I Tivo’d/watched the recent episode of CSI: Miami that featured Tony Hawk and video games (check out “case” 82).

I must say that I was really impressed with the extent of research that was done by the show to make things appear relatively authentic. From an actual Vicon mo-cap set up, to defining a tester as someone who tries to crash the game and find bugs, to modern looking games (instead of the usual Goraud shaded sims normally used on TV to represented a video game), etc.

The scariest part, however, was the extent by which they “recreated” the often extreme working conditions of game development. A few things:

  • A tester had callouses from playing games so much (made it tough to finger print him…)
  • The receptionist sending flowers home to loved ones as consolation for long hours at the office
  • Programmers checking in code at 1am
  • Staff not seeing the “light of day for 2 weeks” and being told by the boss to “suck it up”
  • Coder saying it would be nice to get a raise and a bit of time off (instead of an employee of the month style award)
  • Same coder saying he’s been fixing bugs for 72 hours straight…
  • etc, etc, etc

Scarier still, the murderer blamed his fouls deed, in part on the fact that he was so stressed out from work. Hmm, I didn’t check the credits, but I wonder if ea_spouse was a consultant on the show…

So, not only are games seen as the cause for all youth based crime, but now we are corrupting ourselves into death-dealing zombies.

Nice grave we’ve dug ourselves into…