The Fat Cat Ate A Rat

Warm and content, slept the fat tabby cat.
On a cold winter’s night, he spotted a big gray rat.

The rat was too slow and didn’t see it coming.
The cat leapt from his bed and gave the creature a numbing.

The rat ceased to exist but the large cat was not finished.
The fat flabby tabby was soon to be nourished.

Half of the rodent swiftly disappeared.
It was then my wife saw what she had feared.

“GET AWAY FROM THE DOOR!” she shrieked at high pitch.
I was enthralled and so moved barely an inch.

> – – – Read the rest – –

Tops for 2010

Here are the top queries, referrals and articles that brought people to my world in the past year. WassUp rules.

…

“ray gun nazi zombies”

Makes sense. I created the damn thing. Well, Max made the ray gun.

“jesse snyder”

I hear that guy sucks. I read it on the Internet like ten words ago so it must be true.

“nazi zombies ray gun”

Huh. That’s a lot like the first one, but I’ll take it.

> – – – Read the rest – –

Infinite Spawners

Hey! Non-fiction stuff for a second!

I recently finished Call of Duty: Black Ops on Veteran difficulty. Yep, the game I left during pre-production.

It’s interesting leaving a game two years ago and finally getting to play it. Overall I thought the game was a good experience. However, one thing that stood out was the use of infinite spawners in various places throughout the game.

It made me think back on a time I was being interviewed for a design position. Someone asked me what I thought of infinite spawners. I told them I didn’t care for them in general but that they can be used in the right context.

They thought I was wrong. I’m glad I didn’t end up working for them.

> – – – Read the rest – –

An Argument for Self-Esteem and Education

“Thus there are are five factors from which victory can be known:

“One who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot fight, will be victorious.

“One who recognizes how to employ large and small numbers will be victorious.

“One whose upper and lower ranks have the same desires will be victorious.

“One who, fully prepared, awaits the unprepared will be victorious.

“One whose general is capable and not interfered with by the ruler will be victorious.

“These five are the Way (Tao) to know victory.

> – – – Read the rest – –

Sometimes, Failure Is an Option

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

– Thomas Edison

Edison would have been a great game designer. He understood the importance of iteration, trying new things, observing the results and adjusting his techniques. One behavior I often see in our industry is little to no acceptance of failure. I’m not talking about a game sucking and being considered a failure, but instead of internal failures on game features, tech, levels, designs, and so on.

Here’s a few examples of failure I’ve seen first hand or have heard about across the industry and how they should have been handled:

> – – – Read the rest – –

Social Games though the Lens of Farmville

I want to talk about “Social Gaming.” I find the phenomenon fascinating, especially since GDC was so heavily focused on the topic. Half the talks I went to involved social gaming talks and of course how much money they are making. And how large their audiences are. And how much bigger they will be in the future.

Hard to ignore. So, I started playing Farmville. I’ve been playing it for over a month now. I had stopped playing Mafia Wars a while back after getting my mother of all people hooked on it, so I figured it’d basically be the same deal.

Much to my surprise, it wasn’t. Farmville feels more SimCity than flash game. Cute graphics, sense of progression and economy, what’s not to like?

> – – – Read the rest – –

Twitter

Oh, I’m trying the twitter thing now. You can find me at twitter.com/thejessesnyder. I’m sure I’ll be posting there a lot more than here. The blog will be the economy size version while twitter will be more the like mini-fun size.