What is it

Gebauz is a group of hobbyist game developers who strive to create games not bound by commercial constraints regarding design and content, yet coming as close as possible to the quality (in terms of software engineering, artistic and gameplay content) of commercial games. We create games creating fully original content down to models, textures, sounds and music, trying to both achieve professional quality as well as using this hobby as a source for valuable experience.

Why is it

There are many hobbyist game developers out there, some producing really interesting and creative results, some achieving very high quality on the content side, and some excelling in the technology (software/engines) created. We are just another group trying to be part of all these three categories.

Hobbyist games might be looked down upon, or frowned on by some people who consider commercial games - or even only "Triple-A" games - the only games that are actually playable. Yet, not that few commercial titles actually started out as hobby projects, or made by amateurs who were subsequently turned into "professionals" by being recruited (Katamari Damacy is a shining example, for instance). It is also true that there are really bad commercial games out there too - so commercial or not cannot be a criterium for the quality of a game - neither software quality, gamedesign quality, content quality and general "polishedness".

When looking at one of the most prominent countries of game development, Japan, one can see that a very flourishing and active hobbyist game developer community exists, with some hobbyist game developers that even have a considerable fanbase, as well as commercial success, for instance at special conventions for amateur games - the so-called "doujinshi games" which also might have a somewhat dubious reputation due to some instances of it having somewhat dubious content. Yet, many of these doujinshi games are quite polished in a way or another.

How did it come to be

Gebauz was founded under the name "EMC" in 1995 by Alexander Kusternig ("Kustl") in the process of creating his first game "Fort Matzebär". The name was used in around hundred subsequent games, mostly unfinished, but of very high quality, created by Alex and his brother Michael. Kustl especially created a few "clones" of classic games (Castlevania, Metroid, etc.) which perfectly mimicked the originals down to awkward control oddities (like Richter Belmont's rather limited jump control from Castlevania/Dracula X: Rondo of Blood).

In 2002 Chris Chiu and Michael Kusternig took the name to the public by creating a game named "Metal Hazard" for a computer graphics lab at university, and winning the best game award of the lab that year. The year after, 2003, Georg Semanek, Matthias Proksch, and Alexander Kusternig created the game "Aloha" for that same lab, and won the best game award as well.

During a rather confusing Skype session in 2006, the name "Gebauz" was coined by a misspelling of another word. Because "Gebauz" was a rather cool sounding word, it was decided that EMCGames shall forthmore be known as Gebauz - in order to abandon the confusion with the many companies called "EMC" out there.

2006 was a particularly successful year for Gebauz. We won the Eurographics 2006 Graphics meets Games competition with our arthouse game "pingK", which also was featured in the art exhibition pong.mythos by the Computer Games Museum Berlin. For that art exhibition, pingK was also shown at the GC Art exhibition hall at the Games Convention in Leipzig.

So where are we going from here on? We don't know, but we definitely will continue to show that it is possible to create high quality games and interactive media with artistic and deep value in a hobbyist environment, without the constraints and chains of commercialism and also without the high-and-mighty attitude that some people of media arts possess resulting in work that neglects the main point of a game: fun.