Developer's chicken
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- sseo
or something like that. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
I think the story was that a game developer added a chicken that trailed the main character. He coded it to be easily removed so that when his boss would inevitably tell him to make a change, it would be the chicken.
- vaxorcist0
I haven't heard that one exactly, but yes, there are some situations like that sometimes with projects where you KNOW they're going to ask for something random... and being actually ahead of schedule can be suicide if there's somebody who then decides to TOTALLY CHANGE THE REQUIREMENTS at random....
- sseo0
yeah something like that... I think the moral was about protecting yourself from project managers that would tell you to make a change solely for the purpose of making their authority relevant.
- akrok0
- Just because you have a 3 point light system doesn't mean they all have to be different colors.mikotondria3
- < changed it so you can tell there are 3 lights... Execs getting their money's worthmonNom
- sseo0
Found it, if anybody cares:
A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product.
This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.
The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.
Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "That looks great. Just one thing – get rid of the duck."
- detritus0
There was a similar story about he costume design for Fifth Element, with Gaultier appreciating that certain cast members wouldn't go for the designs he wanted them in, so made ridiculously skimpy outfits they'd never in a million years accept wearing, as a feint, allowing them to settle for the 'safer' designs...