Games for prophet
Ventura's resident game designer walks a digital path to enlightenment
By Chris O'Neal 07/02/2009
Ventura County isn't exactly recognized as being a video game mecca. Developers tend to gravitate toward Japan, San Francisco or a dank cave. But that's yesterday's thinking. Today's developers aren't interested in being confined to a cubicle or tied to a dinghy. Steve DeBaun, who believes that gaming shouldn't be confined, period, shares his love for gaming with the county he grew up in.
DeBaun sat with me outside of Bernadette's on Main and waxed philosophical on gaming. As a teen at Camarillo High, DeBaun was an “alpha geek” at a time when playing Nintendo was akin to wearing thick punch-me glasses. “Being a geek at that time was not that fun at all,” DeBaun recalled. “Did you know in Korea, if you're the best guy playing video games you've got girls hanging off of either arm. Why!? Wrong country, wrong decade!” But he didn't let his unpopularity dissuade him from pursuing a career in the far more popular field of applications development.
After dropping out of Claremont McKenna, DeBaun took a job working on a banking system for Kazakhstan, a far cry from his original plan to major in political science. DeBaun, also known as “Reverend DeBaun-o” — yes, he is an ordained, devout atheist, and he has the Internet-purchased license and two married couples under his belt to prove it — used that experience to start a career in Web applications. After 15 years, however, he decided it wasn’t enough for a man whose childhood ambition was “to be a wizard”; sitting in a cubicle lacked the magic-missile-flinging fun he had dreamed of.
“The job ended and my lease was coming up. So the question was: do I want to get another job and renew my lease, or not, and do something else?” DeBaun said. “I decided to ‘not’ and do something else.” It turns out that something else meant to create Smashball, a comically ultraviolent arena sports game in which exploding your opponents is as important as scoring points, and infamous players have terrifying names like Boom3. Now DeBaun works wherever he chooses to spawn.
“My offices are Bernadette's on Main, Jimmy's Slice and Java and Juice on Chestnut. After 15 years of fluorescent-lighted, climate-controlled shit-holes, it's nice to be able to sit out here in the sunshine and say, ‘You know what? Wouldn't it be nice if when the guy exploded, his eyes went one way and his arms went the other?’ It's much more conducive to that,” DeBaun said, noting that he “spent launch day at the back of Sans Souci.”
DeBaun is no social barnacle; in fact, he's one of those responsible for downtown’s thriving social scene, popularizing Bernadette's pub quiz and “Rockbandeoke.” He considers the many customers and locals his “support group,” who may not know him by anything other than Reverend DeBaun-o. Making Smashball is a way for DeBaun to turn his passion for video games into a public spectacle, where being a spectator is just as fun as playing.
A few years ago, DeBaun sat with his friend and co-developer Mike Bott, watching ESPN's coverage of the rock-paper-scissors championship. “We're both looking at that and going, ‘Are you saying we can’t make something more fun to watch than rock/paper/scissors?’ ” Much like DeBaun's priority of keeping a strong network of friends, his development philosophy is focused on bringing a community of like-minded individuals together in gory harmony.
Soon, DeBaun and Bott will hold private investor meetings in order to raise money to pay off the licensing fee for Smashball.
“I think games are a form of art,” says DeBaun. “There are more stories that you can get out of a game than any book. One thing I want to get across is that we're not making a video game; we are making the NFL of video games.”
Smashball is a free-to-play game available at store.steampowered.com. Owning The Orange Box, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead or any other Valve-developed product for the PC is required to play.
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