Invisible washing machines and squirrel timers: developers reveal their weirdest game dev tricks
Gone Home studio co-founder asks for the "most embarrassing game dev crimes".
Sometimes, a game's development will go largely as planned—but sometimes, you have no choice but to build game logic around invisible washing machines in the sky, apparently. That's just one of the stories to come out of a call for the "most embarrassing game dev crimes" from Steve Gaynor, co-founder of Gone Home developer The Fullbright Company, on Twitter.
As of writing, his tweet has more than 750 replies, including from the developers of Baldur’s Gate, Ultima Online, Telltale's The Walking Dead, Arma and Firewatch. The responses will make you realise just how creative developers have to get to solve major issues, as well as how far they're willing to go to hide the inner workings of their games from the player.
I've compiled my favourite 15 responses below for you to flick through. If you don't want to know how the sausage gets made, look away now.
If you still want more, you can browse the full thread here.
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Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.