Creator of World of Goo develops game in Denmark

One of the two creators of World of Goo, Ron Carmel, is visiting Denmark to attend this year's Game Development Camp in Aalborg. During the camp, 72 young aspiring high-school students will be developing small computer games in groups of six people. The catch? They have only little under a week from start till end. This year they've got Ron Carmel from 2D Boy to help out with the Camp in various ways, giving speeches and motivating the young game developers. N-club sat down with Ron Carmel today, for a little chat about the future of gaming.

During the camp, not only the young high-school students are creating games. Ron Carmel himself is busy, maybe creating the next big hit. While not working on a sequel to World of Goo, new and interesting ideas must be looked upon. Ron Carmel tells us that they do this by prototyping different ideas. Each month has a different theme, with this month’s theme being 'failure'. Failure is exactly what Ron Carmel is prototyping during Game Development Camp 2009, although he seems to hold back on what he is actually playing around with. He admits however, that almost all of the ideas they prototype, never turns out to anything useful, but he isn't reluctant to say that the next big hit could, in fact, be created during the camp.

"We got very burned out towards the end of World of Goo, and we needed to take some time off. Just last month or so we started prototyping again, so I'm going to prototype a game in seven days, and see if anything comes out of it, but my expectations are that, because 90 percent of everything is crap, that this one will be crap as well. We picked a theme for every month to develop a game around that theme, and the theme for this month is going to be 'failure'.", Ron Carmel.

When asked what would happen if this game turns out not to be crap, Ron smiled replied: "Then it will be the next big hit!"

When starting out in 2006, the two people behind 2D Boy, Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler was fresh out of Electronic Arts. They wanted to go their own way, trying out their own ideas, which Ron Carmel notes there isn't room to do in a big corporation. You suddenly become responsible for certain aspects of the game that you would normally never do, which can be overwhelming. Another aspect is economy; every penny you spend is from your own personal savings. At this point one would think that pirated games would seem an issue to small independent teams like 2D Boy, but Ron Carmel seems to have a fundamentally different view on pirated games. Ron Carmel states that pirated games can, in fact, be a good thing, since it generates buzz about your game which may, in return, lead to more people actually spending money on your finished product.

"I don't think piracy does anything to harm sales, but it certainly affects the amount of people who play your game through word of mouth. We've gotten e-mails too from people saying 'Hey, I pirated your game but I also bought it for my brother for christmas.'", Ron Carmel.

The future of gaming is an entirely different matter. It seems that there is only two things Ron Carmel is sure of: graphics are a dead end, and new input methods will be the future. When talking to the young students developing games during Game Development Camp 2009, the feeling is mixed. Some still think the race for better graphics is the way to go, where some people also share Ron Carmel's opinion on new input methods. What will come after the Wii, iPhone and other current generation technologies is hard to say however. No one we talked to, was keen to take a guess on the future of gaming. Only one thing's for sure: the young developers will be ready for the next big thing.

"I think graphics is a dead end. We're already so close to visual realism. Yes, it can always be more visually realistic, but how much does it contribute to the experience of the player?", Ron Carmel.

N-club will be featuring the complete interview with Ron Carmel later this week, as well as detailed reports on the games being developed by the young aspiring developers.

For more information on Game Development Camp 2009, please see their official website, UNF.dk

Artiklen er skrevet af Henrik Ossipoff Tirsdag d. 28. juli 2009 klokken 01:30

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