It's Crunch Time!

Local Austin newspaper the Statesman.com took a trip to NCsoft's Tabula Rasa development headquarters last month and got a peek at all the last minute work being put in. What's it like to work over a long weekend, and just how many bugs get reported a week?

"Oh, yeah," replied a weary and unshaven worker. "We're here Monday. We're here this weekend. We were here last weekend. We're here. I'm not going anywhere."

Welcome to crunch time, the intense period when game developers scramble to finish the last elements and work out the last kinks before a game goes on sale and tens of thousands of players around the world begin playing it simultaneously. The stakes are high: No new game is bug-free, but if players find too many bugs, sales can flop.

Bug meetings, sleep deprivation, and so much more are discussed in this article.