Game Development Gems
Here, you will find a collection of Game Development Urban Legends and Amusing Anecdotes from those within and around the Industry. If you have any tales you wish to add, email submissions to Development Gems
How are you at Car Jacking?
“I remember way back when I was head of QA, we would sometimes have to draft people’s friends in on a cash in hand basis when it got really busy. On one occasion, there was this guy called Davelee, he had a police tag round his ankle for various altercations with the law. Anyway, while I was away on holiday my boss ended up giving him a job in my department without consulting me. As far as I remember, it was his unique expertise that was the reasoning behind this hiring, since many people in our studio had a habit of locking their keys in their cars and often he would be asked to break into their cars to retrieve the keys… From CWK
Flambéed Rat Anyone?
Before I was made head of QA, I had a boss called Malcolm. Malcolm was into his metal and in his office, he had a cupboard full of pornos. Anyway, for some reason he kept a snake for a pet at home, and sometimes he will go to the pet shop to buy some live rats to feed it and bring them back into the office. On one of these occasions, he decided that he will stick one of teh rats in the microwave to see what’d happen. The office microwave got abused so much round that time, with people sticking bad burns of CDRs into it for a light show (CDRs back in those days were over a tenner each). I didn’t actual see this, but of course the rat rippled in the microwave and died a slow death in front of a cheering crowd. Needless to say some unsuspecting fools continued to use the microwave to heat up their food after this event… Yum! From CWK
Work Hard, Drink Hard…
In the late 90’s the game development company I worked for used these oversized beige PC towers. I’d always wondered why these things were soo huge? Was it to imply power in some pork sword fight with the Silicon Graphics Workstations that were slowly being phased out at that time? It certainly wasn’t for quality. These things were populated with the nastiest, cheapest components that the IT department could lay their hands on. It wasn’t unknown for the cd drives to spin up to maximum speed and never stop. Naturally artists would be quite alarmed at their new workstations rocking from side to side and sounding like a Harrier Jump Jet taking off. Eventually frantic stabbing motions directed at the eject button would result in a Britpop cd flying across the room and exploding against the first object it collided with - hopefully a wall and not your nutsack.
Eventually their unique selling point became apparent when an IT member was relocating a former member of staffs PC. Wondering why it was rattling so much he opened it up, expecting to find a lose piece of hardware and was greeted by four cans of warm cider. Now we knew this guy enjoyed a drink. He was a regular in the pub at dinner time and when when we knocked off at five. What we didn’t know that he had his own personal off license disguised as a PC under his desk. Whatever gets you through your day I guess… From FOB
