Funny Stories from Video Game Developers

RC Cola · Jul 31, 2006

Over on the Beyond3D Forums, there is a thread about funny stories that some of the developer have heard or experienced in their careers. Even though I check out the boards frequently, I somehow missed that thread until just recently. Little did I know that I've been missing out on some funny...and weird stories.

A couple of developers posted some good stories, but poster/developer "ShootMyMonkey" kind of stole the thread with his stories about the "Creature" and how "it" went about doing business ("it" was his employer BTW). Here are some of the stories that he posted about:

When I first went through my interview with his only programmer at the time, the guy gave me a call soon afterward. Now apparently because my name happens to be difficult to pronounce and looks unusual, after the first few words were exchanged ("Am I speaking to so and so...?", etc., etc.)... the very first question he asked me was "Do you speak English?"... I was a bit puzzled, but answered in the affirmative. Now this wouldn't have been so bad if not for the *second* question he asked me, which was... "Are you sure?"

There were other programmers interviewed, however, where he says more appalling things, including --
"Let me tell you something, I was already set to hire you from the start, you know... because you're black. And it's always such a good thing to see a black guy who's not selling drugs."

Trying to convince someone to take lower pay --
"I understand you have a family. I have one, too... Y know, on that subject, one of the things my wife and I did was to use one of those ovulation machines to determine when we do it. You should really try to do the same thing so you know when to avoid it."
Yes, he said "ovulation machine", and the rest of us were sitting with looks of shock on our faces thinking 'why on earth is he talking to this guy about his sex life!! This is a job interview!' BTW, the guy we interviewed then was someone I got to work with later, and he's moved around a bit since. Last I heard, he's now a team lead at LucasArts.

The following quotes are images he had of how the future will work --
"Why do we have buttons on the computers in there? It's set 100 years in the future! I'm pretty sure people will move past buttons!"
"It's 100 years in the future! I don't think we should be using bullets anymore. We should be firing energy! You know, like... did you see that one scene on the Borg ship?"
"Why are you modelling toilets? It's 100 years in the future! People won't be sh*tting turds anymore!"
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And of course, one of the classic arguments. This is about a flying vehicle in the game that happened to have two triple-barreled Gatling turrets mounted on both sides.

It : We really need to have these weapons firing from the same point.
Me : "From" the same point or "To" the same point?
It : No, no... from the same point.
Me : Wait a minute. I'm thinking that you're just complaining about the fact that the shots are currently going straight out from the facing of the guns rather than converging at the crosshairs, so you want the shots to lead out *to* the same point.
It : No, no, I mean there shouldn't have to be two streams.
Me : But there are two guns in two locations... You want there to just be one gun now?
It : That doesn't matter. You can have two of them. They should just shoot from the same spot.
Me : But they're not IN the same spot!!
It : I don't see what's so hard to understand about this. There should just be one stream of fire from one spot.
Me : Okay, so you want there to be some sort of connecting arc effect and a stream of bullets to come from the middle instead of the actual gun barrels?
It : No, they should come from the barrels, from all of them.
Me : All six of them?
It : Yes.
Me : So all six distinct locations should instead be one location and the guns will both be at that one point.
It : No, the guns will stay where they are... I like them on the sides.
Me : You just said sides... plural. That means more than one place.
It : No it doesn't.
Me : What do you mean it doesn't? Did you just mean one side, then?
It : If you have two sides of the same thing, it's all just one thing.
Me : But the thing has size! It actually takes up space!
It : Who cares about that? It just has to be in one place, which means the guns are in one place.
Me : So in other words, both the guns are in two distinct locations on the speeder, but their barrels aren't. The barrels are are all at one point somewhere out there, and that is the one and only point that bullets will stream out from.
It : See? It's that simple. You have some brains after all. Now... go drink some coffee, 'cuz you need to wake up, man.
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Funny you should mention that, since it apparently watched enough Discovery Channel to make a few connections without knowing what it's talking about. Anytime I brought up physics-related issues with small objects and high frequencies causing unstable or near-singular matrices, the conversations would carry on in strange ways...
For example --
It : "But isn't that a good thing? Because it means we can have black holes in the game. That would be just terrific what with Hitler creating black holes and stuff."
Me : "D'oohhhh... Shoot my monkey... Not... that... kind of singularity."
It : "Oooh... but... then --"
Me : "And how did Hitler come into the picture?"
It : "Well, that doesn't matter... so it's like a quantum singularity, then?"
Me : "Do you even know what that is?"
It : "Sure, it's like the single things and the quantums become the thing."
Me : "Ummm... right... that's exactly it. But that's not what I'm talking about either. And no, there's no connections here to 'quantums' and Hitler."
It : "Ooooohhhh... 'Quantum Hitler'... I like it, I like it."
Me : *sigh*~ "Oh, boy..."
It : "It sounds all futuristic, but it's like blending the old with the new. Like a flying Harley-Davidson."
Me : "Yes, that's exactly what 'Quantum Hitler' is... a flying Harley. How about you write up a design doc about that and post it on the server so everyone can see it?"
It : "Great. I'll do that right now."
Me : "Yes... and I'll get back to work."

And yes, that is where the handle "ShootMyMonkey" came from, though this example wasn't the first time I'd uttered it at that job (though I'd never used it until I had that job). I'll give the creature some credit, though... I wouldn't have expected it to have the brain power to connect "singular" with black holes.

Also, it very frequently tried to pretend it knew how to code (supposedly to try and get on the good side of us programmers) by finding various code and scripts on the web and printing them out claiming that he wrote them. The best part is not only is it painfully obvious that the creature doesn't understand any of the concepts used in the source (e.g. bitmasks, arrays... types), but it doesn't even bother to change any of the comments, including the names of the original authors. So there will be code from some random guys, and even some people whose names we're all aware of.

Example case --
Me : "You wrote this?"
It : "Yeah."
Me : "You...?"
It : "You bet."
Me : "So why does it say 'Daniel Vollmer' right there?"
It : "Oh, that's just an alias I use when I put code online."
Me : "And I guess that goes as well for those other cases with the names 'Mark Kilgard' and 'Dave Kylie' and 'Thomas Pytel' on them"
It : "Yep."
Me : "Uh huh... And the reason for all these aliases?"
It : "Well, you know, it's just so when these things show up online, y'know... If I used my real name... everybody would think 'Oh, this big millionaire is wasting his time writing code like a common citizen' and all."
Me : "..............................."
It : "I even use multiple ones so people think it's more than one person, y'know. I don't ... y'know...... want them to get the wrong idea ... y'know? "
Me : "Okay, why are you winking? That's creepy..."
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What I really love about all the attempts the creature makes to pretend it can code is that it will often look at our code and ask really stupid questions like...
"I think you guys should just straight up and write the code rather than wasting so much time changing the font colors."
"So why do you guys spend all this time writing the code for these function thingies and then voiding it in the end?"
"How can you void a multiplication? Is that like for blonde girl math?"
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I think I left out the most famous of all the stories -- the one that seems to have spread to several studios. The Octagon story!!

Now do realize that the creature claims to have a B.S. in Civil Engineering from SUNY. Well, when we got to a point of hiring a lot more artists, the programmers got pushed out into a second office attached to the old one, and the concept artists got pushed out into a non-functional kitchen attached to the programmer office (which itself happened to have a door leading directly into the ladies restroom for the office building on that floor). Well, this second office just happened to have 5 walls. The creature, thinking that it is rather peculiar for a room to have 5 walls, and decided to comment...

It : "Oh... 5 walls... so it's a... uh... sectagon... no, wait a... uh... octagon."
Physics Guy : "A pentagon..."
It : "No, not like the defense thing, I mean the shape."
Physics Guy : "Yeah, it's called a pentagon."
It : "Right, right, the building is, but I'm talking about the having 5 sides."
Physics Guy : "Yeah, it's because it has 5 sides that it's called a pentagon."
It : "That's just a name. The shape is something else -- like the way 3 sides is called a trigon."
AI Guy : "He means that the name of the shape is pentagon. An octagon is 8 sides."
It : "Guys, I have a civil engineering degree. I know what an octagon is..."
AI Guy : "Yeah, it's a stop sign... 8 sides."
It : "A stop sign doesn't have any sides. It's polygonal."
Me : "Huh?!? Octagon is rooted in 'okto' from the Greek... for 8!! And I won't even get started on 'trigon'"
It : "Yes, but this is English! Do you speek'a de Ennnglish??"
AI Guy : "The point is that 5 is 'penta' as in pentagon"
It : "Look. I've got the civil engineering degree, and I'm a millionaire. You guys are nothing more than programmers. If anyone here is qualified to say what an octagon is, it's me."
.
.
.
This went on for about 20 minutes and started to include the artists as well, until finally, the creature, after being proven wrong, threatened to fire everybody and start the project over because it was our job to "blindly agree that an octagon has five sides if I say it does."

A couple of hours later, it just steps in and in the middle of all the keyboard-clacking sounds, it says "So did you know that green is the opposite of purple?"
After a few seconds of silence, I asked the creature, "Well, in what representation? Additive, Subtractive, YUV, Lab?"
Got a blank stare and after a few seconds, it walked away and started printing out p*rn.

As I went out into the main office for another cup of coffee, I told a few of the senior art boys about the "green opposite of purple" quote... The art director fell out of his chair laughing on the spot, and our lead character artist explained the source. He happened to be working on the texture for one of the alien characters, and happened to be using a purple+green color scheme, and when the creature commented on the choice of color scheme, he replied that they'd show up clearly against each other since green and purple were complementary.
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Might as well tell you guys about before the creature hired any of us. As you've probably guessed by now, the creature is a being of excessive ego and assumes that its wealth is the mark of its capability to do anything. So in the very beginning, it believed that it could make a game on its own without any programming or art staff. Considering that its only knowledge of the game industry at this point was that fact that it had played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and heard how much money it made. The creature at this point figured -- "Hey, that's easy money! I could do this!" and decided to try and make one, and then realized within 10 minutes that it had no clue what it was doing.

Anyway, the creature decided to go around and pitch its idea to publishers before even hiring anybody. So here's the original game design before any of the rest of us got our hands on it and actually turned it into something with a mild measure of creativity.

You are a 14-year old kid in the distant future. You come home, and after finishing your homework, you decide to crank out a few hours of gameplay in your holodeck. Yes... you have a holodeck in your home. Anyway, there are a number of programs ready to go waiting for you to use, and because it's a holodeck, it allows you to simulate all sorts of games in all sorts of settings. This will range from a WWII setting, to fighting dinosaurs, to a dogfight in spacecraft, a modern-day war on the ground with "energy" weapons...

And then, for the final level, you get to have some real fun by combining all the programs into one jumble -- where you run around on the surface of the sun fighting a boss character, who happens to be Hitler riding atop a T-Rex, which has photon torpedo launchers on either side of its head.

The creature pitched this idea to Microsoft, apparently stressing the importance of the "holodeck" construct and how immeasurably valuable it is to include Hitler in the game... and got the following response from the rep on the phone...
"Your ideas are incoherent, trite, cliche, derivative, they directly rip off other games and movies, and they flat out suck. In fact, we would gladly PAY you not to ever call back."

How do I know this? Well that leads into another story. This involves the fact that the creature had lying around, a pirated copy of the Xbox XDK. The creature thinking that this was actually a legal copy (in spite of the fact that the caption read "contains official leaked documentation"), it meant that we could develop on Xbox. After several weeks of explaining to it that even if it was a legal copy, this alone only meant we had the software -- we didn't have any devkits, and the red tape involved in Xbox development meant signing up as a registered developer and going through formal submission processes and so on.

Well, it decided that I should look into Xbox developer registration, so even though I knew it would be a pointless effort, I did it anyway. Of course, the rep on the phone asked me some questions about the company and the track record and so on... after a little while, the MS rep realized what company I was working for and then uttered in a terrified tone, "Oh my god, you work for that construction guy, don't you? Oooohhhh, no, no, no-ooooo..." And then he proceeded to tell me the whole story of the prior submission.
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I'll give this Greenidge guy one thing. He can draw up a design ten times more thoroughly than the creature. I have, lying around in a binder somewhere, the original draft of the one and only "level design" drawn up by the creature (this is separate from its own personal game design doc, though, where it proposed missions involving you destroying the World Trade Center after "Hitler II" takes over it).

The drawing consisted on small circle on the left. A box about the same size filled with Xs (Its idea of crosshatch shading, I guess). And a much smaller circle on the right. The circle on the left has a line going to the very small circle on the right and from there, another line to the box in between them. The circle on the left is marked "ship"... the box is marked "planet" and the very small circle is marked "sun." And THAT... is it.

The concept itself is supposed to be one that involves you in a dogfight in space leading over to the surface of the sun. You run around on foot on the surface of the sun to fight this boss character, which, when defeated exposes a "stargate" which teleports you to the planet you were trying to reach, which just so happened to be halfway between the sun and where you started. So why didn't you just land on the planet in the first place? Well, aside from the fact that you're "supposed to" fight the boss character anyway for some inexplicable reason, it just so happens that your ship is not equipped for the stresses of atmospheric re-entry. Instead, it's shields are only sturdy enough to deal with landing on stars... and apparently teleportation through a stargate...
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So if I'd followed that credo of 3x asked, we'd have a game where a spy glowed blue and buildings, cars, guns, and powerups (in the form of "stargates") would all be made of chrome in various colors. Yes, a "health pack" would actually be a blue chrome stargate you had to fly through to heal. We'd also have "Hitler II" being the World's Fuhrer through alien technology he stole by defeating the aliens. How did the aliens get defeated by the Nazis if they had such superior technology? Simple! Quote, "You have to remember that the Nazis were great architects, and they did so much more for society than programmers and artists will ever be able to do."... huh?!?!? Oh, yes, you'll have a sniper rifle that is "more functional" than any other ever made because it glows and shines a spotlight beam on the target you're aiming at. All guns have muzzle flashes that need to be a minimum of 4 feet wide. Of course, the final boss is Hitler II himself, and when you seemingly kill Hitler the first time, it's revealed that he's actually a liquid chrome shapeshifter who has joined with a neural network in order to become the ultimate being. So now you have to kill "King Hitler"... and then it's revealed that the neural network was just using Hitler to get to you in order to find the supreme human (in order to combine with you making a neural net cyborg), thereby making you the new World's Fuhrer so that you can rule the world with an iron hand (oops... I mean, "chrome hand") in your own image.
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I had that same discussion with it about 5 times, and I still don't get it... at one point, I thought it had simply mixed up the meanings of the English words "from" and "to," though that was on a slightly different topic --

When I'd gotten the lightning gun working...
It : "Why does it look like the lightning is going away from you?"
Me : "Beeeecaussse... it's a gun and you're trying to hit people with it?"
It : "Yeah, but when you shoot things, stuff comes back at you."
Me : "Ummmm... such as?"
It : "You know, like when there's the recoil and the bullet comes out the side."
Me : "Right, the expanding gases from an explosion and the spent shell."
It : "Yeah, and that's the stuff that's moving from the bullet that hits you."
Me : "What do you mean moving 'from' the bullet? The bullet is being shot away from you to the target, and the recoil is the reaction from from the force that shot the bullet."
It : "The thing is that the bullet is coming back to you from the target because of Newton's Third Law. That's what causes the recoil."
Me : "Newton's 3rd law is about *forces*, not objects. And what the hell kind of bullet comes back to you?"
It : "Listen, when you fire a gun, the bullet goes from the target to you because of the equal and opposite reaction that sends the bullet back and then a spring pushes it out the side."
Me : "Bullets go from your gun to the target, not from the target to your gun!"
It : "No, because you can't make energy so it has to cancel out. That's why it goes from there... to here."
Me : "................"
It : "In any case, the lightning should go from the guy to the gun because it's just like lightning in the sky."
Me : "Did you... just... mix up the meanings of the words 'from' and 'to'?"
It : "From is from and to is to... and lightning goes from the sky to the gun."
Me : "And stupid is as stupid does..."
It : "Huh?"
Me : "We're not stealing lightning from the sky."
It : "Oooohhh... that makes sense then."
Me : "Glad I could help."
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And this next one... well, like the firing from one point business, it still mystifies me what the devil was going on in the creature's head ... and I'm certain that if I knew, it would only confuse me further. Anyway, the context is that the creature downloaded a PC demo of NFS:UG, and messes around with it for a bit...

It : "Look at the way the car moves in this game, I think they have some kind of Karma."
Me : "Mmmm... maybe. I doubt it's a very rich implementation, though. The game isn't really geared to be an involved simulation."
It : "What do you mean simulation?"
Me : "I mean whatever physics they have is dumbed down to make it easier on the player since the gameplay goal is different from something like Gran Turismo."
It : "Yeah, but what does movement have to do with physics?"
Me : "ummmmmm... okay, let's just leave it at 'it's an arcade racer.'"
It : "What in God's name is 'arcade'?"
Me : "......... It's Disneyland."
It : "Y'know, I think they should have made the Hulk blue."
Me : "How did... we... get on the Hulk all of a sudden?"
It : "Well, you mentioned Disneyland, I thought of this p*rn site, and then bam! A blue Hulk."
Me : "Yyyyyeah... I'm... leaving... now..."
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Yeah, I think it would be fairly pleased to be in that place at that time... shiny-shine-shine! The future is chrome and glowing. Considering that it thought we didn't put enough reflection or specular on the rocks in a canyon. Yeah... the Grand Canyon gets polished.

And so does Tetris...
It : "What is this game you kept mentioning as one of your favorites... It was... what was it, 'tatteris' or something?"
Me : "Tetris?"
It : "Yeah, that one. What is that?"
Me : "It's a puzzle game that uses orthogonal configurations of 4 squares in which you try to construct horizontal lines across a window."
It : "Oh, my GOD!! Why on earth would anyone want to play a puzzle game when there is all this powerful 3d hardware all over the place? You programmers are so weird."
Me : "okkkaaaay... The point is it's something of a canonical example of how simple and straightforward gameplay mechanics creates something that's accessible and scalable to gamers of all types and levels."
It : "Well, I can sort of accept it if the puzzle pieces were made of chrome or had the specular maps on it or something, but it's just a total joke otherwise."
Me : "Ummm... it *could* have those things, but that has nothing to do with the game itself."
It : "Well, if it was the... y'know... state of the art for its time, then maybe back then, but that was then, this is today."
Me : "And yet, it's transcended all those years and still remained popular enough to--"
It : "I guess it's like the thing in China with the board with all the lines and those black and white rocks they put on it."
Me : "You mean Go? Hell, that's an even better example than Tetris of simple mechanics scaling up to players of all levels."
It : "It's a thousand years old!"
Me : "It's a fair bit older than that."
It : "That's even worse. That's why they're such a backwards country. They can't wake up and smell the coffee."
Me : ".......... wow...."
It : "Ah... Have I gotten through to you?"
Me : "Well... something has."
It : "If you knew these things sooner, maybe you'd be the millionnaire."
Me : "That's great. I think I'll go vomit now."
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"What? There's a Final Fantasy game? Someone actually made a GAME based on THAT movie?"*

"Maybe we ought to switch over and make a p*rn game, y'know. No one has ever made a p*rn game before; we'd totally corner the market."

"I know you programmers don't really care to check if something is working correctly, but I wish you guys would be a little more concerned about aesthetics."

"Here's something that doesn't make any sense to me -- why is that after these companies have made a game, they still keep programmers around?"

EDIT :
* -- Even aside from the quote itself, bear in mind also that this was a few years ago, so the only FF movie in existence at the time was Spirits Within.
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It : "So you know this thing about the water?"
Me : "What thing about the water?"
It : "Y'know, how I was thinking about doing that one level completely underwater."
Me : "Which level is this?"
It : "The one in the Halo where you have to go up floor after floor in this tower."
Me : "What does this have to do with us?"
It : "I'm just saying what if we did that?"
Me : "You mean make a level similar to it, only underwater?"
It : "Yeah, but the water will be radioactive so you can't stay outside for very long."
Me : "Why would the water be radioactive?"
It : "Well, if it wasn't radioactive, you could stay out there forever, and this way, you're forced to go back inside."
Me : "Right... drowning has nothing to do with it."
It : "What do you mean?"
Me : "Whether water is irradiated or not, what happened to the danger of drowning?"
It : "Well, our game is 100 years in the future, so that's not a problem."
Me : "Okay."
It : "Really, dude, you need to wake up. You know, your job won't exist 100 years from now."
Me : "And thus will future generations be saved."
It : "What?"
Me : "Never mind."
It : "Where was I?"
Me : "You were saying something weird."
It : "Was I?"
Me : "Yes."
It : "I was wondering, y'know, what's the point of making more than one game?"
Me : "What? How about making some actual money..."
It : "I mean, you make one game, you're already making millions."
Me : "Assuming the game sells well."
It : "Well, you know, you spend a little time, put it on the market, and there you go, you can sell a couple hundred thousand without even trying."
Me : "I don't know enough words to describe how wrong that is."
It : "Well, millions, then"
Me : "That's not what I meant."
It : "Really? Tens of millions? It's really that easy?"
Me : "Ugh... I have a headache."
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One of my favorites... Our character artist was looking at a texture swatch test rendered by plopping it onto a sphere.
It : "Hmmm... I actually kind of like that, but could you make it a little more roundish?"
Character Artist : "Uuuuuh... that's a sphere."
It : "Right, I know what a sphere is. It's a circle in the world. I'm just saying make it more roundish."
Character Artist : "I'm just testing out a texture by putting it on a sphere. This isn't an in-game thing."
It : "[Animator], I'm not kidding. Just make it more round, and you'll see what I mean."
Character Artist : "Ummm, I'm [Character Artist]... [Animator] is over there."
It : "When did you switch?"
Character Artist : "We're not f*#&ing twins... we've been at these same desks the whole time."
It : "But your hair colors changed."
Animator : "We didn't change our hair colors...
It : "I'm pretty sure you did. I know you did."
Character Artist : "You're also pretty sure that chrome is a color."
Animator : "I know; what the f*#k are you smoking, dude?"
It : "............ I think I'll go talk to [My Initials]."
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The "slave labor camp" story was actually it covering for various prior stories, whenever someone happened to open up a little hole in the creature's stories. So the first time I heard it was when one of the then newer concept artists heard the "washing plates and silverware at McDonald's" story for the first time.

New Guy : Plates at McDonald's?
It : Yeah, you know...
New Guy : They have plates and silverware at McDonald's?
It : Oh... you know what, it was actually an IHOP. That's what it was.
New Guy : Oh... okay.
It : Yeah. Back in Lebanon, with the IHOP and stuff.
Art Director : IHOP had locations in Lebanon back then?
It : Back when? It wasn't that long ago. I'm not that old.
Me : Given how long ago you said you came to the US, that would have made it pretty well over 20 years ago.
It : Oh. Well, the thing is, you know, they can take the name of whatever they want if there's no actual IHOPs there.
Art Director : So you were washing at a copycat IHOP?
It : Well that's what they called it, but it was really a slave labor camp.
Art Director : That's kind of a leap.
It : Y'know... I was doing it for that little while, but then I realized that they were beating me and not paying me.
Me : ................ okay... I guess you can't be fooled by that sort of thing for too long, huh?
It : You bet I can't. I'm smarter than anyone else.
Me : .... yeah...
It : I totally sued their asses and they backed off.
Art Director : Yeah, those slave labor camps are always so mindful of legal repercussions.
Me : That is the way I would've played it.
It : And they didn't realize that I am an attorney.
Me : (under breath) yeah, neither did you.
New Guy : So... uhhh... I take it you used the money from the lawsuit to start up the construction company?
It : Well, I paid for school here first and then went through a couple of businesses off of that money before I got into construction.
Me : Hmmm... didn't bother to take the bar here?
It : Take a bar? Take whose bar?
Me : Never mind.
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Here we are... the Hitler explanation story. This one actually occurred with rather ironic timing, so when I recorded it, I noted the date and time.

Sept. 11, 2003 @ 10:22 am...
It : You know the other day, I mentioned how much I adored Hitler and then the next day, I had on that SS uniform and everything and everybody acted all weird.
AI Guy : Can't say I'm surprised. You'd pretty much get that response from anyone in the country.
It : Really? There's THAT much hatred for the Nazis? I had no idea...
Me : You are talking about someone who's essentially the poster boy for genocide and racism and so on. He's written in history books as practically the embodiment of evil.
It : I see... See, I'm from the Middle East, so I'm more objective about it than the people in this country. I really don't see why anyone would hate Hitler so much.
Me : Objective is one thing, you feel how you feel... but it's another thing not to notice how practically everybody in the entire country feels after having been here for 20+ years.
AI Guy : I mean the fact that you are from the Middle East in that context only suggests that you have no problem with the idea of murdering Israelites.
It : Let me ask you something, and be objective about it and not subjective... You know, subjective as in, taking it out of the whole...
AI Guy : I know what you mean.
It : Okay, so then let me just ask you, and again, be objective and not subjective about it, but if you saw a poster with Hitler on it, and he was surrounded by futuristic-looking SS soldiers, and the title is ************, wouldn't you have no choice but to be intrigued?
AI Guy : I would not be intrigued. I would be utterly disgusted.
It : Really?!? Disgusted?!???
Me : For that matter, no store in the country would even display such a poster.
AI Guy : Yeah, that's another thing. That situation wouldn't even happen.
It : Really?! The hatred for Nazis goes that far?
AI Guy : Yeah, if they had that poster, they'd probably be rioted... Molotovs through the windows and all...
It : Oh. Hmmm... But from a business point of view, don't you want that kind of publicity? You know, raise some controversy?
Me : The kinds of controversy that are actually desirable doesn't really include the scope of racial issues. Even Battlefield and such, with the German forces, they're careful not to actually use a Nazi flag."
AI Guy : Yeah, you do NOT want that kind of publicity. It will tarnish your reputation. I mean, you can take a route like that, but it certainly won't get you on the shelves at Walmart.
It : Why? Are the owners of Walmart Jewish?
AI Guy : *laughs* Nnnooo... They're just really conservative because they're a wide-market retailer so they need to be careful and PC and all.
Me : Which is what makes them high-volume, so you'll never hit millions of copies if you don't get to Walmart.
It : But should we really care about losing one little segment of the market? So what if no Jews buy the game?
AI Guy : Jewish people aren't alone in being offended by Nazis as you've seen, so the risk of offending someone means it won't get out on store shelves for anyone to buy.
It : Ooooooohhh... But do Jewish people go to Walmart? I mean, it's not owned by Jews.
Me : *sigh~~~~~*
It : You see, this is how objective I am. I don't see Hitler as a madman... I see him as you know... daring, you know... trying to take over the whole world and such. You have to be a really brave soul to do something like that.
Me : Or suffering delusions of grandeur... like someone else I know.
It : Who do you mean?
AI Guy : *laughs*... Well, I mean, he's hated because he killed so many millions... and did so needlessly. Deaths as a result of political scapegoating and so on.
It : Well, don't forget, the Russians killed millions as well, and of their own kind, not people who could be viewed as less important like another race.
Me : .........wow...
AI Guy : Stalin's not very popular either.
It : What? Really?! No, that can't be right. Hmmmm...
Me : I'm not sure how you ever arrived at these sort of conclusions.
It : What about that Iraq guy? Everybody talks about him all the time. And he kills people rather senselessly.
Me : If you mean Saddam, nobody talks about him in a positive light, either.
It : Come on! You have to be joking.
Me : Do you ever really listen to anything people say about him?
It : Well, you know, it's like articles and newscasts... all that ever really matters is one or two words. Everything else is fluff.
AI Guy : I guess we've unlocked the secrets of your obliviousness.
It : I don't follow.
Me : Go Google it.
It : For p*rn?
Me : ... yes... for p*rn...

I should note that at that point, about the only thing the Creature ever really used its Internet access for was to go hunting for p*rn, so the fact that my mention of Google immediately incited the question of searching for p*rn wasn't really that surprising.
Click to expand...

There are some more stories from ShootMyMonkey and other developers in the thread. Some of them might not be as funny if you don't understand some things about software/game development though.

chow_yun_fat · Jul 31, 2006

lol...how did such an idiot become a millionaire

RC Cola · Jul 31, 2006

He most likely inherited it, at least according to ShootMyMonkey. He also had some other businesses that might have been profitable for him (although maybe not entirely legal).

If I'm not mistaken, he was being sued by the city of Houston recently. I think SMM mentioned that in one of his posts.

lpbman · Jul 31, 2006

I wonder if that guy was the basis for the Fed Ex commercial...
“We get fringe benefits, not French benefits, it’s not the Leaning Tower of Pizza, and James Dean was an actor—Jimmy Dean makes sausages.”

deadlybulb · Jul 31, 2006

RC, did you see the movie, Grandma's Boy?

A lot of it takes place at a video game developing company. I thought it was hilarious, even if you're not a video game fanantic like me.

RC Cola · Jul 31, 2006

No, I haven't seen it yet. I'll try to check it out.

BTW, here's a picture that was posted in that thread that I thought was pretty funny:

DaDakota · Jul 31, 2006

Wow,

Why would anyone continue to work for that guy?

DD

WhoMikeJames · Aug 1, 2006

deadlybulb said:

RC, did you see the movie, Grandma's Boy?

A lot of it takes place at a video game developing company. I thought it was hilarious, even if you're not a video game fanantic like me.
Click to expand...

Best movie.

gifford1967 · Aug 1, 2006

That was very funny.

Roxfan73 · Aug 1, 2006

These are my favorite video game developers:

They're the guys from the video game college commercials you see on G4TV.

Lady: "Hey guys, finished the graphics on that game yet? I've got another one I need designed!"
Guy 1: "We just finished level 3 and need to tighten up the graphics a little bit."
Lady: "Great!" *walks off*
Guy 2: "Can you believe we got jobs doing this?"
Guy 1: "And my mom said I'd never get anywhere playing these games!"

Some how they can "tighten up the graphics" with an SNES controller!

rhadamanthus · Aug 1, 2006

Why on earth would anyone keep working for that guy?

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