I don’t know of a game developer who accidentally deleted his game before releasing it, but I know of a game developer who had his game irrevocably corrupted before he could finish it.
Set the wayback machine for the mid-1980s, when home computers ruled the video game landscape. A game developer and artist by the name of Jim Sachs (of Defender of the Crown fame) was developing a game based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the Amiga and created a custom-boot routine for his game (it loaded from floppy disk, like most games of the era). He had gotten pretty far into development and, of course, had some pretty awesome art along with his game code.
Screenshot from Defender of the Crown, artwork by Jim Sachs
About that time, a virus was going around. As far as I know, it was one of the first instances of a computer virus. It was pretty insidious, but was meant to be harmless. It was developed by a guy who wanted to prove to his friend that all computer memory wasn’t erased when doing a warm reboot on an Amiga. He created a little program that wrote itself to the boot sector of a floppy disk after a warm reboot. After five or six warm reboots, it would reveal itself as a window that popped up and said, “Congratulations, your computer has been infected with a virus!” (it may be the SCA virus, but it doesn’t sound exactly the same).
One of Sach’s screens from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (image credit)
Normally, this “virus” was harmless. It would write itself to disks that weren’t write-protected, but would otherwise leave disks usable. A skilled Amiga user could overwrite the infected sectors to clean the virus away, though it may have infected several disks. But this was only true for disks that used standard boot sectors, using the standard Amiga disk-operating system.
As you’ll recall, Sachs wrote a custom boot-routine for his game, and some of his disks became infected with the virus while he was developing his game. Since it doesn’t reveal itself until after it had infected several disks, and only after the requisite number of warm reboots, it’d be easy to infect one’s entire collection of write-enabled disks. Sachs game disk was write enabled since:
He was actively developing his game
Most game disks were write enabled by default, so they could save game state and other information (this was before hard disks were common)
The virus overwrote part of his custom boot-up routine, effectively destroying several months of work. I don’t know if he had his source protected by an SCM, but there is good chance that he didn’t, since that wasn’t common at the time either.
Soon afterwards, apparently disappointed by the loss of so many month’s work, he gave up game development for good.
Image credit: Google Images
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“With all due respect, you’re not paying us $5,000 so I can carry out quick revenge.”
I’ll never forget that line, spoken by a fully armed contractor hired for my personal protection on the strangest day of my career.
The year was 2014 and Dan is falling apart again.
Dan (not his actual name) shows up in many companies. Dan is intelligent, capable of spectacular results but is incredibly inconsistent. Our Dan once led the entire company in our sales rankings and had four President’s Club plaques in his office.
The only thing Dan was consistent at was being a nice guy. Everyone loved him. He gave his time freely to everyone in the office. Whether you were an intern or a manager, he raised his hand if you needed help.
Dan was in his early 50s and was a family man. Married with two kids in high school, he lived a simple life.
Dan drove us crazy. He could be running along with incredible results for the first six months of the year and then look like a completely different person in the second half. He was either sensational or a complete disaster. There was no in-between with Dan.
Most of the time, it just took a stern conversation. He had four different direct managers in his time with the company. I was several levels above him but saw the same three-step process play out every time.
New manager loves him. Dan is helpful, hustles, delivers great results and is a great team player.
Manager is concerned. Dan is missing deadlines, seems overwhelmed and we’ve had some customers complaints.
Manager is done. The entire office is distracted in putting out Dan’s fires and he just lashed out at a teammate (or some similar incident).
Throughout this process, Dan’s manager talks with him about his performance and encourages him to get his mojo back. Dan agrees and commits to improvement while performance keeps getting worse. Each time, a last straw is added to the figurative camel’s back when Dan erupts on a teammate or manager.
We then put Dan on a written performance plan with the direct language of “If Dan fails to achieve the results in this plan, he will be terminated.”
The performance plan always flips a switch in Dan. He would tell us how much he loves the company and needs the job. He would apologize, promise to improve and then deliver on that promise. Results would go from terrible to great.
I am talking about worst to first kind of turn-arounds. We would go from customer complaints to receiving love letters from his customers.
One year later, the process would start over again.
After this cycle happened too many times, I had a conversation with him.
“If it goes downhill again Dan, there won’t be another written performance plan. We can’t afford to keep disrupting the office. You have to get it together and keep it together. Is there something outside of this office that we can help you with?”
He paused for a long time and opened up. He suffered from depression. He drank too much. His family had confronted him. He was in a bad place.
Our company partnered with a counseling organization for just this type of situation. I offered him a leave of absence if he would enter the program, of which we would pay for 100%. He had to attend every session and stay in the program or we would terminate his employment.
He graciously agreed.
We gave him two months of paid leave and he entered the counseling program. He came back energized and we saw the best of Dan.
For a while.
Soon, the process started again as complaints started surfacing, both from his teammates and customers.
This time, it ended with Dan sending an explosive email to a customer at 2AM. This cringe-inducing email was four paragraphs long and all but called the customer an idiot. It was totally out of his normal character.
This happened on a Friday. The customer forwarded his email to me and several other managers the next morning with Dan copied on the email. This customer shared her plans to post it on her blog and social media accounts.
Dan left me with no choice but to fire him and he knew it.
On Sunday evening, I got a call from Dan’s manager. She was rattled.
Dan knew what was coming on Monday and confided in several people in the office, in the worst of ways.
He told one person that he expected to be fired. He went on to say he deserved it and probably didn’t deserve to be alive. Maybe, he should just end it all.
Startling, but it got worse. He called another employee who happened to be an avid hunter. Without talking business, he asked her questions about handguns and which caliber he should look into.
Damn.
This was the summer of 2014 and two school shootings had just taken place on the West Coast within a week of each other. Hints like this couldn’t be ignored.
My first responsibility as a leader is keeping employees safe. Was Dan likely crying out for help? Probably. Was he going to bring a gun to the office? Highly unlikely. Could we take that assumption to the bank? Absolutely not.
I told our manager to sit tight and I got on the phone with my boss. We were not going to take any chances. He had experience with a security firm and knew the owner.
He arranged for an “armed specialist” to be with me the next morning in the office. To this day, I appreciate how quickly my boss worked to arrange everything. I have fired many people but never in a situation like this.
For the first time in my life, I was headed to a business meeting with a loaded gun.
I talked with our manager in the office and asked her to arrange an office meeting at our satellite office across the street. In essence, I asked her to get everyone out of the main office to start the morning. If something happened, I would be the only employee in the office with Dan that morning.
Next, I called Dan and asked him to meet me the next morning at my office.
I didn’t sleep that night. My imagination kept taking me to dark scenarios. I wanted to tell my wife more of my fears but kept them to myself. I didn’t want her to start imagining all the crazy stuff I was dreaming up.
I met with my bodyguard two hours before I was scheduled to meet with Dan. He was an older gentleman, short and lean. He wore a dress shirt tucked into jeans with a leather bomber jacket on. He gave me his credentials. Twenty years in the military and another twenty years in private security, both overseas and domestic.
He wanted to know where all the entry points to the office were. We walked the perimeter of the building and did the same inside. We walked back to my office where I planned to meet with Dan.
“Too many doors to get here. Also, what if one of your employees comes back to the office and is back here with us? I like the offices in the lobby.”
“OK.”
We walk up front and sit down in one of the lobby offices. He asked me how I planned to conduct the conversation and what I am expecting.
“Well, I can meet with him in this office. I will leave the office door open since no one will be here yet. You can sit right outside the office on that couch.”
“With all due respect, you’re not paying us $5,000 so I can carry out quick revenge.”
It takes me a few seconds to comprehend what he is saying.
“Ian, I won’t do you any good on the couch if he brings a gun into that office with you. I’ll be sitting right next to you.”
“Of course.”
“I will have my gun covered by my jacket but trust that I can get to it quickly. I don’t want to show it and get him more nervous than he already is.”
We agree to announce him as an “HR specialist” hired to assist in the discussion. This sounds much more comforting than telling Dan that my bodyguard will shoot to kill should Dan pull out a gun.
Dan walks through the door on time. I am anything but calm. I am not sure if I am worked up because of potential danger or simply because I am sitting next to a trained killer.
Dan knows what the meeting is about. He sees the paperwork in front of me. I introduce the person on my right who smiles and shakes his hand. I immediately get to the point.
“Dan, today is your last day with the company. We tried to make this work but feel that we need to move on without you.”
“I understand.”
I walk him through the paperwork. All standard stuff. When his benefits end, who to call in HR to learn more about Cobra, severance details, etc. He signs everything quickly. Next, I pivot.
“Dan, you said some things to people in the office that concern me.”
“Oh, that. Is this why you have someone here with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to do anything crazy.”
“Dan, we want to help you continue with the counseling if you are interested.”
“Thank you. I am interested. I’m sorry for scaring everybody.”
I took his computer and access keys to the office, shook his hand and he left without incident. We paid for additional counseling and an outplacement service that helped him find new employment.
Since Dan had already been enrolled and worked with the same counseling organization, we alerted them as to what had happened and they reached out to him immediately after our meeting. He started counseling again that day and they continued to work with him for several months.
Our security detail remained in the lobby the rest of the day, guarding the front door. We took it a step further and paid for him to show up every day for the rest of the week, watching the front entrance.
Excessive? Maybe, but it gave our local managers peace of mind. As an organization, we had the safety of 30 employees to worry about. Many were nervous as word got out about the calls he made over that weekend.
Count me as one of the nervous employees. Scared is a more honest word. Scared he might hurt himself, other employees or me.
It was an incredibly difficult situation as you want to do right by the employee while also protecting the people he works with.
I left work early that day. I went home and hugged my wife and kids for a long time.
Then I poured a tall glass of Scotch.
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