We are finishing up a game this week at work, the project that has taken most of my time this summer. In one of the game modes, the computer plays through the level, then the player tries to beat the computer’s time. One of the final tasks in the project is to play the game, recording ourselves in the process. In the final product, these recordings will be played back as the “computer’s performance”.

Now, we have to have a certain number of these recordings, so that the time to beat is not always the same. So we spent the day recording ourselves playing on Tuesday, until we got to the hardest level. By the end of the day, we still didn’t have a single recording of ourselves passing the damn level. End of day became evening, evening became dead of night, still with no success. At 2 am I was playing the game, always coming so close to succeeding, but failing over and over, wishing I could go home and sleep.

I kept thinking about all those nights I spent playing video games, having to go to bed, but wanting to keep playing. Here I was having to play, but wanting desperately to go home. We all finally went home at 3 am, defeated by our own game.

Wednesday came and went still without success, until we finally reduced the difficulty of the game, feeling like lame-ass cheaters.

Feedback came from the client today: it’s too hard.