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Blunder years: Game devs talk about their biggest mistakes
In an effort to prove that sometimes it's okay to mess up, veteran animator Dan Perry asked his fellow game makers to tweet about some of the most agonizing mistakes they've made over the years.
3 Min Read
A famous so-and-so once said 'to err is human,' and they weren't wrong. We all make mistakes. It's how we learn and improve, but when the pressure's on it can be hard to rationalize our slip ups as anything other than the end of the world.
In an effort to destroy that fallacy within the world of game dev and prove it's okay to mess up, veteran animator Dan Perry asked his fellow game makers to tweet about some of the most agonizing mistakes they've made over the years.
Perry, who's worked at studios including Zenimax, Firaxis, and Volition, got the ball rolling by confessing some of his sins, including the time he crashed an entire test server on his first day by submitting a corrupt file.
Plenty of others took up the call to arms, resulting in a thread that proves no matter how experienced you might be, that next blunder is probably right around the corner - and hey, that's absolutely fine!
We've cherry picked some of our favorite anecdotes below, but the full thread is well worth a read if you're looking for an even bigger dose of positivity.
1. Day one of my second AAA gig, I crashed the test server for the whole studio with a corrupt file. Boss laughed.
— Dan Perry (@Danim8tion) January 8, 2018
2. After a decade of making games, I posted something on social media, I shouldn’t have! Thankfully a friend noticed my mistake first!
3. I think about #2 daily
1. Was working at a large company that is the target of many memes
— Derrick Barth (@derrickbarth) January 9, 2018
2. Used a sarcastic joke about company in internal mailing list
3. Got call from HR telling me VP of digital platform saw email, was mad. I guess they're sensitive about jokes.
4. I had to call him and apologize
1) First job, deleted the game on P4
— Kiel Figgins (@KielFiggins) January 9, 2018
2) Another animator and I built and implemented our own character into the game, were slammed with over stepping
3) Too many small studios gave me a 'sky is falling' attitude
4) Took to long to realize that time spent != improvement
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. 🤦♀️
— Gina Bruno (@GinaLBruno) January 10, 2018
1. Spilled water on my dev-kit. Thankfully it lived
— Sophie 'DON'T FORGET ME' Brennan (@wuffles) January 9, 2018
2. Complained rudely about how another department worked with a member of the team in the same chatroom. 😳 Apologised for being a butt
3. Broke every blendshape on every face for an entire month. No one noticed & I fixed it 😏
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.
— Matt Oztalay 🔜 PAXS (@mattOztalay) January 9, 2018
First code I ever submitted (a simple if-statement) I somehow broke reloading of all weapons in Battlefield: Bad Company
— Mikael Lagré (@mikaellagre) January 10, 2018
I have done some stupid stuff.
— Tara 🔜 PAX South (@LadieAuPair) January 9, 2018
✔️ I have checked out entire branches in P4 multiple times at multiple studios.
✔️ I brought down the entire network at @RAD_Studios while setting up the QA lab.
✔️ I leaked a new character for Evolve in Twitch chat via a copy pasta fail.
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