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More than 3,5  years ago, Susan Marshall and I sat down with famous game designer and pop artist Masaya Matsuura in a restaurant in San Jose during the Game Developers Conference. We talked to him about a project called OneBigGame which we were setting up and we were wondering if he was interested in joining and developing a game for us pro bono. Matsuura-san said yes, we started a conversation that same year on what the game could be and things got underway.

Roundabout the same time, I met up with Remco de Rooij and Timen Rienstra from Triangle Studios, during a talk I gave on OneBigGame at their school in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. They had just left school and set up their own game development company and approached me after my talk to offer their services. They were working on DS games and also had their own Wii game in development. They mentioned some iOS development as well, gave me their cards and asked me to contact them should I ever need their help.

Later that year, when I spoke to Matsuura-san about his OneBigGame project, he mentioned the idea of re-inventing the music rhythm genre he invented with Parappa. His idea was to create a new music game on iPhone and he wanted to show it to me at GDC 2008. He also mentioned he needed help from a developer skilled in iPhone development in order to realize the game. Cue Triangle Studios, whom I asked to join me for the meeting in San Francisco after having introduced them to each other during TGS the year before.

In the corners of the Moscone building, our meeting began and Matsuura-san showed us a prototype of a game he called WINtA. As with most innovations, the first time you see it, you don’t fully understand it yet, precisely because it’s new and diffferent. Slowly my brain adapted tot the mechanics and I understood the fundamental principles of the game. Simple, elegant and much more intuitive a music rhythm game than any other I played so far. I was excited,  but also realized there was so much to do still.

And so Triangle Studios, NanaOn-Sha and OneBigGAme embarked upon a creative journey, every minute of which I have fully enjoyed. During this journey, Matsuura-san’s basic prototype evolved into a working demo. This process was truly collaborative and poly-cultural as Triangle kept adding ingredients to Matsuura-san’s basic recipe, which Matsuura-san kept on improving after being pleasantly surprised by the change in taste. The creative collaboration worked really well and ultimately led to a game that is not only a great game in its own right, but could be a new way for people to experience their music (through bizarre interactive videoclips) as well as for artists and vj artists to showcase their work. And because the basic version is free, hundreds of thousands of people will be able to get a taste of the project any day now.

And so the journey has come to an end. A journey which I will never forget. Matsuura-san’s amazingly creative vision, Triangle rising to the occasion and growing as a professional developer, great partners like Nimrod, ngmoco and Sculpin helping out with music licensing, distribution/publishing and QA respectively to make sure the game would be of the highest quality and all this in OUR SPARE TIME. That this game has been created in downtime, spare time, weekends and fully pro bono during its development is simply amazing. And for this, Masaya, Dewi, Remco, Timen, Eric, Tim, Stefan, Willem, I want to thank you. It’s been a pleasure working with you all and I hope the game is as successful as our collaboration.

That we may generate great funds for our charity project, but also that many people around the world may simply enjoy a great gem of a game that will hopefully reinvigorate one of my favorite genres: music games.

Martin de Ronde – director, OneBigGame