Bradley Snyder ’11 is working at the cutting-edge of sound technology through his work as a lead audio engineer. His varied career started through a chance meeting that ended up with him enrolling as a music recording technology (MRT, now audio & music production) major at The Valley. Today, he leads an audio department and is responsible for the work on numerous well-known and award-nominated video games.

“I was in high school planning on a career in animation, focused on 2d Art, while also picking up my first guitar,” said Snyder. “I attended a Christian conference in the Midwest where I saw this massive praise concert and introduced myself to one of the band’s guitarists. He turned out to be Chris Keeney ’04, a fellow Lancaster resident who was attending LVC for MRT. He became my guitar teacher and encouraged me to enroll in the College’s program. The rest is history. Somehow way out in the Midwest I bumped into the catalyst for my current career path and trajectory.”

Coincidentally, a classmate and future department adjunct professor, Dave Nazario ’09, provided the next rung on Snyder’s ladder. He also made Snyder, an avid gamer since the age of four or five, realize that he could combine his love for sound with his love for video games into an amazing career.

“Dave interned at Insomniac Games in Burbank, Calif., during my junior year, and I knew I needed to find out more about how he nailed that gig,” said Snyder. “I followed in his footsteps getting an internship at Insomniac the next year at the same time they hired Dave full-time, so we briefly overlapped.

“I was paid $16 per hour to work on video games during my internship in 2010 while being in sunny California. I was actually making sound effects that would ship in a game millions of people would play.”

This dream lifestyle didn’t initially pan out for Snyder as Insomniac wasn’t hiring at his position by the time he graduated. He took a few odd jobs, including a brief period as a quality insurance [video game tester) at Electronic Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ever persevering, Snyder eventually returned to California, landing a gig at Respawn Entertainment in Los Angeles.

His first project was on the Titanfall game, which went on to receive more than 100 award nominations at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), including several for audio. Snyder also worked on global hit Titanfall 2, which was ranked by IGN, a prominent video game news and culture website, as the second-best game all-time in its category.

“Titanfall 2 probably made me the proudest of the many games on which I’ve worked,” said Snyder. “We doubled down on the sound for that, and it became a ‘cult classic.’”

Snyder’s most recent project was Apex Legends, which is set in the Titanfall universe. It had more than 2.5 million players the day it launched and recently surpassed 100 million players.

“It’s wild to think that 100 million people have played and listened to my work,” stated Snyder. “And it was exciting to win the 2019 Best Multiplayer Game at the Game Awards.”

Snyder recently left Respawn after almost nine years to join Unbroken Studios a small independent group.

“I can’t say what I am working on, but our studio just announced that we are working on a Suicide Squad game, and the trailer already has more than nine million views. I can’t wait to talk about it more because I think it will be a fun project for people to experience!”