TORONTO - Just 25, Jonathan Mak is already a one-man video game success story.
His game "Everyday Shooter" was put up on the PlayStation Store this month, meaning it is available for download to PlayStation 3 owners for just $9.99. Not bad for a game he created by himself in his mother's home and his own apartment. Now the soft-spoken Torontonian finds himself meeting the media to promote "Everyday Shooter."
"What matters to me most is making the game," he explained in an interview at Sony's office in north Toronto. "Before all this happened, already I was pretty excited that I had made something like this."
"The media and the press stuff is nice, but I don't think I need too much of it."
Imagine a modern-day "Asteroids" with music and an eye-catching backdrop. "Everyday Shooter" is a colourful one-person shooting game packed with sharp visuals and pleasant guitar riffs.
"'Everyday Shooter' is like a music album," Mak explains. "Except instead of being a collection of songs, it's a collection of shoot-'em-ups."
Each of the eight levels is different in terms of look and sound, with Mak's guitar work interwoven with the game play.
"The music is more like a form of feedback," Mak explained. "It's not like 'Guitar Hero."'
"It's a one-player game but sometimes I think of it as a two-player game where the second player can just watch," he added. "The idea was to make the visuals and sound good enough for that."
Mak has been creating games for 10 years. He's good with computers, thanks to his father.
"My dad owned a computer shop," Mak said. "He was too lazy to hire a technician so he just taught me to do it. That's how I sort of learned about computers."
He has five or six freeware games already under his belt - you can check out his work at his website, www.queasygames.com. But he knew he hadn't struck paydirt yet.
"Sure I can make a video game, but I hadn't really made one that I enjoyed playing," he thought to himself.
Mak started on his breakthrough game in October 2005. It came out of another project that he had begun work on in the spring.
"Everyday Shooter" turned heads earlier this year when it won three awards at the Independent Gaming Festival at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Sony took note, called his agent and struck a deal. Mak was worried the industry giant might try to change his game for PlayStation but was pleasantly surprised by Sony's attitude.
"I was ready to release it as freeware. If they messed with the game in any way, that's a deal-breaker. They were like 'With this project, you call the shots. Just make the game and we'll release it.' "
Clearly a perfectionist, Mak thinks about tweaks every time he plays the game. "It's gotten a little too obsessive, I think."
He had a packed schedule making the game, doing contract game design work three or four days a week to pay the bills and working on his own title the rest of the time.
He's now looking forward to kicking back for a while - and a chance to try playing someone else's games.
While working on his own projects, Mak doesn't like to talk about them or play other games.
"I guess I'm really gullible," he said. "It's too easy for too many ideas to get into my head and I buy into those ideas. And so the game becomes this sort of, I don't know, this bowl of crap - all this stuff that's sort of incompatible. So I've sort of been on this no-game diet."
"Once I get a (real) TV, the game-playing will begin."
Mak, who has a small TV, also has yet to taste the fruits of his success. He doesn't even own a car.
"I don't like cars. The racing games are fun but I get car sick a lot."
