Game Development Truisms

You know your game is in trouble when...

Some Real Life truisms from the world of game development.

Background: This page began when we were all in the office late one night trying desperately to get a demo for our Playstation game done before the customer showed up. It was late, we were all tired, and then as we were driving around the database (it was a tank game) we came around a ridge and saw--the face of Jesus Christ on the side of the mountain! Plain as day too. Nobody put it there...it was just sheer coincidence that the texture maps for the mountains came together in that spot that way. Somebody said, "Wow, you know your game is in trouble when Jesus appears in your texture maps", and thus this page was born.

Fellow developers, feel free to send other examples from your own personal experience (and yes, if you want to post anonymously nobody will mind...we all understand, believe me....)

Don't forget to also visit the Famous Last Words page...where you confess the really, really dumb thing you said and then instantly regretted...

Oh yes, and there's a thread (probably others I don't know about) over on TribalWar that started with a visit to this page and ran off on a related tangent. Some funny stuff there...recommended!

New Contributions

...when your boss informs you that the company you work for will cease to exist in 2 weeks, and is there any way you might get the game finished before then....?
...when you just finished writing a piece of code that's os complex and convoluted that even you don't really understand it...

Anonymous

Previous Contributions
Note: This next group are the ones that Started It All....

...when Jesus appears in your texture maps.

...when one of your engineers asks, "Is that an explosion or a tree?".

...when the CPU count is higher than the polygon count.

...when your engineers are more interested in what's in the cookie jar than the code.

...when the managers start asking the engineers "Is it done yet?" while holding a schedule for the next game.

...when you've already built up 40 hours of comp time this week--and it's only Wednesday.

...when two terrain blocks fill up all available memory.

...when your producer "forgets" to bring in cookies.

...when all your engineers are playing the competition's game.

...when your engineers begin planting subliminal messages in the textures that say "This game doesn't suck."

...when you see the managers having a blast playing the game, then discover they haven't coined in yet.

...when the copyright take up more disk space than the code.

...when the game contract weighs in heavier than the code documentation.

All of the above courtesy of late, lamented Real3D Gaming Team

...when you are asked if you are free on weekends...for the next year...

Courtesy of Mike

...when your manager wants you to do something that you tell him is flat impossible, and he replies, "I'll take responsibility for the decision"...

...when tech support for your licensed 3D engine suggests that you stop rendering terrain in order to optimize performance....

...when your manager looks at a 3D model from the game and asks, "Could you rearrange those polygons to make them look less polygonal?"...

Courtesy of Matt Schifter, a badly-burned software developer...

...when by "budget" they actually mean "debt"...

...when "WNF" (Will Not Fix) and "Legacy" are commonly used words...

...when you look forward to an 8-hour day with the thought, "ah, a short day!"...

...when management begins pulling key team members off to work other projects "for a day or two" because they're behind...

Courtesy of Arklan

...when your managers tell you they just bought the rights to the Quake III engine, and your game is a 2D platform game...

Courtesy of the Angel of Death (what an audience we attract!)

...when your localization team decides that Babelfish is an effective, money-saving solution...

Courtesy of Joel (this one scares me much)

...when you gingerly approach your lead programmer to ask him to implement a complex feature and he sighs and says, "Sure, what have we got to lose?"...

Courtesy of "walking carcass" (what a name!)

...when over the cubical wall you hear your level designer exclaim, "The map builder has that feature!? Wow, that would have saved us months!"

Courtesy of Damion Schubert

...when your producer offers a watch to each programmer on your team, and none of them wants one....

Courtesy of Arnaud

...when Admin decides it's too costly to support a company network...

From the good folks at DarkSide entertainment

...when your plan is to write a text-based interface first and then add the graphics later...

From the hoping-to-break-into-the-business Rim

...when your programmers know exactly how to make a 3D engine, but haven't a clue as to how to add any cheat codes...

Courtesy of the one and only Milan Stezka

...when the previous game is released without your name in the credits, and you're still working for the same company...

...when your game is about superheroes...

....when interviewing a candidate for a 3D art position and you ask him if he has experience making his own wireframes, as opposed to merely rendering the sample models that came with his software, and the owner of the company says, "We will probably not be needing that."...

...when anyone in management doesn't want the people making the game to be playing any games...

...when the game designer says they consider themselves "more of a _______ than a designer"...

Courtesy of "an Austin game developer"

...when you finish the design, sit back for a moment, and then wonder, "Why does this sound familiar?"...

Courtesy of Tong

....when you discover...two weeks before shipping...that the hardware you've been developing on isn't the production boardset....

....when you can't get $5K to finish the sound for a game that's due out by the end of the month, but your managers are flying around the country spending a cool million to line up "demos" for the company's hardware line....

....when your mangement will cheerfully spend thousands of dollars to drag you across the country to work an emergency integration effort but won't let you spend $50 on a new reference book.....

....when you spend more time putting together progress reports than actually adding new features to the game....

....when your managers start talking about what a great future the company has in doing applications work....

....when your managers use the phrase "management challenge" in any context whatsoever....

....when your management justifies any decision with the phrase "...you need to look at the big picture...."

....when your managers admit to having negotiated an "aggressive schedule"....

Courtesy of yours truly....

...when you finish the game, and discover that your company doesn't do games anymore.

...when the software developers suddenly begin taking home all of their personal belongings.

...when you texture a model with the sound files, and it looks BETTER...

...when you use a model AS the sound file, and it sounds BETTER...

..when you have spent 16 hours burning EPROMS, only to discover the burner wasn't plugged in...

...when strange looking people start surveying your room for their future expansion...

...when the roofers, who are surveying the new leak above your PC, make the comment "well, it only needs to hold for a few more days..."

These gems courtesy of one of the best programmers around, John Woznack

...when the publisher "forgets" to add your company's name to the game's credits...

Courtesy of the one and only Game Joker

...when you've slept on top of your desk for all of 2 hours over the last three nights and it's starting to feel pretty comfortable...

Courtesty of Clyde Smithson, fellow JNTF survivor

...when your learn about some of your games' features by reading interviews of your publisher on a gaming web site a week before beta...

Courtesy of SuperMike

...when your lead artist says, "Hey, let's try 3D for this game".

...when you call up the producer at home to give him your weekly progress report and his assistant complains about how heavy his boss' furniture is and how he can't come to the phone just now...

Courtesy of future gme designer Noam Weiss

...when, after the latest round of layoffs, you realize that the only ones still working at the company (besides yourself) are the lawyers...

Courtesy of the ever-lovely felisandria....

...when you are given textures from Doom to use in the game...

...when your company's web site boasts that your game features a 'fully working raycasting engine'...and you're using the Quake engine...

Courtesy of Pitspawn (strange name, yes)

...when your lead developer asks, "What's the difference between a function and a macro?"

Courtesy of Mason H Smith

...when you're developing your game with an API that your 3D card doesn't have drivers for...."

Courtesy of "a small group of game programmers, who aren't officially a company but whom already have submissions for the list"....

...when you notice that you accidently sent the full version of your game to all of the demo sites and game magazines...."

Courtesy of Ruffi of Switzerland

...when you hear Pearl Jam play your "original" title theme over the radio on the way to work one morning...

Courtesy of Paul, the NJIT frosh....

...when you ask the producer about the AI and he says, "Those random number generators can do anything" in an awed voice...

Courtesy of Alan Crank

...when your designer takes one look at your game's Map Editor and says, "You realize the game isn't going to be tile-based?"...

Courtesy of Sean Howe, part of a little-known Idaho-based development company.

...when it's 6:00 AM, your producer is heading to Japan with a copy of the game, but you can't go to bed until you've written and emailed him a patched .exe...

...when your producer wants to do a simulation of polo because "everybody loves horses"...

From the boys at Purgatory Entertainment...who really sound like they're having all kinds of fun...

...when all of your programmers show up before 11:00 AM...

Courtesy of Darren Schueller.

...when you start coding patches even before the game is finished...

Courtesy of Andreas Stieger

...when you are introduced to your new 20-year old producer halfway through the project....

...when the creative staff are known as 'puck monkeys'...

...when game changes from the producer come in the form of faxes in Japanese...

...when you find out that there will only be 1100 units of your game actually produced (this from the arcade world)...

...when you find out your game was contracted only to support a larger, more lucrative hardware deal...

From one Dave Levinson, former Real3D gamer and a good friend

...when the team laughs out loud every time they pass the milestone schedule posted on the lab door....

From an Unamed Pacific Northwest Game Company...

...when the producer says 'my wife doesn't like that, so we have to change it'...

Courtesy of a Freemont, CA game studio

...when half the game code is actually easter eggs....

...when you surf the Web one day and find a freeware game that's similar to yours, but better....

Courtesy of Devin de la Parte, Project Manager, Distortion Software

...when the boss instists that 300+ polys need to be added to the female's chest because "...players won't play a game with blocky characters..."

...when the boss states that the Windows 95 game will not use the right mouse button because the player will not understand what a right mouse button is.

Provided by AMP

...when the lead programmer asks, "Whats a vector?".

...when the management starts talking about "toning down the violence just a bit"...

...when you can look at a Dilbert comic and not laugh, thinking, "Been there, done that."

...when you catch the lead programmer at the book store buying a copy of "Beginning Visual C++ 6.0"...

These all-too-true missives provided by Bill Campbell IV

...when you tell a headhunter you aren't interested and he says he'll call you back after your Friday ops meeting....

Courtesy of Bob Stanton, of TSC Management Services Group, Inc.....a recruiting firm, no less!

...when the title graphics require more coding than the actual game...

...when the website advertising the game takes up 95% of the budget...

Courtesy of Jenn Tapley

...when you lay awake at night hoping that those elves from "The Elves and the Shoemaker" know where you work and can program in C++ as well as they can sew together sandles....

An excellent contribution from John Wallace

...when your boss hires five new programmers...and they all have sites on the Klik & Play webring...

An all-too-true contribution from rthwtwj wrywnyyn

...when the lead game designer asks the lead programmer if the game is still 3D or not 2 years into the project...

Overheard in an Irvine Game Development studio...

...when management fires the producer who thought up the game, then forms a committee to "ensure it's going in the proper direction"...

...when your new producer declares that Myst was the "pinnacle of game development"...

...when marketing throws a company wide party celebrating going Beta, and this completely surprises the development team....

...when you can read a huge "You know your project is in trouble when..." list and say "Yep, been there" to most all of them...

You are a programmer. They fire the producer. They have no intention of hiring a new one. You now report directly to the VP of Marketing. You are in Hell.

From Jeff Thomas, who swears it's all really happened to him...

...when the GIF promoting your web site is cooler than the title screen in the game...

Courtesy of Jeremy Lowrey

...when upper management comes to tell you that they have just acquired a movie license, so you need to change the name of your game...

Courtesy of a self-described "thankfully former Kesmai employee"...

...when you wonder if you could optimize your fps counter function in order to gain extra fps...

...and you double your fps doing so.

Courtesy of one Jacques Lemire

... when you use the word "technically" to describe whether something works or not...

Courtesy of on Blaine Hodge

...when you move development to your parents' computer...

...when you start wondering if banging the mike on the desk really makes a realistic gunshot sound...

Kindly provided by Darrell Johnson

...when your senior programmer is 13 years old

...when your title screen takes up 3/4 of the CD.

From the mysterious Thaqui....

...when your lead artist thinks "true color" means actual photographs...

Courtesy of the adventurous Millenium Falcon

...when the Lead Artist is replaced with a person whose previous job was "truck driver"....

...when there is a clause in your contract saying "employee will be sued for $10,000/month if he/she quits"...

...and the boss thinks it's "inspirational"...

...and 50% of the company quits anyway.

...when programmers are barred from attending design meetings....

Contributed semi-anonymously from somebody at Aramat Productions....

...when it takes 6 weeks for the lawyers to negotiate a contract on a 4 week project.

...when your producer is a delusional paranoid who sends you long rambling emails accusing you of thinking things about him.

...when the development manager and the in-house programmer are having a feud and haven't spoken to each other in 6 months.

...when your lawyer and the lawyer on the other side still can't agree on the wording of the NDA.

...when your team leader wants a clause in the contract that says he never has to leave his house or meet anybody in person.

...when you get a letter from your publisher's lawyer containing the words "NOTICE OF COMMENCEMENT OF CASE UNDER CHAPTER 11 OF THE BANKRUPTCY CODE"

...when the guy who wrote the game engine left the company, left the industry, left the state, and got an unlisted phone number.

Contributed by the First Lady of Gaming herself, Diana Gruber, who swears each and every one happened to her at one point or another.

...when the lead programmer goes off to buy a Magic 8 Ball to make up for management decisions....

An eerie missive provided by Charlie Wallace of Universal Studios

...when your AI says, in a calm, soothing voice, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave"....

...when someone asks you what time it is and you reply "oh, 0000 1001 o'clock"....

...when you decide to give up and just write the game as one big batch file...

Courtesy of Spider Man (apparently taking time off from crime-fighting)

...when after telling your artist to use as few colors as possible, he hands in his work in black and white....

Courtesy of Michael Lafreniere of TE Software

....when half way through the development cycle, your boss decides that "Well, maybe the game should be real-time instead of turn-based"....

....when the Dr. Pepper Company sends you a Christmas card....

....when the lead programmer wears a suit to work one day....

....when your boss thinks a video codec is a Flic player....

....when you're doing a tile based game, and your artists hand over the tile artwork--all 65 by 51 pixels (true story)....

....when after an all night session, all you have to show is a save game editor for Daggerfall....

....when you spend most of the next day debugging it....

....when everyone keeps asking you, "How hard would it be to ...?" a week before release....

....when you finally lock down the design....a week before shipping....

....when your boss finally figures out what you mean by "If we have time"....

....when your lead programmer decides to take a 'short-vacation' to scenic Silicon Valley...on a Tuesday....

....when you forget to buy soft drinks for the week, and Dr. Pepper calls you to see if you're ok....

....when your boss says, "I've found a way to reduce our development time", while holding a copy of Klik and Play....

....when your boss wants you to port your new 16 Meg PC title to the Game Boy....

....when your development team enjoys playing Windows Solitare more than your game ....

....when your producer keeps asking, "Do we need all these engineers?"....

Courtesy of Nick Shaffner and Scott Hansen, who both work for DigiFX

...when you start begging for a DWIM instruction -- Do What I Mean.

...when your head of audio manages to start and finish a game by himself before you even start coding....

...when you spend more time debugging the debug code than actually coding...

...when you get your head of audio to start coding...

...when you spend meetings nostalgically looking at past failed projects...

...when you have to beg for corporate sponsorship just to *rent* a scanner for a week...

...when you spend more time checking for new e-mail than actually coding...

....when it takes you eight months to come up with the company name....

These courtesy of Sunir Shah

...when one week before your game is finished 20 other games in the same genre are released...

...when all the neat features in the game only work on your own computer...

...when the producer tells you to drop the AI and hire some more graphic artists...

These courtesy of John Christian Lonningdal

...when your engineers start making "You Know Your Game is in Trouble When" lists....

This gem courtesy of Chris Bartlett

...when your game engine won't run without debugger loaded in the background...

Courtesy of Timo Flink

...when you think your game might be more marketable if advertised as a screen saver....

...when you've already decided to turn your game into a screen saver, and your release date slips another month....

...when you start wishing you knew assembly language well enough to reverse-engineer a competitor's engine...

...when you go to bed every night praying that your future self will send a copy of the final release version back in time...

...when you start wishing you were the guy in the Twilight Zone episode with the stopwatch that could freeze time (except that your computer would be unaffected)...

...when you wish you hadn't developed such a high tolerance level for caffeine...

...when you keep checking the bookstores for that new programming book titled "How to Program (name of your game)," with full source code included...

...when you remember with nostalgia how your engine looked when it was only 1 month past ship date...

...when you remember with nostalgia what it was like to be physically unconscious...

...when your development team has to start rationing the coffee supply...

...when you start wishing for an ergonomic debugger...

These beauts courtesy of Steve Pavlina, who's obviously had way too much caffeine over at Dexterity Software

...when you're all out of overtime forms...

...when your producer buys you a sleeping-bag...

...when your publisher comes over for "just a little visit"...

These courtesy of the wild folks at Funcom Oslo AS and Erlend Simonsen, who collated and sent them to me

...when the lead programmer resorts to exorcisms to fix bugs.

...when you discover you've mistaken the deadline for the first milestone.

...when after receiving all the art, you have tell the artist 16 colors, not 16-bit color.

...when a TV documentary reports that your target machine causes impotence.

...when after final duplication, you realize levels 2-50 don't work.

...when after final duplication, you realize those obscene cheat codes are still in.

...when after eight months into the project, you find out it's supposed to be a gulf game, not golf...

...when your boss spends more time in your room than he does his own.

...when you get your first 'proximity bug'. It only crashes in front of important visitors...

These courtesy of Darren Hebden

...when you have to teach the lead programmer how to touch type...

...when the computer suffers a major crash that destroys all records of the game and its development...and everyone is relieved...

...when you suddenly realize no one has programmed anything for user input...

...when you get flamed for sending junk email - to your boss!

...when the competition sends over a copy of their code out of pity!

...when even your AI won't play the game - it just deletes itself...

Great ones courtesy of Dwight Wilkins

....when your lead programmer has PC for Dummies and Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days on his bookshelf, and they are worn ragged....

....when you spend more time looking at code from programming FTP sites rather than working on your game....

....when after 3 weeks, your program is only 100 lines long...and that's mostly comments and 'to do' lists....

...when the lead programmer decides to write the game in Turbo Pascal for DOS instead of Assembler or C++.

...when your artist refuses to use anything except Windows Paintbrush to create the artwork for the game...

...when the company you are writing the game for has been sold 5 times in the during the first 6 months into the game.

Courtesy of Shawn Christian

....when you spend more time doing paper work to get a feature "approved" that it would take you to just implement it....

....when meetings break down into three hour arguments about whether some text should be underlined or italicized...and you consider it just another day....

....when your producer says "what a great 3D engine" another game has when it's a top down, isometric view game he's talking about....

....when your producer remarks that "We don't know if we're having sound FX in the game yet"....

....when your producer constantly thinks that anything easy to do in a 2D game must be even easier in a 6 Degree of Freedom 3D engine....

....when your artists are discussing proper use of linked lists....

....when the number of people in "administration" outnumbers the development team 3:1....

....when all your best programmers are promoted to managers and are too busy managing to program any more....

....when your lead programmer says "It's trivial" every five seconds....

....when your lead programmer says "It's trivial", and it is, but only to him....

....when you ship in the right month, but the wrong year....

....when after a year and a half of development, your still arguing about which language you should be writing it in....

....when sleeping under the desk isn't fun anymore....

....when your code is cluttered with comments that say "Hacka hacka hacka"....

....when dealing with Admin reminds you of a Three Stooges routine....

....when sections of code scheduled for "2 weeks" take 6 months, and still aren't done....

....when, almost every day, you hear things like "Well, we're not sure how we're going to do that, but we have to figure it out or this whole thing will never work"....

Courtesy of Jason Booth

....when there are more empty cans of Coke in your office than lines of code....

Courtesy of Bill Misek

....when the developers spend more time figuring out which features they can copy from the competitor's product than implementing original ones for their own (the "how'd they do that?" syndrome)....

....when the hotshot outside developer hands off what you think is production code on the last day of his contract and says, "You just wanted a proof of concept, right?"....

....when you see fancy parchment [resume] paper in the office laser printer....

....the one right by your technical lead's office....

....when you see the developers comparing clauses in their employment contracts....

....when the lead developer asks QA if they found anything yet, and looks both surprised and relieved when they say "no"....

....when, three months before the release candidate, you're writing the spec for the bugfix release....

....when your boss's boss knows your buglist better than you do....

Courtesy of Tim Lesher, who claims to have only been personally guilty of three of these..but he wouldn't say which three....

....when you find yourself re-coding the audio decompression in the hotel room the night before the release....

Courtesy of Jeff+Dave, who admit that this really happened in another life....

....when you find out the senior programmer's only previous experience was writing RPG databases (not role-playing games...

....when your animation programmer who codes in C++ claims not to know C....

....when your animation programmer who is developing a PC game claims not to know how to use the DOS prompt....

....when you spend more time patching together beta versions to send to potential investors than implementing new features....

....when it's late September and your game is just starting beta testing (and it's a Christmas release)....

....when your art department sees their deadline for submitting media the same as your deadline for delivering the final code....

These gems courtesy of H4H

...when you spend more time dreaming of strangling the producer than writing code...

...when you come in on your last day, after taking care of the third "final bug list", and they come up with a fourth...

These contributions courtesy of Mark Stoner

...when mysterious "Do you want to register now or later?" dialog boxes begin popping up on your development server...

....when your manager thinks the project will take one week...the week he's on his golfing vacation....

....when the alpha with bugs made a year ago is better than the final version....

....when you go to show the final version to the client and the message "Your registration period has expired" appears....

Courtesy of Steven Miller

....when running your game doubles as an easy way to reboot your computer....

....when midway through production, your co-programmer decides much he'd rather be the 3D animator....

Courtesy of Darren Lafreniere

....when a friend says the graphics are perfect...for radio....

...when a beta tester confuses the pre-pre-alpha version with the latest build...and prefers the former...

Courtesy of Joe Kopena, who swears they're both true.

....when the producer fires the lead programmer for working 120 hours/week.

....when, after nine months of development the producer says "you know those royalties we promised you... April Fools!"

....when the lead artist's excuse for delivering 40 128x127 pixel textures is "I don't DO numbers."

Courtesy of Bob Pendleton, who says he "used to be a game programmer, but now only writes about it".

...when the producer tries to justify asking you to put in 80 hour weeks by comparing the final few months to running a race...

...when the programmers rig up the framerate counter to add 5 frames to the framecount just to stop the producers from freaking out...

...when the sound for a robot getting hit by laser blasts sounds like someone spitting tobacco into a tin can on their front porch...

Courtesy of Robert Kovach, much beleaguered artist

...when your developer says, "Try your best but if you can't do it it's not that important anyway"...

...when your co-programmer brags about his 'cool 3D game engine' book, and your producer replies, "You know this is a 2D game, right?"...

...when there's only one person in your company who actually owns any shares of said company...

...when you suddenly realize that you've used 90% of your development period for R&D and you don't have a pathfinder working yet....

...when the troubleshooting section of your manual just links to MSDN...

...when discussing your salary you hear the phrase, "We'll just play it by ear" multiple times...

...when you've made more contributions to the "You Know Your Game is in Trouble" page than you have for your game...

...when the day you join the team is the same day your boss has just broken up with his girlfriend...

...when you're two weeks from shipping your racing game and your producer decides that the game needs to get rid of all the cars (so it's different from 'other racing games')...

...when your new lead programmer--the one with alleged "expert" level skills in C++--says, "I'm not really comfortable with classes yet either; that's why I dug out my C++ Primer book"...

...when two weeks before your game ships another one shows up on the market that's exactly like it...

...when you're asked if you're free on weekends...

...when your art lead decides things would be a lot easier if the whole project switched from the Torque engine to the Half Life engine two days before shipping...

...when your artist has spent the last year working on a single building...

...when your sound guy doesn't show up to a meeting because he's in jail...

...when your GUI programmer talks about how Office does things...

...when you ask why there aren't any programmers on the team and you're told that "all we need are level designers and some artists"... the decision"...

...when someone asks at a meeting, "what if we used a bird's eye view?", and you're working on an FSP...

...when you have three managers for the same project, and they all say they can't afford to hire another developer...

...when your licensor decides during beta-test that the color purple is a "lesbian" color and wants it taken out of the entire game....

"...when your manager asks you to type something up, and it's her resume..."

...when you ask your boss about your late paycheck and he replies, "Think of the glory!"...

...when you're a year into your project and the VP of Marketing says to you, "You know, we should add some sex to the game--sex sells!"...and your game is a flight simulator...

...when you can't find anything odd about the phrase, '40-hour work day'...

...when management tells you that a game will ship on a given date, "regardless of its quality or readniness"...

...when you find out that the reason for this is that management's huge bonuses are riding on this date...

...when your lead animator quits and nobody knows about it for two weeks...

......when, a year into dev, you are hired to help fast track development and discover that this involves holding classes where you teach the coders basic game logic and Direct X...

...when royalties may or may not be in rubles...

...when your production managers say, "Look, you just give advice about gameplay; we make the decisions"...

...when you do your hardware testing at Best Buy...

...when your producer says "find a warez site" when you ask about any kind of production software...

...when your company thinks that testers make good designers "because they play a lot of games"...

...when nobody knows where the lead programmer is because he doesn't log onto AIM (or ICQ) anymore...

...when the General Manager of the company stocks beer for the community refrigerator during crunch time...

...when you are afraid that your boss might be reading this page, so you ask that your truism be posted as "anonymous"...

,,,when the lead artist exclaims in the middle of a design meeting, "Why don't we make a game where nobody dies?" and the entire room goes quiet...

...when all work ceases and havok ensures because someone lost the company copy of Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours....

...when the publisher tells you that they've decided the "shareware" venue would best suit your game....

...when a review of your game opens with, "It's games like this that make us realize how good Trespasser truly was..."

...when you take a look at the pathfinding code and see something along the lines of


"direction = Random(4)"

...

...when the game runs perfectly on your system...only your system...

...when you find that the "You Know Your Game is in Trouble" list is a useful reference...

...when your tech support web site states, "We don't provide patches because we don't write buggy code"...

...when your paycheck bounces (that's a dead giveaway)...

...when you get your promo copies of the game and realize that you forgot to print the last two characters of the registration code on the CD label...

...when the game in question is a 3D third-person squad-based shooter based on any popular sci-fi movie property...

...when even your lead coder can't get better than 12% of the highest possible score on any level...

...when the producers, coders, and mangement all come out of the meeting room asking 'do gamers really want to save their progress in mid-level?

...when your producer says, "I really don't see the need for concept art. I mean, we already know what we want it to look like, right?"...

...when your producer says, "I'm not convinced that it takes a solid team to make a good game"...

...when your lead programmer asks, "Should this game be compatible with DOS 3.2?"...

...when your producer says, "We just don't have time to plan things out."...

...when the project you've just been assigned to has a graphics engine containing numerous references to EGA and CGA modes....

...when Marketing asks you to put all "easter eggs" in the manual....

...when you've just spent four days at the office without sleep your producer sends you an angry email demanding to know why you went home so early Friday evening....

...when you call up the producer at home to give him your weekly progress report and his assistant complains about how heavy his boss' furniture is and how he can't come to the phone just now...

...when the lead programmer comes up to you and asks, "So, what's this 'class' thing I've heard so much about?"

...when the company you licensed your engine from tells you that they can't fix their collision detection code because "it would break our demo"...

...when the lead developer asks if you know about any good web sites with source code...that he could cut and paste.

...when you, or any other programmer on the project, gets a girlfriend.

...when the sign in the front lobby costs more than the computer you work on...

...when you send a "You Know Your Game is in Trouble" list to your co-workers to lighten the mood, and they all respond with their own additions...

...when your lead programmer answers every question with, "Well, it's a step in the right direction"...

...when your managers inteject during a design session with "No, let's have the bullet stop before it hits him...we don't want peopleto die in this game, do we? Would that be humane?"...

...when the designers are reading previews of your game to "get ideas"....

...when management tells you they've signed up for a port, and "all we're going to do is replace the art...honest!"...

...when you catch your boss making telephone calls to a competitor to discuss the "Terms of Sale"....

...when you have to set back your BIOS every 30 days to keep all of your development tools from expiring...

...when your company thinks surge protectors are a waste of money...

...when your boss wants to be the hero...

...when your partner uploads the full version of the game, instead of the demo...

...when you receive a call from a lawyer representing Hasbro, and he wants the name of your manager...

...when your computer illiterate producer walks in and says, "I think we could get a much larger target audience if we did the game in Java, since it's cross-platform..."

...when the release date is December 25th...

...when all of your "can't happen" error messages begin appearing in the error logs...

...when your DirectX game asks for the soundcard's IRQ...

...when your copy protection is so good that even the factory can't duplicate the game master...

...when the night before deadline you realize that the game is going to take up 659MB...on a 650MB CDROM...

...when the lead designer's description of his hot new game idea starts with, "Well, it's pretty much like Quake..."

...when you have three bosses who all believe th at they directly control you...

...when you read about your game in the press...in the "Vaporware Update" section....

...when you're forced to change 3D engines in midstream due to "budget cuts"...

...when you learn about your game's latest features from the company web site...

...when there are 8 programmers listed in the credits and you've never met three of them...

...the only working CDs you can cut turn out to be physically impossible to duplicate...

...when you're doing an arcade conversion--and you find out the arcade game was cancelled four months ago...

...when all your sound FX are made by 1 person banging a microphone on various kinds of surfaces...

...when the lead programmer views 'Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes' as a complete reference...

...when you see your job posted on the company's Internet site...

...when you look at a 'You Know Your Game is in Trouble' page and wonder how eerybody who submitted stuff could possibly know so much about your company...

...when you go to Admin to point out that your most recent paycheck is only $150, and they say "Oh, didn't anybody tell you...?"...

...when the client confuses the prototype with the finished product and expects everything to be delivered within two weeks....

...you start feeling relieved when your project director takes a two-month long vacation....

...when you have to put a soft pad on the reset switch...

....when you find yourself getting fresh ideas for your title from the 'You Know Your Game is in Trouble When...' page...

...when the lead programmer on your racing game drives a minivan...

...when your publisher goes out of business just after they ship your game.

....when you're at a job fair and you find out your boss just quit....

...during Beta the lead programmer is stunned to find out that the Playstation does not have 8MB of memory...

...when it's a year behind schedule and the writers are still arguing over the name of the main character...

...when you refer to the total number of producers you've had as "the sixpack"...

...when your lead programmer refuses to use source control, preferring instead the "gentleman's agreement" approach.

...when your project is conspiculously never mentioned in any company email, marketing meeting, party, or press release....

...when your game gets previewed as "The Single Best Game of All Time"...and you only started coding two weeks ago...

...when "Just Ship It" becomes the unofficial project motto...

"...All design decisions shall henceforth be made by committee..."

...when you find out that the only other programmer on the job is the brother of the guy you're replacing...

...when you find out the project is a turn-based first person shooter...

...when your Art Director sits down next to you one day and asks, "So this animation thing--what's that all about then?"

...when your lead programmer asks you, "What's a header file?"

...when you are hired on as a 'firefighter' a year into the project's development, only to discover that you are currently the only person on the team.

...when schedules and budgets become confidential, 'management-only' information...

...when someone asks why your project wasn't discussed at the most recent management review...

...when, two weeks before final delivery, the art director decides he doesn't like 'all those little particle things'....

...when the guy in the next cubicle says, "You know, I get paid the same whether or not this game sucks."...

...when 2 months before shipping the design is still a "work in progress"....

...when the CPU you're developing on isn't even made anymore....

...when a complete stranger walks in and asks "Is that a You Know Your Game is in Trouble When entry...?" and adds three items....

...when your producer writes "Project Is In Trouble" on the white board at the start of a meeting...

...when the head of marketing wants more "flashing stuff" in the interface...

...when the codebase isn't frozen until three days before going to gold master...

...when the manual is passed out for "proofreading" to everybody one day after going to the printers.

...when your 'crack development team' consists of two people...

...when the web page promoting your game has more lines of text than your design document...

...when you're not allowed to spend half a day learning a new Art Tool that could increase productivity 150%- but get interrupted for 2 days to turn out screen-shots before the renderer is up and running...

...when the level designers all have more successful published titles (individually) than the Producer/Project Manager...

...when a major component of the decision of where the new office is going to be is proximity to cheap motels...

...when, 9 months into the 12 months PlayStation development cycle, your producer makes the offhand comment: "Some of the people in the office have a problem with the characters being represented in 3D..."

...when your management writes a letter to a porn star to let her know "together we can make wonderful games that kick ass!"...

...when your new boss refers to his latest management scheme as the "New Regime"...

...when your development computers don't meet the game system requirements....

...when cool new hats made up to promote your product are given to the marketing people, but not the programmers....

...when your publisher's newsletter lists your title as 2 player split screen...and that's news to you....

...when your development manager decides to 'configure the dynamics' after you've worked perfecting them for 6 months.

...when the code for the libraries you're using say '#ifdef SEPT_19TH'....

...when the mangement structure is a pyramid, but upturned with you at the bottom.

...when your product manager comes back from E3 with "a clear idea what WILL differentiate us from the competition"

...when your release date is pushed back but your gold master date remains the same.

...when your only co-programmer asks, "what does v-a-r-i-a-b-l-e mean?"

...when the Marketing guy has been on the project longer than the executive producer and the lead coder....

...when management announces halfway through the development that the project is now for the PC rather than the Playstation lead so you can just forget all of those memory limitations.

...when the Marketing guy gets a producers credit.

...when the developers are reading the back of the box and muttering "when did we put THAT in?"

....when your office is reassigned "...and you won't mind working in the playtest room - it`ll help you identify the problems quicker..."

....when the playtesters play everyone elses game but yours....

....when the audio engineer is making triple what you make....

....when you wish retro games would come back big time....

....when your graphics artist knows more about the architecture than you do....

....when 20fps is about all you can get without drawing any polygons....

...when your boss happily gives you a free Red Bull every time he walks past your desk...

...when your boss hopes an ex-employee stole a copy of the game source...because nobody else still has it...

...when you realise your boss is too frightened to ask you to do anything...five months after joining the company.

...when your producer adds 'the answer is yes' to each request for a new feature.

...when your typical week is 3 days building the weekly demo, 2 days repairing the damage, 1 day adding new code, 1 day commuting.

...when 190 of the 200 bugs on the QA report were fixed 2 months ago...

...when you start putting build numbers on the title screen, and ignore QA reports with the wrong number

...when, after you've burnt the final version of your game onto 6 'gold' CDs, your executive producer walks in and tries to start a conversation with, "How hard would it be to..."

..when despite all your attempts to deceive yourself to the contrary, you realise that the one thing killing the framerate in your 1-month-to-release Mech game is the Mechs.

...when you tell your producer that you can't give a progess report yet because "the printer is broken and my resume isn't up to date."....

...when you get to the end of the "You Know Your Game is in Trouble When" page and realise that you recognised ALL of them, down to the most specific ones.

...when you see the phrase "Hello World!" pop up on the lead developer's console...

...when you're not copying other people's code, you're just making sure that yours is better...

...when, the day your project enters alpha phase, your lead programmer comes to you asking if you have "any good books on game development...."

...when your producer calls to tell you he decided last night that you need an "expert" to help you tune your game...

...five minutes later, the "expert" arrives, and he's only 17 years old...

... when the development schedule is based on the marketing plan instead of a design or technical spec...

... when asked where the design spec is, the director replies "In my head"...

... when the same director is asked to write the design spec down and he writes it on a napkin during dinner with the product team...

... when the developer has to tell the PR and marketing heads of their very large publisher HOW to sell the product...

... when a game mag editor writes in his column that your product has been cut from your publisher's release schedule, and you were never told by the publisher...

... when the lead designer of your game doesn't play games...

....when they come in and catalogue the items in your office...

....when a request for a hard drive to store the 4 gig's worth of assets your game has takes 2 months to process because it has to go through 5 people.

....when your boss is giving a tour and introduces two associate producers as two of your best 3D artists.

....when a guy who hasn't worked on your project at all is asked to present your scedule to the board of directors.
....when that same guy tells the board that the project is in big trouble because you keep adding features to list when the features you're "adding" are really just part of the original design.
....when your design document is about as long as your resume.
....when the VP of game development arranges a meeting and starts it off by saying "I want to start by saying it's been great working with you guys..."
....when you try to come into work one weekend and your access card doesn't work....
....when your game runs faster playing over the internet than it does over the company LAN....
....when you would rather type up a list of truisms than work on your game....
....when you have so many meetings you can't remember what it was you were working on last....
....when one of the marketing people says "I don't have time to learn how to play the game."
....when PC Gamer magazine won't take your phone calls.
...when, two months before shipping, your producer says "I got this great idea for the game from a dream I had last night."
...when the new VP of 3D game development is an actor.
...when you see your company's other titles on sale at Kroger.
...when your company has three vice presidents with the word "strategic" in their title.
...when the game is designed by a committee consisting of anybody in the company who shows up for the meeting.
...when your boss says things like, "We know the game sucks, but it's too late now to change it."
...when, after trying to explain to the PC-porting lead why you have so much trouble working with the game box you're writing the new game on, he just laughs and says, "Sucks to be you!"
...when you see that the carefully stacked collection of empty soda cans on the developers' desks suddenly overshadowed by the carefully stacked collection of empty Tylenol bottles...
...when, after craming every last possible polygon into every frame, your manager asks (in a serious tone), "Can you make this into a two-player split-screen game?"
...when you finally blurt out "but the gameplay sucks!", and your producer giggles as he pulls out a chart showing how the projected sales of the merchandising of the game is going to out-sell the game itself by 10 to 1...
...when the art people keep comming over to the software engineer and asking things like, "where did the textures for ___ disappear to?"
...when your boss asks you, "Can we store an entire database on one of those PSX memory cards?"
...when, after your boss spends the whole day trying to figure out why the new 10gig disk drive isn't responding, you happen by and notice that the new SCSI cable he's trying to use really isn't a SCSI cable...
...when one of the softare engineers brings in his entire collection of old Atari game boxes, and the whole office ends up watching the two of you play "Tank"...
....when your shortest-path routine thinks that an "IMPASSABLE" flag on a wall is more of a suggestion than anything else.
....when you hear your producer tell your boss "Real-time shadowing on a 386/33? No problem."
....when you see float temp; //<---DONT TAKE THIS OUT!!!!
....when, the day before a critical milestone, you discover that all the developer's board sets have been running with the wrong configuration all this time, but when you configure them correctly, they all refuse to work. Then, just to add insult to injury, you can't get them to work again even with the old, but wrong configuration....
....when you have more producers in your credits than QA testers.
....when your co-programmer is scared to remove #ifdef MACAROON from the games' source because he can't remember what it does anymore.
....when you pull network support from the feature list, and marketing doesn't list it in the product info sheet, but lists modem play instead.
....when someone does a partial rebuild of your program on you and suddenly it's 11K smaller....
....when office political power is the inverse of the number of action figures on a desk.
....when a publisher that refused to send you different standard controllers asks if you support a new analog controller that hasn't even been released yet....
....when you're calling an ex-employee a month after he left asking how to master a CD-ROM.
....when you had to list complete strangers in the credits to keep the number of producers from outnumbering the rest of the development team....
....when you're maintaining a consistent 59 frames per second and don't know why....
....when two weeks before shipment, your producer wants to "consolidate" the schedule....
....when your final submission milestone is in three days, and you haven't even received your first bug list yet....
....when you've never even heard of half the words on your mandatory technical submission checklist....
....Milestone Day: your console title runs out of memory on adding another line to the credits....
....when your producer says it's OK for your buggy game to ship, since you can put out a patch later....
...when the number of animation files exceed 2,000, but your production manager only has 300 in her database.
...when Bill Gates talks about 'the advanced technology' in every game done by his joint venture, except yours.
...when marketing asks you, "so who is the target market for this game?"
...when the number of hours you work on utilities to streamline your boss's work is more than the number of hours you work on your game.
...when marketing gives everyone on your project cool game tee-shirts, except you.
...when your boss publically promises a ship date of next week at a trade show, and afterwords meets with you to ask how much work needs to be done.
...when your game's AI is offered a better paying job than you.
....when you've written more lines of design doc revisions than actual code....
....when these lines of design doc revisions are being made to a program scheduled and budgeted as a straight port....
....when you're on your second Jaguar(tm) title....
....when your sysadmin decides it would be fun to disassemble, sell and reconfigure pieces of the CD-ROM burning machine the day before a Milestone....
....when it takes you six months to convince your sysadmin that replacing your ancient 486 could speed up compilation....
....when it takes you a bit longer to convince your sysadmin that it might have been silly to order that Pentium 133 without a level 2 cache....
....when you're three months into game development and you still don't have your console development system....
....when the company providing your video CODEC keeps saying "I'm surprised that worked!"....
....when you're on your third Jaguar(tm) title....
....when your producer hasn't looked at your game in three months....
....when your producer has promised his producer a list of what features you can add "for free"....
....when you start to get used to the fact that your producer has a producer who has a producer and suspect even more layers of random influence beyond THAT....
....when people keep forgetting what project you're working on....
....when you wish YOU could forget what project you're working on....
....when the second programmer on your project is packing up to become a Scottish monk or some such thing....
....when you are one of two programmers working on three SKUs....
....when you have trouble convincing your producer that you can't make Jaguar(tm) GPU RISC code doesn't port to the Playstation(tm) "transparently"....
....when your producer didn't learn after the first beating and wants another list of things you can add for "free"....
....when your producer applies your proposed milestone list to calendar days, not business days....
....when five months into the project your co-programmer finally admits that this is his "first real C program"....
....when at age 23 you start to dream of your retirement....
....when you read "The Dilbert Principle" and can't find anything far-fetched or even unfamiliar in it....
....when your bosses look at your new, almost-complete DirectDraw game and say, "It has to run under Windows 3.1, too."
...when your code has more occurances of "//FIXME" than "typedef"...
...when your code has more global variables than functions...
...when your 3D programmer assumes that ROLL "really isn't all that important"...
...when you use variable names like "bob", "temp", and "x" for easy cut & paste...
...when your programmers think they're being clever by using an int called "eger"...
...when your co-programmer writes all his code in Pascal, then uses a freeware Pascal-to-C converter...
...when your head programmer decides two months before release to delete all his code and start from scratch...
...when Carmack takes your lead programmer out to dinner.

These provided anonymously by various developers who don't want their bosses to know anything about it...

Copyright Steven Woodcock, 1996 - 2005. If you enjoy this plesae feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, providing (1) it is not altered in any way, (2) you don't use it for profit, and (3) this copyright notice is attached.