“Quiet reflection - I think this is one of the most underused techniques for developing anything,” Greg Lemon explained. “I think we need to get back to a period of quiet reflection and meditative thinking, literally just sitting there and think with no stimulation, a lot of times you can get great ideas from that.”
Greg Lemon is CEO of Greg Lemon Interactive. In his company, he balances a combination of paid and speculative work. The paid work is freelance, to pay the bills and keep the lights on. The speculative work is creating new indie games, which may or may not make any money, but is exiting all the same. Specifically, what he does is – everything! And everything includes art, sound, design, 3D modeling, texturing, rendering, rigging, animation, coding, motion graphics, engineering, and optimizing. He claims, “I really enjoy working on all aspects of game production, and I love it when I get to touch multiple parts that make up a whole.”
The ‘Featured’ Rush
Being featured on the front page of the Apple App Store for his first indie game, Puppy Park, brought him the proudest moment of his career. Unfortunately, the game was released in the first week of January, so profits were minimal, but the experience was still exciting.
Another exciting time was when he was promoted to the lead animator on Star Trek: Online. He had already worked as a senior animator on another MMO, but becoming a lead was a huge eye-opener for him. Suddenly, he wasn’t just animating, he was working with engineers, designing state machines and coming to grips with the huge responsibility of planning and scoping out all the work that needed to be done. It was his first glimpse of how all aspects of a game, including art, design, and code, work together to form a cohesive interactive experience.
The emerging trends that he sees most affecting his company are virtual reality, wearable tech, and 3D scanning devices. He plans to use these trends to continue innovating and making great games.
Allowing For True 3D
The trend that he feels will most affect the industry as a whole is holographic projection. This will allow for true 3D games in real space, not confined to the 2D plane of a television or monitor. Another innovation he believes will come is being able to live online without the need for a physical body. Even though it sounds sci-fi, he is certain it is being worked on. Ray Kurzweil, an engineering director at Google, has already talked about this being a reality within this century.
Lemon prefers to do his gaming on PS3. Currently, he is again playing through Final Fantasy Tactics, one of his favorite RPGs. He says FFT has such an engaging storyline, and the chessboard-like movement and the combat system take RPG battles to a whole new level. He is also playing Outland, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, and Unfinished Swan. Outland is one of his all-time favorite platform games, combining great controls and aesthetics with an Ikaruga-like color swapping system. He enjoys Pro Evolution Soccer, not just because of the World Cup, but because at its core, soccer is a physics-based puzzle game with an infinite variety of attack and defense strategies, and he feels no one does this better than Konami. He claims Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is an amazing fighting game; the parry system alone creates fantastic depth. Unfinished Swan is a First Person ‘Shooter’ with no guns or violence. He calls it an absolute masterpiece; he is greatly enjoying painting his way through the game.
Lemon also enjoys a variety of non-gaming hobbies: cooking, brewing beer, drawing and painting, swimming, playing ice hockey, playing the guitar, and reading. And, he says, “Hanging out with my wife and three-year-old daughter is pretty amazing, too.”
At Casual Connect USA, Lemon announced that he is working on some pretty cool projects. He is also available to help work on other developers’ projects. He says, “Let’s talk!”
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