At the End of the Tour

One of the things that always struck me odd about people making the transition from writing about games to actually developing them is that the workflow doesn't seem like it could possibly be any more different. Reviewing games in particular requires you to focus intensely on one game for a few days before summing up the experience and then moving on to the next game. It's mostly short-term objectives and constantly changing scenery. Game development shares that singular focus, though it also requires you to think about that one game constantly for 18 months. It's like building a house with your bare hands, and I'm used to just renting.

I've been doing this part for effectively my entire adult life, and it's hard for me to really imagine those specific details of what it's like to release a game, so I was intrigued by a recent feature on Kotaku asking developers about any rituals surrounding the completion of a game. Some of it's pretty obvious celebratory stuff like popping champagne bottles and taking much-needed vacations, as well as plenty of predictable hand-wringing over message boards and review scores. For a lot of guys, such as Epic's Cliff Bleszinski and Capcom's Ben Judd, it's apparent that just because the game is finished doesn't mean you're anywhere near the finish line. A lot of it's kind of mundane stuff, but they got responses from a good cross-section of the development community, and it's interesting to see how differently folks like David Jaffe and American McGee respond to this specific part of the development process.