There’s an analogy I like for game development that I’m fond of stretching beyond plausibility to make a point. I first used my favorite metaphor years ago when I started blogging, and I’ve been itching to expand on my original premise ever since.
For as many years as I’ve been in the game industry, I’ve been a casual follower of the sport of high-altitude mountain climbing – specifically, attempts to climb the “eight-thousanders,” the fourteen highest peaks on earth that are all over 8,000 meters tall.
I say casual follower because I have no athletic ability and enough minor health issues that attempting to hike to the base camp of one of the aforementioned peaks would undoubtedly kill me. I remember going on a ski trip with friends to a relatively low mountain in Colorado and spending a couple of sleepless nights miserably wheezing from the lack of oxygen.
Nevertheless, the subject has fascinated me for several decades. I’m staring now at a shelf of climbing books. Anyone that’s glanced at the theming on the front page of this website can detect a touch of obsessive mania in its presentation.
As a sedentary game developer, high-altitude climbing interests me because it has it all. Climbers stretch themselves to their physical limits in pursuit of what amounts to an expensive and potentially fatal hobby, and in the process, produce compelling and sometimes tragic stories that shine a light on the best and worst of humanity.
All The Best Stories
If you’re digging into the subject of high-altitude climbing for the first time, you have to start with the story of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. The pair may or may not have made it to the top of Mount Everest in 1924 – years before the first official summit in 1953 – but they vanished into the mists on the final push and were never heard from again. (Mallory’s body was finally discovered in 1999.)
Then there’s Maurice Herzog, the first person to summit one of the 8,000-meter peaks – the deadly third-highest mountain in the world, Annapurna – in 1951. His subsequent book about the expedition is chock-full of colonial-era racism and self-serving promotion but also contains some of the most stirring passages about climbing ever written.
There’s one of the most well-documented and tragic climbing tales of all time, famously brought to life by Jon Krakauer’s popular Into Thin Air. A tragically-timed storm high on Everest led to the deaths of several climbers at the dawn of the age of commercially guided expeditions. After Krakauer’s book, alternative narratives emerged from others who were on the mountain that year; acrimonious back-and-forth finger-pointing consumed the climbing world for several years.
Newcomers to the subject could do worse than starting with books by Ed Viesturs, the first American to have climbed all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen. Viesturs, a motivational speaker, is a cautious climber who has always approached the sport with an eye toward risk mitigation and staying within his limits.
There’s Steve House, whose most famous quote gets a prominent placement on the front page of this website. Unlike Viesturs, House famously pushes himself far beyond his limits. An advocate of fast, lightweight alpine-style climbs on brand-new unexplored lines, his philosophy is the antithesis of the carefully-planned guided expeditions that haul near-novice climbers up the world’s highest peaks in pursuit of profit.
Then there is a host of entirely valid modern criticism of the entire sport – that it’s become a pastime for rich hobbyists, wealthy dabblers who have for years taken advantage of the Sherpa culture in Nepal. Modern commercial climbing expeditions that drag inexperienced climbers up the big peaks are arguably no better than Maurice Herzog, who flogged his porters on the trek to Annapurna in 1951 and risked the lives of teammates in a perilous and poorly-planned final summit push.
Extending the Traditional Metaphor
Climbing to the summit of Mount Everest is so often used as a business metaphor that it’s become something of a joke. The analogy is easy shorthand for overcoming insurmountable odds; it’s typically trotted out for solid, simplistic lessons about the teamwork needed to achieve difficult goals.
The real lessons of high-altitude climbing are more complicated, with all the shades of gray that exist in the human experience. In particular, when I compare stories about climbing to the modern landscape of game development, I see reflections everywhere I look.
I see big-budget triple-A games that remind me of big-budget commercial-guided Everest expeditions – hundreds of employees functioning as little more than cogs in a machine, all marching inexorably to deliver a predictable, reliable result.
I see producers and developers who are forced to become expert planners alert to every dependency, seeking ways to mitigate risks on their projects in the same way that Ed Viesturs mitigates danger on his oxygen-free summit attempts.
I see indie developers moving fast and light, creating new twists on genres, like Steve House climbing alpine style, trailblazing an aggressive new line on a dangerous peak.
I see failed projects that leave a trail of layoffs in their wake, like (and yes, this is an inappropriate and grim comparison) the emotional and physical wreckage left in the lives of the survivors of a climbing disaster.
And I see plenty of heroic efforts. I see developers constantly trying to achieve things that haven’t been done before, in pursuit of something that, like mountain climbing, has “no real purpose.”
Coming Back Down
The analogy isn’t perfect. High-altitude climbers risk their lives; if a game fails, developers might be out of a job, but they’re still alive. But the compelling stories from the world of high-altitude climbing have value beyond the simplistic “go for the summit” analogy that we’ve all seen in yearly corporate PowerPoint presentations.
If there’s a takeaway, it’s this: game development and high-altitude climbing are both filled with highs and lows. Game developers work in a profession where there are incredible moments of fulfillment and achievement, as well as hard times when nothing goes right.
I was thinking the other day about the odd feeling I’ve always had after shipping a game. It’s an accomplishment to ship anything. Reaching the finish line is a mix of euphoria, relief, and a bit of fear at how a game will be received by the audience.
But after the rush of mad scrambling at the end of a project to get the game out the door, there’s also a moment – about two weeks after the launch – where I start to feel a little down. Was that it? I’ve done it; now what’s the next game? Will it be better than this one? Will it be worse?
I recognized a kindred feeling expressed in the introduction to Krakauer’s Into Thin Air – where, when he finally stands on top of Everest, still facing the long climb back down, he expects to feel euphoric but feels nothing – just numb, cold, and spent.
And similarly, for the games I’ve worked on that I’m most proud of – the ones that served as the foundations of my long career – I recognize a related emotion in the stirring closing words of Maurice Herzog’s flawed and self-serving memoir:
“Annapurna, to which we had gone empty-handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins.
“There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.”
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