reading about other people's good times

I am very amused by this write-up about the making of Meridian 59. My friend is one of the original creators of that game.

Archetype is a virtual company. I have never met any of these people before, in person. I have only interviewed with one person over the telephone. Everything is surreal and dreamy. I live in total terror that maybe this is all a joke and I will be on the curb come rent time. Miraculously, a paycheck actually appears in my mailbox at the beginning of the month.
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One of our new Guardians chooses the very original name ‘Gandalf’. When told by his coworkers that they were all going to start a tradition of having names that start with ‘Z’, he sullenly changes his name to Zgandalf.
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Not to be outdone by 3dosucks, a new website goes live, detailing how Q will give personal favors in the game for oral gratification. This is accompanied by doctored images of his in-game character. The entire team is quite amused. Except for Q.
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In a round of layoffs, I am forced to lay off my own brother. We rehire him a month later.
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The entirety of server 109 gets bored, and raids server 108. They don’t player kill. Instead, they all choose names starting with clone, as in ‘clone1’, ‘clone2’, ‘clone3’, ‘clone4’, etc. They all use the same character model and they only speak in binary. One person, the master, does all the talking for the group. Server 108 freaks the hell out. They blame us. We try to explain that we aren’t that smart.

In an admirable example of the community defending itself, a player on server 108 starts a new character, calls it ‘Clone16’, and joins the game. Immediately, the other clones include him in the clone’s in-game chat channel, and start talking normally, saying things like ‘ha ha ha! I can’t believe they R so freakd!’ He quietly listens. The next day, he posts a log on the message board complete with a listing of which clone is which 109 player, and which clone guy is cheating on which clone woman with which other clone woman.
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One of our Guardians parts ways with the company, muscled out for giving favors to his favorite customers. He is so popular that dozens of people write messages on boards that cover hot tech stock tips saying that 3DO is going down because they can’t keep their best CS people. Our stock actually dips that day.