Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Stressful times, part 1

There are some rough months ahead of us at home, and we've been having our first tastes already (more about this in the next post).

As if that's not enough, work is getting more stressing by the day. Plannings are fully booked, and even get overbooked the closer we get to the deadlines. New requirements for the game are still being added, and old ones keep getting changed. I can't take anything for granted anymore; a decision made one day can easily be turned completely around the next, and hours worth of work can turn into lost effort pretty quickly. But we know it's all for a worthy cause.

Although still quick to make jokes, my colleagues and I are slowly but surely getting to know what it's like to be working in the video games industry. The tension is oozing off the walls; people get irritated more easily, and start to have difficulty handling interruptions or extra requests.

However, we all love our jobs and we all want to make this the best game possible. Each and every employee gives it his or her full 100%. The Ooze of Tension can't eat through our Barriers of Dedication and Optimism, so we fight as hard as we can to hold the little Demon of Despair back. However, every now and then a short emotional eruption occurs somewhere down the hall.

For me personally it gets extra tough, because my wife is currently in her 8th month of pregnancy. She can't drive a car anymore, so it's now become my responsibility to drop our 20-month old son off at the day-care in the morning, and pick him up again in the evening. In other words, I have no leeway to work overtime to finish my planning, which tends to get frowned upon by my superiors.

But I will not yet give up. I plan to support the project until the bitter end.

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