jogos indies, é por isso que gosto do "gênero"...
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Por ATLAS (Eletronic Retro Volcanic Ostrich) em 20/09/2009 às 15:00
Nossa de todos os caras q vcs esntrevistaram esse eh o mais estranho. LOL. deus greco-nordico hahahaha boa
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Por Kaarosu (de Azeitona) em 21/09/2009 às 08:39
Ri legal aqui. Gostei deles :D
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Por Kaarosu (de Azeitona) em 21/09/2009 às 08:51
Also, a página em inglês ta bugada, depois de uma parte todo texto fica laranja(inclusive os comentários)
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Por Pturtle (Tartaruga do Esquálidus) em 04/10/2009 às 04:01
Espero que no final do ano, apareça alguma promoção na Steam para mim pegar esse aí!
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