How Are You Not Dead?

True story. A friend of mine was the lead designer on on a Star Trek video game.

Late one night, he gets a phone call.

“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m Dave and I’d like to speak to Scott.”
“This is Scott.”
“Is this the Scott that’s the lead designer on the Star Trek game?”
“It is.”
“I noticed that in the game, the Enterprise-D has only eight phaser cannons.”
“Umm, yeah?”
“Well, according to the Star Trek encyclopedia, it has only four.”
“Oh, I remember that. Yeah, we got the info from the Star Trek people, but in game balancing, we discovered that the ship was underpowered, so we added some more phasers so that it was balanced against the other ships.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, happens all the time in gaming.”
“Oh.”
“Game balance is tough. You gotta make sure everything is balanced and fun.”
“Oh.”
“The writers on the show weren’t thinking about how to make a good game, they only cared about what looked good on television.”
“Got it.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“About the extra phasers. Will you release a patch that removes them?”
“A patch? Hell no. Do you know what goes into making a patch like that? We’d have to rebalance the whole game.”
“Or maybe an option for players to remove it, if they want?”
“No. Wait, who are you again?”
“I’m Dave.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“I looked you up in the credits. I guessed you live in the same city as your office. And you’re in the white pages.”