Disclaimer: All individuals and examples in this article are inspired by experiences in my career; any resemblances to real people, organizations, or situations are in no way associated with my current employer. The views represented here are my own and don’t reflect those of my employer.

Dear Player,

We don’t really know each other at the best of times. In most cases, we will never get to meet — and yet, our relationship is one of love. At least, I feel this way about you. I’m never quite as sure how you feel about me, either good or bad, due to how many of those emotions are communicated only in the strongest possible terms.

I have dedicated my life to you, regardless of whether you realize it. I have spent years learning about you. Who you are, all your different desires and moods. What makes you tick. What makes you feel joy, agony, and love, what makes you grit your teeth and mutter swear words, what makes you laugh and cry. I know you, even though I don’t know your face. Your many faces.

I spend 40 to 80 hours a week to make something that I hope will make you happy. Or, sometimes, to help you experience something you might not have known you needed to feel. Part of my job is to be mysterious, to do things to you that you didn’t see coming. To know what you need before you do. In some ways, especially when you’re at play, I probably know you at least a little better than you know yourself.

Why do I do this, despite the risk and industry conditions, long hours, and unknowable trends that make planning game releases so impossible?

I grew up with games. I know their potential, for you and for me. How often in a lifetime does one get the chance to touch someone else’s life? To make it better, or more interesting, to give enjoyment and maybe change a perspective. I believe games have the potential more than any other medium — and I know you do, too.

This makes us, dear player, two sides of the same coin. I don’t speak for everyone involved in this profession, but I know that love and respect for the art of what we do and the players we hope to make happy is incredibly widespread, if not the default for most. There are easier ways to make money, after all. But I can’t think of any better ways to spend a life.

Sometimes I sit there for hours and I tweak numbers. I tweak them — health, stamina, damage, currencies — and then I play the game again, and I tweak and I play and I tweak and I play ... Hours go by like this, until I get it right. Days.

Sometimes I redo all of it a month later. Two months later. I go home with a headache every day, but happy that I made the game better for you.

In some ways, especially when you’re at play, I probably know you at least a little better than you know yourself

You’d be surprised at how often an elegant solution to a numbers problem is found by brute-forcing things in this manner, or how much an OK game can be improved, or even made great, by tweaking a few variables. So many of us are haunted by that idea — by the thought that trying it one more time, with one more thing slightly adjusted, is what’s going to make the difference. Perfection is impossible, and you can hurt yourself chasing it.

Almost all of us do so. We know that it may or may not change how many games we sell, or even our own paycheck, but we want you to play the best version of our games that is possible.

Sometimes I fight. In meetings, with other people. Coders, artists, creative leads, marketing people, publishers ... it gets loud sometimes. I advocate for you often, dear player. For your time, how long you get to play, what payment models are appropriate. Sometimes I advocate for your right to be represented well. Or for your right to play our game in the first place.

I don’t always win.

And that’s because games are made up of thousands of small and large decisions made by many people along the way. Every problem has many potential answers and angles. Clashes are normal. It is important to keep each other in check for both creative decisions and business decisions. These hard conversations are part of my job. To represent you, dear player, is my job. It is OK that I don’t always win; what’s important is that I try. That we try.

Sometimes I have to solve strange problems. Problems that I know would upset you if you learned about them, but problems that are part of my job. Sometimes I tell the game that each enemy’s first bullet should miss you to accommodate for the lack of senses you will have compared to the real world when playing our game. I know it will make you feel better when you play. I also know you would probably hate me if you knew. But I truly believe knowing a little bit more about the magic will help you understand us better, friend.

Sometimes I read your feedback. On Twitter, on our forums. Often, it slices right to my core. Often, I wish I could explain to you why we can or can’t do what you ask for. Often, I wish I could tell you that you’re not necessarily right. But how do you explain that you know someone better than themselves without making them more angry?

Sometimes people tell me they wish I was dead, or worse. I make sure the door is locked twice that night.

Sometimes you become very passionate about a game, dear player. You spend hours upon hours playing it, and you become very familiar with its systems from your perspective. Sometimes that makes you believe you know better than me what to do to improve it. I want to respect your dedication when this happens, dear player, but I also want you to know that gaming knowledge is not the same as developer knowledge. We see the same product from two different angles — both are valid, but they cannot be confused.

You tell me I’m wrong when I try to explain. If I don’t do what you want me to do, you will write a bad review, or worse. This is just one of the ways in which developers often find themselves closed off from players.

In my career, I’ve sat in planning meetings in which we all stared with hatred at the one ticket in our system labeled as a “bug.” It has been open for 48 days now. We don’t know what caused it. It’s a blemish on our record. I’ve seen people spend multiple long nights trying to find it.

We may have decided to mask it by changing a feature instead, to work around it, and pray that it won’t end up somehow bothering players. It may be weeks, months, or even years before we find out if that was the right decision. Sometimes we never know. But we remember.

Sometimes I sneak into a Twitch stream late at night. Someone is playing my game. I stay silent and watch them enjoy what I have worked on for years. It’s one of my happy places. I get to see your face, dear player, and I get to understand why I do what I do, when sometimes it’s hard to remember.

Sometimes I wonder if players are more kind when they don’t know they’re speaking to me directly. I’m not sure why that’s the case. I wonder if it’s because so much feedback is often sent to people who can do little to change the issue being discussed. That makes players feel like they’re not being listened to, and so they think they must ask with more force or less grace, or add a threat. I wish I had a better way to de-escalate these situations. I wish we had better ways to talk.

And it’s not just me, you know? I have hundreds if not thousands of friends who pour their hearts into the thing you will hopefully enjoy, and they do it for years of their lives.

One day, I spent two hours at the gym after finishing work. When I came back to the office, my friend was still there, making sure the art he’d been working on was just perfect. Nobody told him he had to stay — he did it because he wanted it to be perfect for you. We laugh about how it’s hard to pry yourself away sometimes, and how players now know about our problem with crunch, but that it’s more complicated than that and often cultural, self-inflicted. He has four kids at home.

I had another friend who spent hours in his studio recording wild things: a watermelon breaking, soup bubbling. One time he recorded a fly. Sometimes we joked about how the sound recording booths, due to being soundproof, are great places to go and cry when the stress is too much. We laugh, but we both know.

This other friend I have, he likes coming to the office early. Way before any of us are there, often before the sun even rises. It’s the only time he can get work done, he says. Not due to personal reasons, but because the rest of his day will be filled with meetings in which he solves problems with other people. He should leave at 4 p.m. when he comes in early like this.

One day, he was already halfway out the door when an important stakeholder randomly came by to play the game. We didn’t have any warning for this, but we stayed because we felt we should, for the sake of the game. Almost every day, he leaves after 6 or 7 p.m. to support his team. He commutes for over an hour to get home to his wife and kids, and then does it all again the next day.

My other friend, an artist, once threw out the 16th version of a design he made. The direction changed so many times, he asked me to have a brainstorming session with him to get access to fresh ideas. He had discarded hundreds of other concepts he made on the last four games he worked on. All four of them were canceled.

Can you imagine what that’s like, dear player? It’s possible to work on so many games that you become an industry veteran, despite having most, if not all, of your projects canceled. We have to be careful listing these on our resumes, if they’re public. We don’t want to make news, or waves, by saying a game you think you may have liked was canceled for reasons we can’t possibly control or see coming.

I hadn’t seen another close friend of mine in many months. I knew it wasn’t because he didn’t want to see me, but because he had been crunching. When I checked in with him, he said he’d been in the office until 12 a.m. some nights over the last week. He said it’s worth it because they’re making something good.

We both know that’s what we tell ourselves to cope. We believe it, sure. But we have to say it a lot. To ourselves, to each other. To try and make it true.

Did you notice that all my friends at work are men?

Is it ever good?

There is a magical moment in game development, which we all know, but wouldn’t be able to tell you when it occurs, where the game just clicks. It is the most amazing day of any development cycle. It’s the first time you can actually “see” what you’re making. A lot of game development is just having faith that you’ll get there, with the game looking nothing like what you imagined while you question yourself and others.

That moment where a game moves from being a list of systems to get set up, and exists enough to be played, providing you with any kind of challenge or unexpected behaviour is always fucking magical. — Mike Bithell (@mikeBithell) November 18, 2019

It’s like jumping out of an airplane while still sewing the parachute, just hoping that it’ll be done by the time you’re close to the ground.

This magical moment is what we live for. It’s when we truly know what we’re making; it’s when we truly know who you are and what you will see, feel, and experience when you finally hold in your hands what we’ve been spending years of our lives making.

We have to believe that you will love it, because otherwise ... where have the past three to eight years gone?

Sometimes, when I think about this, I feel scared. Of you, dear player. Of you and your judgment. Of one misstep that could lead you to hate me and the people around me, and what that would mean for my future, or even my safety.

Why stay, you ask? With all of the things I told you? Because the few times throughout my career that I can drag myself through the stress and the pain and the work it takes to release a game that truly means something to some of you, it will have been worth all the hundreds of times when it made me want to quit.

And maybe, maybe if you take some time and look within yourself to get to know me, maybe then I won’t ever have to do anything but spend a vast majority of my life making things out of sheer, pure love for you.

Maybe.

With love,

Jenny