Nothing unique to video games about this; in software engineering circles, this is known as the ‘heroic’ model of software development. Ed Yourdon wrote his first edition of “Death March” back in 1997, but the phenomenon was well known years before that. Heck, I burned out on programming altogether back in 1984, doing…

My wife and I were 33 when we married — a second marriage for each of us. And between the two of us, we had nine (9) kids under the age of 14. That was the start of 20 years of raising teenagers. About halfway through that I came to the terrifying realization that, regardless of what we did, our teens had the power…

Not a new problem. When working in the early 1980s on release 1.0 of Sundog: Frozen Legacy for the Apple 2, I worked very long hours, topping out at 100+ hours/week for the last few weeks (the game was released at the 1984 West Coast Computer Faire). I repeated the process in working to ship version 2.0 of the game in…

And, yes, I still play games. Preferences are towards 4X and TBS games (XCOM: Enemy Within is probably my recent favorite); less so toward RPG and FPS (though I did play through Tomb Raider 2013 and Dishonored several times); and not that into RTS (though I have fond memories of LOTR:BFME 1 & 2) or MMO.

Heh. I was playing computer games before any of my (now-adult) children were born — and probably most of you as well. Also, I co-designed and wrote most of the code for a successful commercial computer game while the three oldest were still under 8 years old. Now, get off my lawn. ;-)

OK, someone already posted a still, but here’s the video that created a meme that still lives on.

For this, I may finally break down and buy a PS4.

Go read “Catch Me If You Can” by Frank Abagnale (the one they turned into a movie; the book’s great, and the film’s not bad). The film/TV show cliche about getting in anywhere if you have the right clothes and attitude is remarkably true in the real world.

Favorite all-times:

It may get you a job; it may not help you keep it or progress in your career, unless you have significant natural talent in programming and then build upon that. Here’s a piece I wrote back in 2008 on what makes a great software engineer, based on having worked in the field since 1974 and having interviewed large…

Ouch. I am not at all an RTS fan, but I loved the BFME games. And "The Battle of Five Armies"? (Puts face down in hands and sighs.) Bad form, indeed.

The initial Civilization IV release. 2K Games pushed it out the door for the Christmas season, not at all ready for prime time. They eventually patched it sufficiently, and it became one of the best 4X games of all time, but it was a dog at release; I gave it two (2) stars on Amazon, though I eventually went back and…

The TV series "Backstrom", with Rainn Wilson as a curmudgeonly and politically very incorrect detective, had an episode ("Boogeyman") clearly inspired by the 'Slenderman' meme and the recent murder case, though the mysterious, allegedly supernatural figure wasn't Slenderman per se.

I could tell you stories about what our granddaughter Evangeline was doing when she was 2-going-on-3. So could her neighbors and the local police. She's now 7-going-on-8 and has mostly settled down.

No, it's not a great iPad game, either (I bought it for both iOS and PC, more fool me), and the PC version is a straight port of the mobile version. I've been playing 4X games, oh, since before many of you were born (e.g., Galactic Empires by Ursine Engineering on the Apple II; we're talking 35 years ago), and this…

Sent the link to my daughter, who wrote:

I have an autistic (high-functioning) grandson who learning both guitar and keyboards. I sent this on to my daughter (his mom); I suspect he'll get a great kick out of it.

Anyone else think of "Iron Man" on reading this story?

My great advantage was that I did game design/development over 30 years ago, when graphics were so primitive (see screenshot) and system resources so limited that it was a miracle to get a game out at all. Also, computer gaming was still in its infancy, so the bar was pretty low.

...I'd largely been playing the same kind of games on the same kind of maps.