Going Gold

The process of going gold is arduous. I like to break it down into three phases - Panic, Acceptance and then finally The Waiting.

Phase I - Panic
At this point, the game has just entered test, and you have a personal list of things to do a mile long. It is easy to feel overwhelmed at this point. You're trying to fix the horrible bug in your code before anyone else finds it and makes you look stupid. There are some systems that you know need major rewrites before they're ready to ship, and you have to redo them now so that the new code will get adequate testing. But the testers keep sending you bug reports, which you don't read, because anyone looking at the game for three minutes can see a dozen things that need to be changed. Your co-workers are coming into your office three or four times an hour with a problem that they expect you to drop everything to fix. This is a great time for excuses and delaying tactics. Basically, anything you can say that lets you get back to work on the stuff you need to work on instead of the stuff everyone wants you to work on. Some of my favorites:...