And Further More, I’m Working on Halo 4

A while back Halo 4 was announced. As you might have suspected, I’ve been pretty busy working on the game. It turns out the campaign for a Halo game requires a pretty intense amount of effort. Who would have thought. I guess people are pretty into Halo or something.

I was actually the first designer hired at 343 Industries, but at the time the studio didn’t have a name. It was called something generic like “Halo Internal.” Woooo. In any event, I was the first designer to take the plunge (there were other designers that had come and gone, but they were pulled from other parts of Microsoft).

I didn’t start as a lead either. I was just coming off a crazy amount of Treyarch crunch (which if you ask around, is some of the most legendary crunch known to mankind) and was looking to get down on some level building, scripting and prototyping. You know, hitting reset on the ol’ work life balance button. However, after working at 343 for a bit, they asked me to be a lead, and being a lead on a Halo title is not something you tend to turn down. Don’t worry, I like to stay pretty hands-on with the tools in addition to having an outlook calendar full of meetings.

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Org Sharks, Clown Units and Halo Top 5

What are you lookin' at?

I don’t get to talk about work very much. Today, that all changes.

The Top 5 Brigade has been having some trouble with… leaks. After a lofty and well deserved promotion, my wise, handsome, and wonderfully smelling Section 10 officers sent me, Haxington, to root out a mole within the Top 5 unit. The Clown Unit.

So far, my attempts at information extraction have been in vain. Schismarch, whom I suspect to be the culprit has been extremely evasive to my lines of questioning. On the other hand, I think one EckoTech might simply be playing dumb. Perhaps they are in kahootz and they are both moles. The punishment I would no doubt have the pleasure of exacting on the two, if that were the case, would make my life complete. And I would probably get another promotion. Which I would deserve.

Wait. Maybe I’m the mole? No… no! I mustn’t think such foolish thoughts! Their mind games are beginning to weaken my mental fortitude!

I may need to resort to more… extreme measures in the oncoming months. I will find the mole and order within Section 10 will be restored. Come hell or high water. Now, where did I put that bottle of rubbing alcohol, the 9-iron, and “Ol’ Trusty?”

Oh. If you want to see video of my interactions with these two, check out the surveillance footage I’ve received clearance on posting below:

• Me getting promoted, one of the best days in my life.
• Interrogation time. So close… so close.

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.

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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?

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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.

Billy vs. Steve

This isn’t about Microsoft vs. Apple.

I just finished watching King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary about the crazy culture of professional arcade gaming. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading, because I’m going to spoil a lot. It’s a great documentary, so go check it out.

Anyway, the plot revolves around a guy name Billy Mitchel, who set a bunch of arcade records in the 80’s. 20 years later, a guy named Steve Weibe (pronounced Wee-bee) decides, “Hey I can beat Billy’s score in Donkey Kong,” buys a Donkey Kong cabinet and plays in his garage. Eventually he beats Billy’s score.

If only it were that easy. His 1,000,000+ score (something like 150k higher than Billy’s score) must be verified by the officials of “Twin Galaxies” who are the self appointed refs for classic arcade games. The rfefs end up coming to Steve’s house when only his wife is home and start ripping his cabinet apart to verify it. At this point, these guys sound officially insane.

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You Down With 343? Yeah You Know Me!

I’ve been quiet for a while. Too quiet. The truth is I was deathly scared I’d accidentally post something about the team I work with and get fired over it. Man, these Microsoft guys are serious business!

As it turns out, I can now say I work for 343 Industries. Haven’t heard of em’? Soon you will. I have the privilege of working with some of the top talent in the industry, across the board.

Microsoft recently announced 343i’s existence at ComicCon ’09. They also announced some of the stuff we’re working on, like an anime series and something called “Waypoint.” They revolve around a popular intellectual property you may have heard about.

So in short, I got to work on Call of Duty and Nazi Zombies and now I get to work within the Halo IP. Not many people get to say that in their lifetimes.

A Treatise on Achievements

I get a lot of flak for having a huge gamer score. Part of the problem people have is that I play games to “boost” the score; games I probably wouldn’t play otherwise. For example, I probably wouldn’t be playing Lost, the Cabela series, and a few other games if it weren’t purely for achievements. Also, those people never look at all the AAA games I’ve played, or point out that I’ve played the same or more (both in amount of games and achievements in any particular game) of any game they’ve touched. Haters!

However, here is where I take a stand. On the Internet! Every game I’ve played, even Cabelas, I’ve been able to take something away from. Before achievements, I’d stand around a Best Buy, look at the back of the box and laugh at the value games, then buy my copy of Halo, Gears, whatever.  I was a game snob. Now that I play these kinds of games, in addition to the AAA titles, I fully appreciate a good game when I see it. The difference is huge. I remember growing up, when I thought all games were good, mainly because I could only get one a year.

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Indie Games Galore!

Going to GDC always inspires me to go on an indie game bender. A few of us are sitting at this big award show hosted by the Independent Games Festival (IGF) waiting for the Game Developer’s Choice Awards and feeling guilty that we’ve played 0% of the games they’re calling out. Between the bunch of us we only heard of like three games they talked about…

So, within the next week I start getting games from Steam, downloading them for the PC or getting them for my iPhone. The one thing I found about a lot of these indie games I’m interested in is that most of the nominees (and some of the winners) haven’t even released their game yet. How does that work exactly? Does this happen in the movie industry too? “Well, no one has seen this movie yet, but here’s your award, I’m sure it’ll turn out great.”

Anyway, after getting back from San Francisco, I went on my yearly indie game binge. Here’s a quick run down of the games I played:

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“Achievement Guides”

Dear Internet,

Please stop publishing “Achievement Guides” that simply list the all the possible achievements found in a game. I can do that from within the game itself. A guide is supposed to tell me the best way to get certain achievements, not just tell me what they are.

Love,

Sir Haxington