Development of the game, Go Gimbal Go

Matt and Gabriel talk about the design of their game, Go Gimbal Go

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/go-gimble-go-gdc-2010-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and with me today are two special guests. How about you introduce yourself?

Matt: Matt Lazar, the producer and designer of Go Gimbal Go.

Gabriel: I’m Gabriel Cember, the art lead.

Interviewer: What’s this game about?

Matt: So, Go Gimbal Go is a 2D platformer, rhythm action game in which Gimbal is racing across the lines. We make him go as fast as possible. It’s a color match. It’s a 360 control button to the color coded line. So, if he’s on a red line, you have to press the red button and he goes faster and faster and faster. We throw in some crazy physics that make him do some loop-de-loop stuff and some other toys that kind of propel him forward. The whole object of the game is to get to the end before time runs out.

Interviewer: What inspired you guys to start the game?

Matt: Well, originally it was just between my friend, Steve, who is the lead programmer–we just wanted to make a cool game that we could show people. The initial idea came kind of from another abandoned idea in which we were trying to make this connect the dots game, and it had some color coded mechanics within there, and we found that the actual connect the dots thing was just too out of scope but the color code part was really fun. The irony, of course, is then we tried to make a very simple game that then blew up.

Interviewer: You know, with this game, so you started it outside of class then. This was a student project.

Matt: We started it in the summer of 2008 and completed it in our free time. Then it became a student project while we were going at DePaul University. It was our senior Capstone game.

Interviewer: What were the challenges then of doing this student project, and did you try to turn it into a class project?

Matt: We did put it as our class project. It was a game that we were making during that phase. As for challenges, you know, just the time management, right? Everyone’s got a social life. Everyone’s got to work to pay bills. When you make this game on your free time, it’s always some really, really hard challenges to overcome, especially when you’re doing this as an independent. So, what you always like to do is discover the fun. You’ve got to experiment. You’ve got to test. You’ve got a prototype to find that little spicy nugget that gets people to play.

Interviewer: How long did it take to find the fun then? So, were you onboard before the fun was found or after or how did that work?

Gabriel: I came in September 2008, way before it was a school project. Actually, the way it became a school project, it just sort of magically came out of thin air because it happened that the next quarter at our school three of us were going to be in the same class doing a Capstone class. And we were like, OK, we’re already working on a game. Why not just use school time to work on the game, you know?

So, that’s the A1 thing that kept me in the project. B, what kept me in the project, is when they initially got me on they showed me all the concepts for it, and it was just like really amazing stuff. I could see so many different routes that we could take, that it really seemed like it could be a special project.

Interviewer: Did you guys already know each other before the project, or was it this project that brought you together?

Gabriel: It’s funny. I’d seen a bunch of posties like looking for a 2D artist.

Interviewer: So, you posted posters around the campus?

Matt: Around the school., yeah, and Gabe applied. I’d never met the guy. We sat down. We talked. I was like, this guy’s cool. I invited him over to hang out with Steve and Dave who were also on the game just because you need to be friends. You need to be able to work well together or things go to hell. I always think games really reflect the team that made them, and Gabe totally fit in. We were, like, just cool. He’s our man.

Gabriel: I was really nervous for that initial meeting.

Matt: Really?

Gabriel: Yeah. The day before, I don’t know if you remember this. I came in with hand drawn animations, literally, flip animations. Do you remember this?

Matt: No. This is cool.

Gabriel: We should put it on the website because it’s kind of funny. It was a hand drawn animation of Gimbal kind of screaming. I was just really nervous.

Interviewer: So, what really brought you to this project is their clear direction or, at least, what they wanted to do. That’s what inspired you to join.

Gabriel: It seemed like they had a really clear idea of what they wanted, and it seemed like it was going to go places.

Interviewer: And so, what were some of the other challenges? How long did it take to find the fun because I think that’s definitely the hard part?

Gabriel: That’s the hard part. It’s not an exact science. When we got the color matching going, that was fun but it wasn’t enough, right? And then, Nick Guida, one of our programmers, actually added physics to the game, just grabby effects. So, when you jump off the line, you’re always automatically going to catch back to it, but when he put that in the whole game changed–whoa, this is way cooler than I thought, so physics always…

Matt: Actually, the physics was a complete accident for me. He was just messing around trying to make Gimbal be able to jump off the line and land on the line. And then, it just turned into this crazy way of playing where your direction was affected by the line, so each line had its own gravity. You could do all sorts of crazy things.

Interviewer: Did you guys meet once a week then to work on this, or how was the time line?

Gabriel: Right now, the whole artist audio team meets every Tuesday to talk about the work they’ve done, and then Thursdays we talk with the programmers and designers in general. And then, we schedule every once in a while these marathon sessions where we stay up all night and crank out content for the game.

Interviewer: So, you pretty much have two meetings a week.

Gabriel: Yes, two, maybe three.

Interviewer: Where is it at right now? So, you said it started in 2008, and now it’s been about a year and a half.

Matt: Right. The game is nearing completion because our end goal is to submit it to the Dream [?] Festival in 2010. We’ve got a lot of content ready. We’ve just got to smooth and polish it so it’s cool.

Interviewer: So, it’s aiming to be on Xbox Live or something.

Matt: Yeah, Xbox Live, indie Xbox, or cable. See where it goes.

Interviewer: Have you been doing play testing while you were developing this? What were some of the other things that you’ve had to change or adapt to as you’re developing?

Matt: Actually, I wish we had done more play testing, to be honest with you. It’s kind of hard to find places because everyone is so busy, but it is really important. When you show it to people, they always are a) brutally honest or would just point out something that just seemed so commonsensical, like oh why, didn’t I do that. So, we’re probably going to schedule some more play testing and kind of polish the game out.

Gabriel: It was much easier to play test when we were still in college because we could just hold sessions in one of the labs and get 10 or 15 people to play the game. We got a lot of great feedback doing that.

Interviewer: Now that you’re out of school, how are you balancing getting this done with all these other obligations?

Matt: It’s super tough because I have a job. I can only speak for myself. Gabe, you can jump in. But I have a job that’s 9 to 5. I’m also working on another project for DePaul that takes up a lot of my time and I also work on Gimbal. So, it’s a mad balancing act of trying to fit everything in. But I think that’s what it is about being an independent, right? You have no money. You’ve got to do it in your free time. It’s just for the love of making games.

Interviewer: What do you see then as the top learning lessons you’ve had as you’ve developed this game? You usually learn something from every project. So, what have you learned that you are going to take forward in future projects?

Gabriel: I think that the most important thing is to really care about the project. That’s number one.

Interviewer: That’s awesome. It’s the truth.

Gabriel: We’re being honest. Definitely that rings very true, so.

Interviewer: Moving forward, what other games are you looking into or thinking about developing? Are you just focused on this?

Matt: Like I said, I’m working on Devils Tuning Fork which was a game that got nominated for the Independent Games Festival. So, I’m also working on that project as well as Gimbal. So, those are my two focuses right now. Those are what I’m going for. What happens after that I don’t know. I can’t concentrate on more than four things.

Gabriel: Well, right now I’m unemployed, so mostly I’m looking for a job.

Interviewer: Go ahead.

Gabriel: Until Go Gimbal Go gets done, I just want to work on Go Gimbal Go.

Interviewer: Where do you see, I guess, the future of the games that you like going? Where do you see these types of games that you’re developing going in the future?

Gabriel: Independent games?

Interviewer: Yeah, independent games and even the specific type of game that you made.

Matt: Well, for independent games it seems like the system is now in place. There’s markets that you release your game on and make a profit. There’s places that actually market your game, get people’s attention like the festivals, indie blogs. Magazines are picking up on it, too. Sometimes, I see a culture in the last couple of years, and I run into things I’ve never seen before at all. It was like ’05, and they had been around for a while. That’s why I think things started to develop. So, I think it’s actually a legit part of the gaming experience now and it’s really cool and exciting.

Gabriel: I think independent games–it takes time. It takes effort to make a game, and it takes a lot to make a game really show itself. So, I think what’s great about independent games is that the only way to rise above all the AAA games that are out is to really do something a little bit different. You can’t make Call of Duty independently because you just don’t have the resources, but what you can do is you can make something really interesting that, maybe, was technically easy to make or comparatively easy to make but just like there’s that spark there that you don’t get in a AAA game.

Interviewer: Where can folks find out more information about your game? Is there a place to download stuff?

Matt: Well, we have a website, GimbalLockStudios.com.

Interviewer: Can you spell that?

Matt: G-I-M-B-A-L-L-O-C-K-S-T-U-D-I-O-S.com.

Interviewer: Great. Anything else?

Matt: Any other ways to get hold of the game?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Matt: You can check out a couple of our videos on YouTube. Just search Go Gimbal Go.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.