I am glad that I can interviewed lead programmer of one of the most creative free game I ever play: The Blob (Read review). He is also the founder of new game studio: Ronimo Games and musician.

In this interview I ask him 8 questions about his live, degree in games and plans for future. Enjoy it and don’t forget to visit his portfolio.

1. Can you introduce yourself? Where you live, when and where you started creating games.

Hi, my name is Joost van Dongen, known online as “Oogst”. I am a 23 years old game developer living in Oss, a city in a huge country named The Netherlands. I started out creating 3D models when I was 13 years old and always wanted to take that into games, but lacked the technical knowledge. So I jumped into some mods, but none ever went anywhere. Then when I was 18, I started studying Computer Science and a year later, together with other students, I made my first games. That started out with a few old fashioned table-top games at art academy, but soon changed into full 3D computer games.

2. I read in your website about your study in Utrecht University where you study a games related postgraduate degree. How do you like your study and how do you evaluate this specialized degree?

The course is called “Game & Media Technology” and it is actually not a postgraduate degree, but for a normal Master’s degree. It focuses on computer games and media, so there are things like image analysis there, as well as a lot about games. The good thing is that it has a deep theoretical background, with a lot of math and proofs. The flipside of that is that there is a bit too little of actual programming. To become a good game programmer, a student really should just program a game and that is not part of the curriculum, although some students do it anyway. To me it is perfect, though, because I also just finished a Master in Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts. At art school I really focused on creating games, so together with the theory of Utrecht University, that is a nicely balanced whole. I evaluate both as very good, although someone who wants to go crazy on games should probably choose the Utrecht School of the Arts, because you do not actually get to work on games at Game & Media Technology during your studies.

3. Together with your “class-mates” you created your first well known game: De Blob. How did you come up with the idea of the game, how long did it take to create it?

De Blob was originally intended for a stand in an information centre. A mouse and keyboard are difficult there, because they are easily damaged, so we wanted to do something with a nice, big, heavy trackball. Taking the trackball as a starting point makes De Blob really obvious: the in-game character basically just performs the movement of the trackball. So that is where the basic gameplay came from. The idea of painting the city came from the assignment we had: Utrecht already had a boring 3D visualisation of the city and we were supposed to make something more living and breathing. We figured the player should do that himself, so the game starts out with a dull grey city and the player paints it and brings back life.

As for the development: it took four months to create the game with a team of 9 students. In that team, I was one the two programmers. Note that the four months includes 1.5 month of conceptualising and experimenting, so actual development took only 2.5 months.

4. After release it should be a very hectic period: your game was awarded by many prizes, you sold the concept to a well known company that creates a Wii and DS remake. How did you enjoy this period?

Well, it was not that hectic at all, really! The selling was handled by school, so all we did was wait for the status reports we got from school once in a while. Going to the Independent Games Festival with De Blob was totally awesome! We had a stand there and all these important people came by and talked to us. Usually networking is really hard, because you have to meet the right person and dare walk up to him and such, but now all the cool people came to us. Even Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of the original Tetris and a real celebrity in the games industry, came up to us to tell us how cool De Blob was. Now that is what I call high definition coolness!

5. Let’s come back a little bit to the remake of De Blob for DS and Wii. Are you contributing to this project, I mean consultation or any other kind of contribution?

Nope, nothing at all. Two THQ studios (Blue Tongue en Helixe) are developing the new version for the Wii and DS. We do watch the trailers that are on the internet, though, and conclude that the remake for the Wii is going to be awesome. We have not seen anything of the DS version yet.

6. After the success of mentioned game you co founded a new company, Ronimo Games, and are working on new unrevealed game. I see your first artwork and it seems to be graphically interesting again. Can you reveal any information? I mean name, genre or something else?

There is very little I can tell about it, but I can give the following inspiring description: it is a combination of action adventure, Pikmin and pinball. Have fun trying to figure out what kind of game that results in!

7. Do you have any plans for the future of Ronimo Games? Do you have any vision or which genres you want to produce?

We basically just want to have fun creating games. No limits, really, but we do have a common vision that creeps up in everything we do. That is that games should be easy to learn, but hard to master. So no 15 different buttons to learn before you can play, but more like three buttons and enough depth in the gameplay and decisions and choices the player has. Also, games can be fun for everyone. I have seen gamers, little kids and elderly people all enjoy De Blob. We recently tested our new game and saw the same effect: people of all ages were hard to beat away from our game. That is awesome!

8. Do you want to tell anything to my readers?

Expression through creation is one of the greatest pleasures there is, so stop gaming and start making games! (Or music, or poems, or paintings, or choreographies, or…)

Thanks for interview.
P.S.: don’t miss the “monkey game” on Ronino games website