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:

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GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Fin.

Wake up. Fully clothed. No click-clack today. Roommate is gone.

Overall a more pleasant morning than the day before. We’re supposed to meet Tom’s dad in a bit, but first I gotta check out of the hotel. Tom, his wife and sister start shuffling out of their rooms, but man, are they destroyed. Especially Tom. The women-folk for some reason are handling it like champs. Tom’s sister in particular seems unaffected by her hangover within a half hour of waking up. Her liver is like 10 years younger than ours and hasn’t been battered by multiple launch parties, E3s, GDCs, milestone celebrations and more. Four Barrel coffee takes care of Tom’s wife.

Tom. Well, he doesn’t recover for the rest of the day.

In the car, on the way to the hotel. I’m sitting shotgun and cursing at San Fran drivers and apologizing for my crassness. LA did it to me, and its one bad habit I picked up from living there for five years.

“GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MOTHER F**********!”

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Social Games though the Lens of Farmville

Don’t worry, I’ll finish my GDC stories soon enough.

But for now, 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, whats not to like?

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GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Part 4.

CLACK. CLACK. CLACK. CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

The near perfect cadence of a woman’s heels down a wood floor of a long hallway.

Of course, I start waking up. It’s hard not to notice the cacophony. I start to wonder, this it Tom’s sister? Or maybe her roommate? But her roommate doesn’t know a stranger is sleeping on her couch. I decide to keep very still and not startle her.

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GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Part 3.

Friday was a blur.

I wake up in no condition to walk amongst the general public. Talk at 9? Skippable. What is important today is talking to people about game design. I decide to sleep in as much as I can.

I get up around 10, hit the shower and head to the Moscone center for some food. Being a creature of habit, I end up at the exact same place as the day before (some small food vendor within the conference center). Looking at and listening to people is tough at this point. The world around me is happening but I have no influence over it. I’m buying a sandwich and tea, fishing for my wallet all without thinking. Just going through the motions, everything is fuzzy and fast.

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GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Part 2.

Like I said, the next day was bad.

Waking up happens like a shot at 8:30am, because God forbid I miss the latest and greatest on the four most important emotions of social gaming at 9am. My hotel roomie is already gone because he’s an early bird and didn’t stay out drinking all night. In fact, he doesn’t drink at all. Ever so wise. I hop in the shower without remembering how I got in there in the first place when it hits me: I’m probably still drunk.

No worries, I planned well the day before, so my stuff is already in order. I get changed, get my phone, my laptop, wallet, badge, triple check that I have my room key and head directly to the talk from my hotel. Luckily the Marriott is a block and a half away so, it only takes five minutes to walk there.

The sun hits me like a ton of bricks. My entire body is barely functional from last nights intake of beer. I pass by an outdoor coffee and tea stand and I strongly consider getting some Earl Gray, as is the usual morning tradition for yours truly. However, the thought of eating or drinking anything makes me physically ill so I pass by begrudgingly. I know I need it but my body just won’t accept any new guests at the moment. No vacancy.

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GDC2010: A Wonderful Blur, Part 1.

The Game Developer Conference is like college. If you’re not going to awesome parties or meeting great people, you’re learning something that should stay with you the rest of your life.

GDC is hard to hate. I make a point to go every year. I love catching up with my buddies, seeing how things are going in the rest of the industry and so on.

I get in early the day before so I can take in the day and not feel rushed. Any GDC veteran will tell you, there’s a lot that will be happening in your life in a short amount a time, so it’s best to take it easy while you can. People start rolling in3-5pm the day before GDC, after a trip on Virgin and a pleasant conversation with a cabbie who is having problems with the police. The best thing to do upon arrival is chill out for a sec, get your stuff in order at the hotel then go grab some cheap beers. My new favorite spot this year was The Chieftain, a little Irish pub with a surfboard shaped counter, perfect for a pitcher of some local San Fransisco beer and catching up on the good old days. Also, they put eggs on the burger so you know it’s good.

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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.

Pennies for Points

This year, on New Years day, I made the resolution to donate a penny for every point I earned getting achievements on Xbox Live. I really want to do some charity work, but I’m busy with games day and night. I’m in a fairly time demanding line of work, believe it or not. However, I feel pretty lucky, so why not do something nice for everyone while doing something I love?

So, Pennies for Points. Eventually I’ll get a more proper site up and running so people can track my effort a little better. Maybe I can get a few other people to join in. For now, you can check the side of my blog and watch the number get bigger.

I started at a gamer score of 101,467. Now I’m at 106,952. The months not over but the total gamer score increase since Jan 1st is 5,485. That means $54.85 in total donations thus far. Did I mention I’ll donate through Microsoft near the end of the year so they match my donation? One more cool thing about working for MS is that they’re pretty good about charity donations and giving back to the community.

Where does all this go? Most likely Child’s Play since it’s one of the best charities for gamers I could find.

So that’s it! I set up a new years goal and it’ll be fun to stick to it.

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.