You’d think that at a video game studio, there would be a lot of people playing video games. At least for the team that I’m on, that’s really not the case. Everyone is busy with the real work of making a video game, so there’s little time to play finished games. Lunch hour provides a good opportunity but most people would rather take the full hour to eat their outside the studio, run errands, or just surf the web. Another factor is that only our Sony PS3 dev kits can play retail games unlike the Xbox 360 dev kits. Only just recently have more people (beyond the software engineers) received PS3 kits. Also factor in that most people don’t own a PS3 at home, so they won’t own PS3 games logically. All of this combines for very little game playing at work.
There are a few small exceptions and I feel lucky to be part of that. There are a group of about five of us that play Virtua Tennis 3 on my PS3 dev kit nearly every day. It’s a great game to play at work because it’s easy to pick up and be relatively decent at it. Also, one set matches last between 10 to 15 minutes at most, so a complete gaming experience can be had in a traditional “coffee break”.
Another group used to play Mario Kart in the fall but that’s stopped now. Currently, I think we’re the only people who regularly play a game during breaks. And now, knowing this, your life is complete.