Chapter 8: Part 2 -- Work hard, play hard

They didn't hire me for another year. I think I called them up once a week, saying, "Hey, how's it going? I'm still here!" At one point they said, "We really want to hire you, we just can't right now. Get back in touch with us every so often and we'll let you know what's up."

I took that as a cue to call them every single week, and at some point they told me, "Hey, why don't you check in, like, once a month?" I might've slowed calling to every other week.

- Eric Sexton

You would take the VW van that Max owned, and you'd go to Desk Depot, and it was just old desks. You would pick your own desk, haul it up with everybody's help, and you'd just drop your desk down and that's where you worked. No cube farms or any of that crap, so communication was awesome. You just looked over at someone and said, "Hey."

- Rick Seis

NFL Quarterback Club '96 for the Game Boy.

I've always been one of the worst roamers. Generally, even when I'm at my most productive, it usually happens in one intense three-hour chunk. For the rest of the day I'll kick around ideas or work on smaller-scale things, but I'm able to be a major distraction for everyone else.

This is partially why Runic Games doesn't mind having me a thousand miles away from the studio in my current job.

- Matt Uelmen, composer, Condor

Dave would challenge me: "Here, write this." I would come up with algorithms and functions to figure out how to get things to work. My first goal was to make a game like Centipede. After I programmed that, I made a Pac-Man game.

- Peter Brevik

I looked forward to it every day. We would carpool together, and we would go to hockey games at night together, and work together. It was a great time.

- Peter Brevik

The microchip had a little window on the top. If you shot it with ultraviolet light, the light would remove all the data. So we put the microchips on this little platform, we'd stick it on this ultraviolet sheet, set the timer for around 30 minutes, and sit there.

It was like making toast or something. Tick, tick, tick--ding!

- David Brevik

You couldn't just test out a little bit of code and run the program and see what happened. You really had to think about as many tasks as possible ahead of time. In that way you had to be a little more organized. You couldn't just change a line of code and re-run it.

- Robin van der Wel, programmer, Condor

Learn about the making of Diablo's iconic cathedral and the construction of Tristram in later chapters.

For me, working on the M2 game was tough. I had to get out my college physics book to work on that game. I remember the PlayStation coming out. Sony had invested a lot of money into writing libraries to make the programming easier, but with the M2, there was no supporting code for that system.

It's funny because I think the whole course of 3DO's legacy would have changed had they just come out with the libraries at the same time they came out with the hardware.

- Brian Piltin, programmer, Condor

All day we would sit around and play NHL '94, pretending like we were working. We had a schedule up on the wall. Different people played on different days. We tried to spread it out, make the tournaments last a little while.

There were specific moves we developed that would score most of the time. Almost all of the time. We had nicknames for every single one of the moves: "Oh, you straight-lined me!"

- David Brevik

Max, towards the end, actually starts to beat me. He's the only one that starts to beat me. I dominated for the most part. Dave would never come close, but Dave could always beat Max. Always. Whatever that was, whatever their styles were, Dave could always beat Max, but my style was always counter to Dave's style. Always.

Erich and Max continued to move up, and yet Max would still get beat by Dave. So when tournaments would come I'd sit there chanting, "Please, Dave, beat Max! "Please, Dave, beat Max!"

- Rick Seis

NHL '94 was a hotly contested affair in the Condor offices.

We did everything together while at work. We'd go to lunch, and it wasn't like, "Ugh, we've got to go to a company lunch." Everybody wanted to do that. So we'd all go to lunch and inevitably the Schaefers would bring their newspaper, and everybody would pick a section and just eat lunch while reading the paper, with your buddies around you, and not much conversation would happen.

I'd say, "What sections are left?" Everybody wanted Sports or Business, and I'd end up getting Living or something.

- Rick Seis

We liked coming to work because it didn't feel like work. It felt like a club where you went to hang out with your friends.

- Kelly Johnson

We hired people one by one as we found good people. We wanted to keep the group together, and I think having a steady group of people that worked together for a long time was something we valued pretty early on.

- Max Schaefer

David Craddock

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.