If any of you tuned into “30 Rock” two weeks ago (ep. title “The Fabian Strategy”), you may have concluded two ideas: 1) Tracy Morgan should always be on “Cash Cab” for the sake of genius comedy and 2) Jack Donaghy plays Snood. The indie-developed flash phenomenon has been mentioned several times out in the pop culture sphere. Probably at some point, you have engaged yourself with a game of Snood, as it was one of the most proliferative games on the web P.F. (which of course refers to that time which is “Pre-Farmville,” a brighter time of humanity, during which you couldn’t care less if you had a certain pig or not).
While playing in the earlier days of the game’s dominance on the web (around 1999-2000), you may have noticed the words “By Dave” in the lower right corner of the game screen. I surely can remember as a college sophomore thinking, “Well, Dave, your game is insanely addictive and has caused me to barely pass Russian History. Thanks, dude.” Flash forward about five years, and I meet a tall, Iowan man named David Dobson through performing at the Idiot Box Comedy Club in downtown Greensboro, NC. It doesn’t take long to piece the two “Daves” together and realize that I’m performing improv comedy with the man who invented Snood. Turns out he teaches geology at Guilford College, just down the road here in Greensboro. For the past five years, I have been performing on stage with Dave and playing several table-top RPGs with the games creator. Recently, he agreed to an interview for all you readers here at pixelatedgeek.com; read after the break for the proceedings!
The guy here on the right is probably recognizable to most of you out there. In Snood, you would fire this dude here and several other of his multi-colored, polyhedron buddies in a reverse-style Tetris game. As the ceiling lowers, your objective is to make all the Snoods disappear by lining up three or more of one kind. A simple concept that exploded overnight online at the end of the last decade. “The game has been great financially for me and my family,” Dave says, a devoted husband and proud father of two children. Dave told me that Snood has served as the most commercially successful game in a series of projects that have dominated most of his life. “It started early,” Dave remembers, “my love for creating games truly began by altering a few rules of favorite board games or adding different challenges to pre-existing games. Some of them would be ridiculously difficult and made the game nearly impossible, but others caught on among my family and friends.”
Dave’s love of creating challenging puzzles and games meshed well with the exponential advent of newer technology. By the time Dave attended Harvard University to work toward his A.B. in Geology, he had already translated and coded many of his ideas to computing technology available at the time, such as the Commodore PET. Snood found its way first and foremost among Macs, however, as that was the main computer on which Dave completed the coding. It quickly hit the web mainly among Mac users and soared to fame as one of the most downloadable games online. Though the internet was a great home for the game, Dave’s home automation services were not quite equipped to handle the popular rush. The game’s origin on the web occurred well before PayPal and other online billing services. So, people sent their ten dollar registration fees to Dave’s home address. “There were times when the mailbox would be stuffed with thirty or forty letters a day, just a simple envelope filled with a name, an address, and a ten dollar check. I would catalogue all of it on a spreadsheet and then send them a code back in the mail.”
Though a bit arduous in terms of the payment process, the game’s release was fruitful, bringing in a significant source of income as well as early web fame. But you wouldn’t know it, having met Dave. He is as modest as you might expect a mild-mannered geology professor to be; even though I know the secret of his success and his true Clark Kent-identity, I also know that the game served as no laurels upon which to rest. Dave has continued to program more and more games as well as branch into board and card games as well. A while back, I wrote an article about Diggity, a clever, turn-based card game centered on mining for gold. You can check out a lot of his work at Plankton Games, Dave’s hub for his creative gaming outlets. And, if you haven’t already played Snood, go download it, join 1999, and catch up with the rest of the world. It’s worth it.
For the interview, I asked Dave a few other questions that I thought you all might find interesting:
1) Did you have any other games pre-Snood that witnessed success online?
It was called Centaurian. I still have the (1990’s era) web page up here. It doesn’t run under OSX, although it will run under OS9 in emulation on some OSX Macs. You can check out the link here.
2) You mentioned that you first released Snood for Macs; what was the reasoning behind that?
We got the Mac because she’s [Dave’s wife] always used Macs and because my advisers had set up a mostly-Mac work environment for me in grad school, so it just made sense. I still had a PC – but the Mac was our main computer then, and it was the one I was mostly programming for.
3) Favorite games (for the fans!):
Arcade: Sooo tough! For an individual game, I’ve probably put the most quarters into Street Fighter II (I’m an E. Honda guy). I’ve played tons and tons of pinball, and I own an Attack from Mars. My favorite all time is probably Bosconian (the basis for Centaurian). But I played almost everything that came out in an arcade from 1978 to 1998 and enjoyed nearly all of them.
Console: Also tough. I go back to pre-Atari-2600, so there’s a wide variety to pick from. I played the heck out of Asteroids on my Atari. More recently, I’ve really enjoyed the Dark Alliance games, Prince of Persia – Sands of Time, Oblivion, Fallout 3. Guilty pleasure would be Dynasty Warriors – it’s just fun chopping down millions of enemy warriors.
Computer: Hands down it’s Nethack. I’ve played literally hundreds of hours of Nethack (ascended three times). For non-text-based non-super-dork ones, I really liked Civilization I, Wing Commander, Master of Magic, Warcraft II, Marathon, Bolo, Age of Empires II, WoW, Halflife, Counterstrike, Call of Duty, LOTRO, Company of Heroes, lots of FPS and RTS games.
Board: The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game (1978) – my brother and I have played hundreds of games of that, continuing to this day. I’ve also enjoyed Wiz War, Swashbuckler, Axis and Allies, Settlers of Catan, and lots and lots of the old Avalon Hill games.
Table-top: Me and D&D go way back – I rolled my first d20 in 1980 or so. I’ve also played Shadowrun, GURPS, Paranoia, and lots of others, including a bunch of homebrew systems. My best DM ever was a 65-year-old Korean War veteran, Standing Bear, who used to let me sit in on his role-playing sessions in the student union at Iowa State back in the 1980’s.
Once again, I have the pleasure of playing in Dave’s table-top RPG that he’s written. You may commence your jealousy now. And then go play Snood!