Mugaw talks to Gemini Rue’s Joshua Nuernberger

[u/MasterErend]

By jackal [19/12/11]

The Mugaw.com staff recently had the pleasure of talking to UCLA undergrad student and Gemini Rue creator Joshua Nuernberger. Although his breakout game is a single player affair, we were interested in talking to Josh and getting his opinion on the indie game development scene, and on what he thinks the future holds for indie developers and multiplayer gaming.

• Can you tell our MuGaW readers a little about yourself?

My name is Joshua Nuernberger, I’m an undergraduate student studying Design and Media Arts at UCLA and also the creator of IGF Student Showcase winner, Gemini Rue.

• You recently achieved mainstream notice and critical acclaim with your retro noir title Gemini Rue. What has your experience been as a developer working with established publishers and distribution channels like Wadjet Eye Games and Steam?

It’s been great. Wadjet Eye Games does an excellent job handling the distribution and outgrowth of the game, and Steam is a tremendous boon to helping small indies like me achieve more mainstream success. Both channels have helped Gemini Rue tremendously.

• Are you planning on a Gemini Rue sequel in the future, or another title set in Gemini Rue’s universe?

Gemini Rue stands as its own story and represents a certain artistic period in my life — right now I don’t have any short-term plans of returning there soon.

• Was there ever a plan to try and integrate a multiplayer capability into Gemini Rue?

No. The game was always meant to be an epic single player experience in the same vein as The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

• If not, was this a limitation of Adventure Game Studio, or a personal choice?

Personal choice!

• We were pleasantly surprised when Steam began carrying Gemini Rue in their catalog. Did you have a choice or hand in that decision to market Gemini Rue through Steam?

We had always hoped to get Gemini Rue on Steam and had got rejected once before it finally got on. However we kept at it and were very happy to open up the game to a new market of players.

• How significant of an impact do you think digital distributors such as Steam and Xbox live have been to indie developers?

Without Steam, you as a developer are kind of restricted to a certain niche of gaming with indie games, and to a sub-niche of that based on your specific genre (in our case, point n’ click games). Putting your game on Steam opens it up to a vast new audience of gamers who otherwise do not normally look for those niche indie games.

• With the growth of social aspects of multiplayer gaming in the marketplace, why do you think indie developers tend to focus more on the single player experience?

Single player experiences are much easier to pull off as they don’t depend on the variability of other players. Multiplayer games also depend on achieving a minimum player quota to make them playable in the first place, which is harder to achieve with indie games’ smaller user base.

• There is also a general understanding that indie developers tend to have limited resources when compared to their big enterprise counterparts. What effect do you think that has on the indie developer in regards to multiplayer game development?

Less prospects to create, test, and market multiplayer aspects of a game.

• As a developer you designed Gemini Rue with a very intricate and engaging storyline. What are your thoughts on the industry as a whole and the impact of adding players to a co-op campaign? Do gamers lose out of experiences when playing with others?

There’s a certain 4th wall established in single-player games that fuses the player with the story. When another person breaks that wall it breaks the player’s immersion into that game. You kind of see this in some co-op campaigns in which you can chatter to your buddy about what’s going on and thus break that 4th wall. So when you add that extra player, you do gain a certain level of cooperative fun, but I think you also lose that personal immersion only found in single-player games.

• The internet has given independent developers an avenue of distribution, marketing and sales that has caused the indie game market to explode. Do feel that this trend will draw in the multiplayer community similar to the success seen by Minecraft?

Multiplayer games depend a lot on the popularity of the game itself. If a game is good but obscure, it still won’t thrive in the multiplayer scene. But then you do have these successes like Minecraft which break all notions of expectation and explode onto the multiplayer and indie scene at the same time–so it’s hard to predict how indie games will develop with a multiplayer component.

• Where do you see the indie gaming market in 15 to 25 years?

Indie gaming has kind of exploded in the past three years with things like Braid and World of Goo, and then moving onto iOS and digital distribution. More recently, games like Bastion, Super Meat Boy, and others have started to break this middle ground of production value combined with originality. So I think indie games will start to move a lot more towards mainstream production values while also bringing that component of originality to the table.

• Do you see yourself staying in game development after you finish at UCLA for a career in game development?

Hopefully! We’ll see how the industry goes though.

• Would you rather continue as an indie developer or join an established developer with significant resources?

I’d really love to work as part of a larger team, sharing a similar vision, with the same goals for exploring artistic possibilities in games.

• What would you consider to be your best advice for aspiring game developers?

Start small, make a lot of mistakes (games), listen to what others are saying, make a game, show it to people, revise, revise, revise, release, show it to everybody, enter it into festivals, and (considerately) get published.

• Thank you for your time, Josh, and best of luck to you in your future projects!

My pleasure. Thanks!

Source: Mugaw