Somehow I think not too many people will really feel the pain of my predicament this weekend. I suspect the actual feeling might be closer to jealousy — unless you’re a QA tester. I strongly encourage you not to show up at my doorstep, pitchforks and torches in hand, looking for justice due to my insensitivity to the non-video game industry plebs.

Unfortunately, I have to work this weekend. By work I mean play the crap out of two of our upcoming titles for this holiday so I can be intimately familiar with them.

The combination of needing to learn how a particular game plays quickly and having access to early code so I can actually do that hasn’t happened much in the past. Usually my education on a game title is a combination of being privy to parts of the development cycle for at least six months, if not significantly longer, a combination of reading different documents about the game and playing the game or watching it being played, of course. This will definitely be an interesting experience as I don’t believe I have come close to completing a game since the release of Gears of War in holiday 2006.

Working on these titles means that I’ll have less time to play Halo 3, The Orange Box, Project Gotham Racing 4, Puzzle Quest, Everyday Shooter … and the list goes on and on. I really do wish I could make the weekend significantly longer, just so I could do more work. I clearly do not deserve any pity.