Gaijin Games was founded in 2007 by industry veteran Alex Neuse, and has since gone on to develop the popularrhythm game series for WiiWare.is the fourth in the saga, and has been nominated for the Excellence In Visual Art award at this year's Independent Games Festival, thanks to its quirky retro stylings.In this "Road to the IGF" interview, Alex Neuse talks us through his positions prior to founding Gaijin Games, discusses elements that were removed frombefore release, and why the indie gaming scene is out of control.I started in QA at LucasArts back in 1997 and have bounced all over the industry since then. From LucasArts, I moved to Activision, and then to Santa Cruz Games before founding Gaijin Games with the hope of finding creative freedom.I've held jobs in QA, Production, Business, Management, and Design. By far my favorite is in Design, and it is the discipline that I call my home.We wanted to make a 2D side-scrolling platformer to represent CommanderVideo tackling the challenges of the real world and not taking no for an answer, but of course theseries is a rhythm music series, so we had to figure out how to turn a platformer into a music game.Once we knew the theme and the gameplay style, we dealt with the constraints of our genre and found gold.andare probably the most dissimilar to the rest of the series; and because they are much less abstract, making them stand out wasn't that difficult.I think it would have been harder ifhad been as "high-concept" as, and. The specificity of running and jumping automatically differentiated it.All of thegames are 3D, so we used the standard game industry fare. Maya, Photoshop, and then a bunch of Nintendo tools. For our design and coding process, we used Code Warrior and various Office applications and wikis for documentation.The Team Meat guys are really good friends of ours. We're in the same town, and we share a lot of the same views about what video games are and what they should be. They asked us if they could put CommanderVideo in, and we thought we'd return the flavor.Our two companies have wanted to do some sort of a collab for a while now, and hopefully this won't be the last time we get to work together.There were 3 of us working on the game full time with one audio engineer on it part time, and we spent about 4 months making it.There were. In, we cut a lot of features. There were certain gameplay features that turned out to be too complex, and there were some art desires that just didn't pan out. For instance, CommanderVideo used to be able to turn into the VOID fromto collect black beats. He also had a couple other abilities as well.Being able to do too much detracted from the experience, so we cut those features. Also, we wanted a much more isometric look to the game, but because of the musical elements, the 3Dness didn't suit the precision of the gameplay, so we went with a more traditional side-scrolling camera. There are several other things that are on the cutting room floor as well.I haven't played as many of them as I'd like, but yes, I have played some. Of those that I played, I particularly enjoyedandI think that the indie scene is out of control. There are SO many games being made, it's hard to keep track of them all. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as a gamer who loves to play a game through to completion, I find it hard to set aside the time to give these games the play time they deserve.In the future of the indie scene, I hope to see more games actually get finished and make it to market. I'm sick of playing half-done games that are riddled with bugs. Like all consumers, I like products that work and that are complete experiences.That's what we try to deliver at Gaijin Games, and I've found that my favorite indie games are the ones that are complete games that have made it to market.