Criar videojogos, não se faz a brincar

Não raras as vezes os criadores de videojogos são agraciados com piadas do género, "Trabalhas a fazer videojogos? Haaa então passas o dia a brincar!" Tal é o ridículo que durante muitos anos alguns criadores preferiram não revelar o que faziam à família e amigos, por saberem de antemão que seriam brindados com uma total incompreensão sobre o seu trabalho. Hoje as coisas estão mais leves, a sociedade aceita os videojogos como um produto artístico, que requer trabalho, e alguns sabem que requer bastante trabalho. Apesar de se irem encontrando ainda algumas pérolas.

Mas mesmo assumindo a arte como trabalhosa, talvez não saibam que muitas vezes quem trabalha nesta indústria passa por períodos de trabalho de uma brutal intensidade e complexidade, fazendo desta profissão uma daquelas que mais rapidamente rebenta com os seus trabalhadores causando o chamado burnout. Nesse sentido deixo-vos aqui duas descrições de momentos desses, separados por quase 25 anos a demonstrar que nada mudou em termos de trabalho criativo árduo nesta indústria.


Super Robin Hood (1986)

Philip e Andrew Oliver (1986)

Descrição do tempo passado a desenvolver Super Robin Hood.

"Although we were both filled with enthusiasm to write the game, we only had one computer between us at this point so it had to be shared. We were still working in a bedroom in our parents' house and our schedule was to do programming for 23 hours per day, with two breaks of half an hour to allow it to cool! We worked in shifts for 18 hours per day, seven days a week, eating while we worked. During the periods when we were both awake one had to prepare their code on paper, whilst the other used the computer. It was all worth the effort though because within a month we'd scored our first number one charting game. Following this success Codemasters wanted us to write more games as soon as possible!" [Fonte]



Super Meat Boy (2010)

Tommy Refenes e Edmund McMillen (2010)

Descrição dos últimos 2 meses de desenvolvimento de Super Meat Boy.

"Edmund: These two months were easily the worst months of my life.

The pressure, workload, and overall stress of development was extremely overwhelming. In those two months, neither of us took a single day off of work, working 10–12 hours a day, every day. There was a point at the end of development where I was getting less than five hours of sleep for several weeks. I remember having a breakdown in September where I actually thought I was stuck in some nightmare where I was repeating the same day over and over.

Tommy: Because we were so time-compressed, we were basically developing features during bug checking, which meant every single time I turned on the computer and checked the bug database, the work I did the night before was pretty much rendered irrelevant. I would work and fix 100 bugs in a night and get it down to 50, then wake up the next morning and have 200 bugs to fix.

This lasted for weeks and weeks. I felt sick, angry, and totally stressed. My parents were bringing me dinner because I literally didn't leave the house for those two months. I remember just saying to myself over and over, "Don't die until the game is done," because it was a real concern of mine. I felt miserable, my blood sugar was all over the place, but I absolutely had to press on and crush the bugs as they came up. I don't know if it made me stronger or not... all I know is that somehow I survived!

Edmund: I think both of us were trying to keep from the other just how bad things were getting to avoid stressing the other out any more then we already were.

I had many nights where I would tell my wife that I was done, that I didn't want to make the game anymore, that it wasn't worth it, and that I would gladly bow out and take the loss just to go back to my normal life. She would "talk me off the roof," I'd go to sleep, wake up five hours later, and repeat the same day again." [fonte]