Jonathan Mak Plays it his Way

Jonathan Mak

In the mainstream videogame industry, chasing technology is just part of the job. Game consoles change every six years or so, and with every change comes quantum leaps forward in processing power and graphics capability. Every time a console changes — from the Xbox to the Xbox 360, from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3 — game developers have to relearn the tools of their trade.

Jonathan Mak thinks that this is craziness. Actually, a lot of game designers think this techno rat race is crazy, but what separates Mak is that he's actually chosen to opt out.

Mak, 25, is the new new thing in the world of videogames. His first published game, Everyday Shooter, from his one-man company, Queasy Games, launched through the Playstation 3's downloadable service last fall and has quickly become the talk of game fans everywhere.

Everyday Shooter

Everyday Shooter is a riff on the old-school shoot 'em ups from the heyday of the arcade. Think Space Invaders, Missile Command, or Defender but gone totally abstract and psychedelic with beautiful ricocheting explosions and perfectly tuned, surprisingly deep game-play. (Then imagine all this packed into a rock'n'roll concept album. The game's eight levels are each accompanied by a guitar score composed and recorded by Mak.)

"There will always be those game designers, in the mainstream, particularly, who are chasing the technology," Mak says from his tiny basement apartment in Toronto. "But that's because it's easy to quantify. 'Hey! It's high-definition, check it out. That'll be twenty bucks more!'"

Mak has a funny laugh, somewhere between a kid hyperventilating and cartoon character's "hehehe." He lets it out now. "I mean, I could care less. It's being imaginative that matters — and that's harder to quantify."

Mak is part of a burgeoning indie game movement that has embraced the concept of the "bedroom programmer" — a term used to refer to a time before games became such big business and when a designer could program, design, animate and make the music for a game all on his own (and, presumably, in his bedroom if he chose.) It's a retro concept, hip in its backwardness. And Mak is very interested in all things retro. You can see it not only in the graphics and colors of his game but also in the tools he used to build that game. His own computer — 2 gigahertz — isn't even powerful enough to run the newest PC games on the market, and he chooses to program in C++, which is the gaming-world version of showing up to an electronic music festival with an acoustic guitar strapped to your back.