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.

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.

> – – – Read the rest – –

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.

E3 ’09 Roundup

Ahhh… E3 is finally over. It was a huge E3 this year which was great. I missed the classic pig party feel of E3 and I’m glad it was back. Anyway, here’s how my week went.

I flew in on Virgin since it was the cheapest fare a week before the beginning of E3. Now I’m officially a Virgin convert. It felt like flying on a limo and the price was right. Very choice. I caught “Slumdog Millionaire” on the way down from Seattle, which was a bomb-ass movie.

I met up with my buddy who lives in downtown LA. He does contract art from home in his sweet loft apartment. Ahhh, the good life. It’s also great because he lives within walking distance to the convention center, near great places to eat, and near lots cool hangouts. If you’re hungry, I highly recommend Bottega Louise (7th and Grand). It feels like you’re walking into an elegant European restaurant. The place has amazing food and it isn’t pricey.

I got my sweet all access pass for the Microsoft media briefing on Sunday then headed over to the Kotaku Party at the Golden Gopher with some Activision friends. We hung out there for a few hours, even after the free drinks dried up. I got a chance to meet some of the Kotaku guys as well. Mike Fahey was sitting in the back of the bar like the Godfather of the joint. He was super cool and always gave fair reporting on Treyarch, which I appreciate a lot. Good times were had by all, even if I was getting drilled about what I was working on and what Microsoft was up to. No about of alcohol will make me spill the beans though, I’m a human lock box! Although they knew about “Reach” the day before the briefing… hmm.

> – – – Read the rest – –

Seven Steps to Boost Your Gamerscore

Last time I wrote about why I like getting achievements. This time, I want to give some insight on how I go about getting those ‘cheeves. A few people I know keep prodding me to write about this, so here we go!

1. Play games you enjoy – This probably sounds dumb or obvious, but you shouldn’t play games you don’t really like. You’ll notice I have some games like Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2009 (that’s everyone’s favorite to pick on so I point it out in particular) that I’ve 1000pted. Guess what? I actually like playing those games… rag-dolling animals is fun for me and I don’t get to do that in any other game. By contrast, I wasn’t feeling the recent Harry Potter game (too long and involved), Deadliest Catch (too repetitive), or Dead Rising (terrible save system) so I stopped playing them. I will admit I will put up with a mediocre game just to get achievements though, since playing a bad game is more fun for me than watching a decent TV show. I think it’s really up to the individual player, but as long as there is enough “fun” to keep me interested I’ll stick with the game.

2. Find the fast points – This goes against #1 in someways. You’ll see I’ve 1000pted a hockey game which honestly I didn’t think was that fun (I’m not a big fan of hockey in general, nothing against the game itself). However, early sports games for the 360 are some of the easiest to get achievement points in. Avatar: The Last Air Bender is everyone favorite example of quick points. You can get all 1000 points in under three minutes. For someone who is into getting achievements, getting fast points is fun by itself. If I can play one game of NHL 07 and get 1000 points, it’s pretty freaking fun to see that you’ve unlocked 26 achievements for 1000 points in a match or two. Getting back to Harry Potter; I wasn’t having a ton of fun playing the game and it was long, so the investment in time for points wasn’t worth it.

> – – – Read the rest – –

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.

> – – – Read the rest – –

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:

> – – – Read the rest – –