Matt Weise gave a great presentation to a packed room at MIT last week, peppered with war stories and so-horrible-it's-funny anecdotes from his experiences in the game industry. For those of you who missed it, here's his list of awful things about professional game development, and each point was greeted with doleful grins and nods of agreement from the other industry members in the audience. Forewarned is forearmed, so here's my recommendation: everybody preparing to enter a game industry career should stop believing that anyone can avoid these pitfalls, but start anticipating and preparing for them instead.

10. Working with people who don't play games
9. Dealing with people who think "fun" is objective
8. Working on games and/or genres you don't like
7. Dealing with people who do not understand the design process
6. Being told you must kiss a publisher's ass
5. Having a design dictated to you over the phone
4. People who cannot communicate to save their life
3. Overtime (Matt actually skipped this one in the presentation because it's pretty obvious)
2. Dealing with people who can't work on a team
1. Realizing that no one has ever unknowingly made a bad game (That'll be you one day)

Thanks Matt!