Toronto's Jonathan Mak single-handedly created the game Everyday Shooter, which made its debut on the PlayStation Network on Oct. 11.

Now that the video-game industry has reached a point where hundred-person teams with million-dollar budgets crank out productions that rival Hollywood epics in scope and polish, it's tempting to look back at the stereotypical "early days" of one guy cranking out games from his basement as an embarrassing throwback that illustrates how far things have come. These kinds of games have never really gone away, though - they just went underground.

And there, in darkened back alleys where programmers would meet to swap games on floppy disks, a scene flourished that was about artistic fearlessness and an indie do-it-yourself attitude.

Perhaps no one embodies this spirit more than Jonathan Mak, the Toronto native who single-handedly created Everyday Shooter, which made its debut on the PlayStation Network on Oct. 11.

Although Everyday Shooter was conceived of and built by one person, you'd never guess it. The game is a gorgeous and trippy experience inspired by the idea of what it would be like to interact with a musical soundtrack while manipulating geometric shapes. Players pilot a vessel through colourful backdrops, shooting objects to trigger musical cues that harmonize with the all-guitar soundtrack.

The soft-spoken Mak describes his creation as an "abstract shooter." It was a two-year labour of love, crafted in Mak's spare time as he worked a day job to pay rent. Mak is a triple threat when it comes to game design, armed with a familiarity with computers gained through working in his father's computer shop as a lad, an enthusiasm for gaming honed by watching two older brothers play, and considerable musical talent, which he enjoys expressing through the guitar.

Under the banner of Queasy Games, Mak designed about 10 games before Everyday Shooter, including the real-time strategy Gate 88 and Bubble Thing, which was designed for the Toronto Game Jam. Mak dismisses these early efforts as "stinky."

Going with the award flow

A screenshot from Everyday Shooter, a game inspired by the idea of what it would be like to interact with a musical soundtrack while manipulating geometric shapes. Players pilot a vessel through colourful backdrops, shooting objects to trigger musical cues that harmonize with the all-guitar soundtrack.

Mak, who often speaks in musical terms when describing his design and thought processes, says a change in attitude was what prompted the great leap forward in Everyday Shooter. "I don't know if you're ever heard someone say, 'Hey I got this idea for a game,' but I was doing that a lot. With this one, it was more like how you would write a song," he says. "You wouldn't go up to someone and say, 'I got this idea for a song, and it's going to have this and that.' You'd just start working on it and it comes out. And that's how this game came about - just working on it, and ideas from out of nowhere would just come out and into the game.

"Sometimes the level starts off as a gameplay idea, sometimes it starts off as just this visual thing I'm working on; sometimes it starts off as a song," Mak adds. "Usually one of those things is a point of departure. I get the level somewhat playable and then I add more of the visual stuff. Sometimes I didn't feel like doing gameplay stuff, so I would just do visual stuff like making fancy explosions."

Everyday Shooter won three awards at the 2007 Independent Games Festival and caught the eye of Sony, which made a deal with Mak to release the game on the PlayStation 3's downloadable games portal, PlayStation Network. Mak says he's grateful that Sony allowed him to retain creative control; in fact, he says the company really had little input into the game beyond providing a distribution channel.

In February, Sony did a similar thing by releasing flOw from independent developer thatgamecompany, and it went on to become the top first-party download on the Network.

"Clearly the response is there from people who are downloading the games; they are enjoying them, so as long as they continue to enjoy them, we'll continue to [publish them]," says Kyle Moffatt, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment Canada.

Net key in getting worldwide exposure

The internet and the increasing proliferation of broadband connections have made it much easier for independent designers to get their games more widely distributed. Mak is also fortunate in that he has the programming chops necessary to bring his ideas to life. He feels that a lack of technical expertise is one biggest barrier facing "do-it-yourself" game designers. "There's a lot of music being made now by people who traditionally couldn't ever make music without the aid of a computer. There's less of that in games," he notes. "I eagerly await the day when there's an instrument where you can make games not knowing that much about programming."

And if someone offered him his own studio with a team at his disposal?

"I wouldn't want it," he says. "I still like the idea of doing everything on my own and then showing the final product. I wouldn't want to do something where I got paid beforehand to do a game, because that's when you get all those [extra] expectations. Everyday Shooter would be totally different if someone funded it from the start."

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