I Thought I Knew Tired

Here we are, working on a Sunday for the second week in a row. E3 is in 3 weeks, and we’re in full-swing, tough-as-nails crunch time.

This morning, I got up relatively early, but found myself physically incapable of putting on my socks to go to work. I was, without any exageration, mentally exhausted.

I logged on to MSN, and chatted a bit with Louis, our Lead AI Engineer, and got a quick tour of the status of the game. Louis joked around to make me feel a bit guilty, and it worked a charm: 15 minutes later, I was in the taxi on my way to work.

And here I am once more.

I’ve worked long hours before, and I’ve known stress before, but the road to E3 has shown me new levels of exhaustion and tension. It’s going well, mind you; we’re all exhausted as much as we’re excited, about going to Los Angeles, and about showing our game to the world. It’s a sign of the team bonding that many of us in the core E3 team are either quoting Arrested Development at one another all the time, or playing round upon round of Mario Kart DS whenever we have a minute.