Good Game Get! Interview

… in which we ask a game developer three specific questions based off our site name!

GGG! Interview #001 Justin Smith

I was in the hospital last Winter because I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and while it was better than dying - it still kind of blew. Luckily my folks grabbed me an iPod touch and I began buying and purchasing a ton of iPod apps and games.

One of the games made me seem a little insane to my hospital roommate.

The game was Justin Smith’s Enviro-Bear 2010. I chuckled madly as I played the absurd game of a bear preparing to hibernate by driving a car around the woods.

It’s rad, and I appreciate Justin’s wonderfully original and fun game design.

- Kyle





One really cool algorithm deep in the guts of the game that makes the coder giddy with delight over his own cleverness.

Also:

Lots of special case code.

A harmonious color palette.

Visible pixels.

Numbers popping up everywhere.

Variable-ratio operant conditioning.

Unusual characters with terse dialog.

Non-realism.

Slapstick.

Really tight collision detection.

The unexpected.

This list was gathered from my collection of favorite games. What makes a game good is really a question for philosophers and poets. I’m a coder at heart.



Making games is all I know how to do. I’m a one trick pony. I’m a little terrified that if I lose my marbles, or there’s a massive soviet invasion, I’ll be relegated to manual labor since there will be no use for computer games. Oh and also I love making games. Love in a way that I don’t love working at Safeway.





A laugh. One solitary chuckle is all I hope for. Maybe with a shade of bewilderment. Or a sigh of longing as the player gazes out their window on a rainy day, dreaming of simpler times. 100 hours of development time is a lot of work for one joke, but I don’t complain.