At the end of the day, we're all just humans, right? Fallible, imperfect humans who make mistakes. And to show that's okay, one former Firaxis dev aired his own dirty laundry and asked others to confess their screw-ups on Twitter. The responses so far have been equal parts cringeworthy, uproariously funny, and enlightening.
You ever wonder what day-to-day life is like inside a studio? Check out Dan Perry's thread on Twitter or have fun perusing some of the best responses, which we've embedded below:
Went to IM my (now) husband letting know our Game Director was in a terrible mood and to just steer clear of him. Ended up sending the message to the Game Director by accident. 🤦♀️January 10, 2018
Here's one I think we've all done (or at least been afraid of doing): emailing the very person you're talking about. This Elder Scrolls Online Community Manager went to warn their significant other about a higher-ups irritability and... well, that had to be an awkward conversation.
2. The opening/closing valve animation in first Mirror’s Edge is turning the valve the wrong way. I didn’t know which way you turn to open/close a valve so I think I just guessed.January 10, 2018
Don't worry, this next one is far less serious. Turns out the original Mirror's Edge got some details wrong, like which way you turn a valve to open it. Whatever, it's the future, maybe it's different by then.
First day on a AAA I submit the idle loop of the main character's companion as an additive animation. It took a good 3 minutes for programmers to run to my desk asking WTF DID I DO?!?! I always check before submitting anything to this day.😬January 9, 2018
1) First job, deleted the game on P4 2) Another animator and I built and implemented our own character into the game, were slammed with over stepping3) Too many small studios gave me a 'sky is falling' attitude4) Took to long to realize that time spent != improvementJanuary 9, 2018
As a junior TA, While trying to get everyone’s Perforce workspace root mapped to the same location in everyone’s hard drives I accidentally deleted like... a month or two of animation that hadn’t been checked in.January 9, 2018
These three share a common theme: completely obliterating data or inconveniencing an entire team over simple mistakes. But such are the harsh lessons one has to learn, and it doesn't sound like they're too bothered over it years later.
I flew to the US with a demo to show the license holder a build of the (ps1) game. Booted it up and it was in Black and White. As the colour also drained from my face I realised the disk was a PAL build and not the required NTSC.January 10, 2018
I can just imagine this scenario A Christmas Story-style: Oh ffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.
Check out more responses on Twitter, or if you've experienced some stumbles of your own, feel free to share!
