Last Days of Amuze

July 1

Some (demo scene) friends came to visit Amuze - I make sure I have the NDA:s ready and do the procedure as usual. Janne was not happy however, and ordered Rikard to get those people out - I had to cut the visit short and show them out. The reason seemed to be that Janne said he needs to clear visits first, which we never had to before.

July 7

I think Juan was fired or asked to quit today. Not too surprising, I think he calls in sick about 50% of the time. Smart guy :)

July 15 (Tuesday)

After the previous 83 hour week has drained me completely I ask to speak with John & Sheridan. I simply tell them I can’t go on like this and I will limit my working weeks to 60h (still more than acceptable by law) and take the 36h weekend rest also defined by the same work time law. Sheridan seems to think this is lame but John understands.

After canceling most everyone else of the programmers vacations (usually just a couple of days in advance) Janne takes 3 weeks vacation himself.

Rest of July

Normal hard work for two weeks, but manage to take at least one day off during the weekend. Feel like I can cope, although I still see no way we will make any deadline, which tends to demoralize. Builds always drag on into the night and tie up too many people.

August 1 (Fri)

Sheridan mail out schedule for the weekend - everyone is to work from 10:00 to 24:00 each day except some (including me) who on Sunday will work from 20:00 to 08:00 Sunday morning. It felt like “And here’s your weekend rest, sucker!”

After again being denied his Vacation, Johnny quits.

Sheridan leaves for England. In fact, no one from management is to be present during this monster weekend. Bad feelings all over.

I decide to go to the Assembly demo party next week with some friends. I’ve missed so much this summer, I need to do at least this one thing. I know there is no way I would get time off for it, so I know there is going to be major trouble - but I feel I have to get away. (Although I have doubts about it during the weekend).

August 3 (Sun)

Been working a lot.

Worked from 16:00 to 08:00 Monday morning. Feeling worse than ever. It’s just so fucking pointless, the game is still very far from completion. Know that I need to get away soon or this will not work at all. Regardless of what happens I will go to Finland over next weekend. I tell Rikard this so at least he can plan for it.

August 4

Filip has also had enough and quits. I think he’s been going ever since the incident where - to get the weekend off - he was forced to promise to do an impossible task (finish the Above part of the game in one week) with the threat of being fired otherwise. (People who didn’t argue with management but just took the weekend anyway had no such problems).

August 5

Tomorrow I’m going to Assembly. Have been thinking all the time of whether I should quit or just leave for the weekend. After talking to Rikard I decided to talk to Sheridan tomorrow.

August 6

Nervous as hell and after not being able to sleep at all, I ask to speak with Sheridan, and I sit down with him and John. I tell them that I intend to be on a ferry to Finland in a few hours and not be back until Monday morning. Sheridan freaks out completely. I get it all; “How can you do this?” - “There’s no way we’re going to make beta without you” - “If that’s the way you feel we can all just pack up and go home and no one will get any salary because we wont get anything from Sega” “It will be your fault that we fail”.

My arguments to this was (as usual) that there was absolutely no way we where going to make beta anyway, that every weekend has been “the important weekend”, that I felt I just couldn’t go on like I did and had to get away, and that since there was no way they would ever let anyone take any time off, the only option was to just take it.

I cant help but feeling really bad - but the only thing about my decision I wasn’t sure of is whether I should have told John & Sheridan earlier or not. One of the most awful discussions of my life. Was still all shook up the day after.

August 11 (11:00)

Back at the office after Assembly, it’s like I’m still there. Peder has decked out on the couch in the middle of the room, scraps of food and soda cans everywhere. Emil & Rikard is up trying to fix things for the build, both looking like zombies. Since I’m “rested” I stay to finish the build. Sheridan seems friendly enough, but I later find out that they came very close to firing me, and also tried to turn the other programmers against me on a meeting, by saying I fucked them over by leaving them with all this work for “beta”.

I burn 4 DVDs and start the FTP of the “Beta” to Sega at 02:00 in the morning and then I take a taxi home.

August 12

“Beta” delivered - Meeting in the bar. John & Sheridan tells us that they have finally been able to get some more time - namely three weeks. Beta is pushed forward two weeks. For a moment I have the thought that it just might be possible to finish the game in that time, but I will soon realize that there is still way too little too late. They also announce a long weekend with Friday off.

August 15-17

Weekend off. Feels like I should do lots of things - finish my CV, apply for jobs, clean up the apartment, wash clothes. Manages nothing of this. (Although I start hobby coding for PS2 on Sunday, quite a bit different (and more fun!) then at work. Something must be wrong with me :)

August 18

Back to work and GUI coding (which still seems to be the most important task according to management). Fredrik Sjöö comes by and is worried about the TRC and the fact that it’s been totally disregarded so far. I agree but Sheridan wants me to work on the interface so that’s what I do for now.

In the programmers meeting I tell Rikard that perhaps it would be better if I concentrate on the more technical issues and he will talk to management about it (trying to “sell” it to them was what he said).

Leave work at 18:15 and realize I feel guilty about just working slightly above 8h, but have to say goodbye to Dan (a friend who’s moving to Skövde to study game programming for 3 years).

August 19

10:30

John & Sheridan called a meeting with me, Jonas Norberg an Rikard Elofsson. They tell us that we actually failed alpha and haven’t gotten any money and need to fix all major bugs and basically make it pass TRC in two days. We’re also not to tell anyone else of this. I tried to gently point out that this was an impossible task - they (like always) gave their sympathies and said they understood how hard it would be, but nothing else. They didn’t even seem to expect any feedback from us on the matter (as usual).

14:30

A meeting is called at the bar where each of the people in management starts to admit what they’ve done wrong with the project, like Managers Anonymous or something. Actually it was a pretty good move from their part, but it is just too late. Sheridan admits driving people too hard without knowing that much about the games industry, John admits to an over-ambitious script resulting in too big a game for the time frame that had been made with no feedback to us etc.

Anyway, the atmosphere at work is slightly better, and surprised I guess. Interesting that both Rikard and Peter basically (but in not so many words) said that the project was not going to be finished the way it was now.

There’s still no way this game is coming out this year though, which at least me an Fredrik Sjöö is completely agreed upon, and (hopefully) something other experienced people realize. Do I sound bitter? I guess I am…

18:00

The insanity of trying to fix the TRC problems without telling the others starts to sink in…

And again I’m sitting here late in an almost empty office…

August 20

Pretty productive day.

Managers never came back from lunch - that’s happened before, they usually go out for beer for meetings or planning sessions (I think they’re planning the next game).

“Do as I say but don’t do as I do” seems to be the motto.

Actually, it pisses me off something fierce…

August 21

With memory leeks reduced enough I start looking at the non-repeatable crash-bugs. It’s hopeless - bugs that appear in third party code or bugs with no callstack, and maybe only after playing though a level or two.

It’s especially hopeless since I can’t tell people that it’s important to fix crashes - and a lot of bugs seems to relate to physics, and the guy who coded that is leaving in one week and is supposed to write the whole motorcycle part of the game before that which is already completely impossible.

No managers around as usual. My guess is another beer round.

Sent off my CV to 9 Californian game companies, and to Dice.

Friday

Wrote a ‘Memwall’ system for the memory allocator to try and detect memory overwrites. Found one so far.

14:30

The weekly Outlook reminder for “Fredagsöl” pops up as usual, even though that was canceled a long time ago.

18:20

Sneaked away from the office to go and drink beer with some people from work. Lot of feelings ventilated. Everyone else seems to hate the company as much as I do.

Saturday

Very hungover. Worked a bit. No managers.

Sunday

Worked a few hours. RpTeam Render bug seems impossible to locate. Fixed some more memory fragmentation. No managers.

Monday

Emil is off on vacation, I wonder how long it will take for management to realize. Only Janne here though - rumors about Sheridan taking a long-weekend (again!) because of bank holiday in England.

Four people called in sick today. I wonder if it’s something contagious? Wouldn’t mind being decked out in bed for a few days.

Daniel (another programmer) quit last week. Three more (project-employed) will leave at the end of this week.

Tuesday

Payday was yesterday, still no money on the account. Hope Amuze isn’t out of money already.

Management think they can hire Jim again (old Amuze employee) - I don’t think so since Johnny (the guy who had to go earlier) was one of his best friends.

Nobody’s working much now, just waiting for Stefan to find out why no money has been paid out.

17:10

Info at the bar. Stefan tells us the problem is that the money from Sega for the Alpha hasn’t gone into the account, but they hope it will come very soon, and they will try hard to fix it.

The problem is that I know (together with Rikard and Jonas) that Sega had said there would be no money for alpha because of TRC failure. We decide to talk to Stefan even though we aren’t supposed to talk about it. Stefan is completely unaware of this, and Rikard calls John to get a clearer picture but John promises the money will arrive, that there is no problem. I don’t know what to believe - I am at a point now where I have no problems believing that John would lie about this, even to Stefan, to try and get people to finish the beta this weekend.

Maybe also worth noting; Someone told me that Stefan has personal debts of 3 million already.

Stefan has talked to Sheridan about trying to get John to stay away from the economics of things because it never works. The reason Sega is interested to work with us is because of the “movie” type of games that the west are good at but not Japan - which explains some of the weird decisions (almost 200 cut scenes of more than 1.30 hours for instance).

Wednesday

Stefan arrived after lunch - still no word on the money.

Rikard had talked to John yesterday about the situation, saying that people are a worried - John answered that as long as it doesn’t affect the productivity it was no problem. OF COURSE it will affect productivity - the two head managers go away to england on a computer fair and leave the rest of the company wondering where the money is during one of the most important weeks of the project. Beta on Monday, what a joke.

Apparently, Stefan is unable to reach John. Other people in the company is starting to catch on…

John will be in early tomorrow an “clarify the situation”. I can already guess; there will be no money this week but we still need to work very hard all through the weekend to finish beta. And the worst thing is I think most people will do just that. I hope I can stand up to such crap.

Thursday

John, Sheridan & Philip turned up at around 10, but stayed away from everyone else (meeting room). After lunch Janne mailed out to say there would be a meeting in the bar at 16:30. Very few people are working. At least I finished the new texture cache loading…

15:00

Meeting in the bar - John tells us it’s a screw up from Sega and it will be another 1.5 weeks before the money arrive. They make a pretty good job of smoothing things over. People go back to work.

Other news; in two weeks time we must send a build with two levels in perfect condition - if we succeed we will get an extension, if we fail the game will be canned. I just hope we get our money before that date.

We needed to make a build, didn’t leave until 21:30

Friday

Management divided the company into two groups with almost everyone in the group that should concentrate on the two levels. I was not in that group however.

Talked a bit to Sheridan before going home. He was nervous and again talked about the importance of getting the two levels perfect, and that beta wasn’t that important (huh?)

Saturday

Arrived at 14, really didn’t want to go. Hate work.

John & Sheridan was around but didn’t say much and left early.

Sunday

Arrived at 13.30 - no managers here today except Janne (but he wasn’t here that long).

Rikard called John to ask about how we’re supposed to “leave off” the beta - he expected Fredrik to test during the night, but Fredrik had no intention of coming in for night work with such short notice. After Rikard made several calls back and forth John admitted there had been a “misunderstanding” and Fredik agreed to come in at 06 next morning to test.

Burned beta candidate at around 23 - better than before but still crashes, still has lots of problems.

Monday

Slow day - no inspiration left.

Emil back again after just one week.

Sheridan not here.

Burned another beta with some fixes.

Several people asked John about the money - his answer was apparently something like “I’ll check soon, it should be coming” like it was low priority…

Tuesday

Came late (11:40), felt like crap.

New features started showing up on lists from management (to be implemented for the two levels) - it seems I am expected to work on this too - OSD things again. It’s the same story all over again.

Sheridan tried to be nice.

Talked to Rikard H at lunch - apparently he told John just what he thought over a few beers - including that he really didn’t care if the game came out or not and that he hated the whole situation.

He also said that Matte didn’t even want his name in the credits, because the game is just not good. I agree.

Fredik Sjöö quit - leaving for Avalanche Studios.

Went home at 18:40.

Wednesday

Janne sick today.

Sheridan sent out the list of things to do for the two-level-release; there is no way it’s going to work. Too many changes in too little time. Will probably make the game even messier and more crash- prone, and make gameplay more confusing - if we can get around the fact that we have used all memory and now they’re going to throw tons of new stuff in there…

Thursday

Finished optimized free() (with skiplist).

We find out (which I sort of already knew/suspected) that John happily spends a lot of money on his UK travels and UK people. They always fly first class and stay at good hotels in the center of London. This off course pisses people off even more.

Stefan says he’s got confirmation from the bank that the money is arriving, and promises we will have them on our account on Friday or at the very latest Monday morning 09:00 - “100% certain”

Friday

Finished new alpha-sorting, everything seems to work fine

Got the list of OSD/GUI stuff I need to do. VERY long. Still trying to fix other stuff like crash-bugs, memory-problems and alpha sorting.

Snuck away very early (before 18) to clean up the apartment for tonights Pictionary-session :)

Saturday

A bit hungover but not too bad. Worked all day.

Sunday

The day off! Hooray!

Monday & Tuesday

No one got their money by 09, but most people have it before the day is over. Not me however. Kills my hard-won inspiration, especially since I can’t really get Stefan to take an interest in this. Didn’t get much done today.

10th September (Wednesday)

Got my money today. Stefan had screwed up and given Jonas Norberg my salary as well.

Sheridan was to inform me of the priorities of OSD things so I know what I should be working on - he just looked it through and said everything has to be done. I told him (as usual, sigh) that it wasn’t possible. He said somebody had to help me with it then, but none of the other programmers could leave their tasks so it seems he expected me to personally force it upon someone else - then he left.

Got quite a lot done on the OSD today.

Thursday & Friday

Worked very hard on implementing as much as possible of the OSD stuff. I got further than I thought thanks to my headphones and being able to get into the “zone” for many hours straight. Still lots left - not that it matters, the problem is going to be stability and memory anyway.

Really began to run out of steam Friday night - more memory problems of course, since Mårten and the RWS people have been working around the clock just throwing in more things in the game.

We confirm that the P&R level is not even loadable - Sheridan gets upset and talks to us about solving the problem, but when he realizes there is no easy fix from our side he seems to loose interest and goes back to worrying about how things look in the levels.

After pulling down AI-memory and by running a release build, P&R seems to have enough memory to run - however we have crash bugs in both levels that stops us. Ones seems to be from bad input data, but the other is more mysterious.

Very bad atmosphere at work. Sheridan seems to expect us to just stay at work until everything is done. It’s after midnight and it’s only a large amount of coffee and a couple of aspirins that keeps me up - I’m not doing much good now and just want to get out of this hellhole.

At 03:00 the programmers have a meeting and reluctantly agrees to come back Saturday to fix it in exchange for being allowed to go home and sleep. However, it seems we will also have to work Sunday - we talk a lot about resigning or just leaving.

Came home feeling like crap - slept 5 hours and woke feeling panicked about going back to the office.

Saturday

I decide I have to resign.

I arrive at work at around 14, and tell Rikard about this. We go outside and talk for half an hour (with Emil too) about any alternatives but come up with none. We go back up, I tell John I need to talk to him. In his office I simply tell him I’ve had enough, I can’t take it anymore and have to resign.

He doesn’t take it that bad - but he’s not happy and he says all the problems will soon be over etc etc. I manage to be nice and just stick to the basics and no bullshit (even if they - and especially Sheridan - deserve it). I manage to convince him that I’m really serious and have no doubts about this and he seems to accept it but wants me to work this weekend. I say no because I’m burned out and he reluctantly agrees.

I’m happy :)

Lunch with the programmers before I go home. Pretty good weather. Starting to feel something… good. Something feels lighter. We talk a bit more about the situation. Emil seems to be very close to leaving - I think that if they make him work on Sunday he will (he has a date :). Jonas Norberg is also angry but scared to quit before he has another job.

I take the bike home. I smile all the way - the relief is enormous. Can hardly keep back the tears.

I fall asleep on the couch and wake 5h later when I hear my phones SMS beep. It’s Emil - he and Norberg also resigned!

After my resignation they apparently decided they had to work really hard to finish the “deadline” (which we of course never knew when it was, they promised completely that it was Friday evening and that the weekend was guaranteed to be off) - rumors has it the actual deadline might be Sunday or Monday.

Since Emil & Norberg wouldn’t do this - and it’s not an option to not work - they too resigned. Must have been an ugly scene, Emil said Stefan cried. I feel sorry for Stefan but what can you do?

Sunday

Woke up feeling good for the first time in months.

Sunny outside, had breakfast with Patrick and later dinner with my family. Slowly starting to feel like a human being again…

Why did I wait this long?

AFTERMATH

It is now the beginning of March 2004 and I’ve been working at DICE for a few months. I thought I’d just try to wrap up the last things I heard happened at Amuze.

After I quit, I got a job at Dice pretty quickly, since they where starting up a new PS2-project.

Emil started working at KTH (Parallelldator-centrum) and Norberg at a new Game Studio Startup called Avalanche Studios (former Rock Solid guys).

Peder is still working at Amuze (he got a descent salary-bump after we left to keep him around).

Rikard E quit a few weeks after us and only recently started a new job, apparently he was pretty much a wreck after Amuze and it took him a while to get back.

The three main graphic-artists at Amuze (Rikard Hilding, Johan Carlberg and Matte) also quit and are now working here at DICE.

Amuze apparently hired a lot of new guys with no experience. If there is any justice in the world that method will fail. Heard they recently (Jan/Feb) had a new BETA but that they weren’t much closer to finishing the game than when I left.

Sheridan couldn’t take Amuze anymore either, and went back to England in January. There was much joy and celebration among the Amuzers.

I had to fight a couple of months to get my last paycheck - I agreed to just get half my salary for the last month at Amuze (in which I was only at the office two times, but offered to come in when they needed me) but Stefan still made a big mess of everything.