<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia>Heterochromia is the "disorder" you are thinking of in the opening section.
there are "old" media degrees? where are these?
not all games have so much a "fail state" as much as a loss condition. there is a difference. a fail state says the game is over, or you must restart/reload; while a loss condition is the thing that could cause such a fail state if one exists, and usually if there is no clear loss condition then the loss condition is automatically not completing. and in some cases the true loss condition is that the player gives up, and walks away. if we consider say a jig-saw puzzle to be a game then it would have a win-condition of putting it together/completing it and a loss-condition of not completing it.
It was stated that 'why would a person do a job with such atrocious schedule, and hours knowing that if they don't they will get fired soon if not immediately, but still knowing that they will be "fired" a few months later' (this is a combination, and I am really bad with names if I cannot see the person, or have the minutes) essentially it comes down to I have this job, and it is paying me this number for it, and I am replaceable, and then couple that with I would just become another member of that hopeful group, and at least now I have a job. when couple this with the crunch time thing, and unionization (this technically becomes a political argument very quickly as to effectiveness) though there are good things, and bad things to unions for all parties involved, and though you bring up
when you spoke of project management it is quite difficult to sometimes consider what is realistic with regards to a project this can either be a result of inexperience on the part of the project manager, or the project team member not giving estimates. though you only really brought up publishers a few times with regards to timetables. these are usually the people who are funding these projects, and they are the ones deciding when it will release, and they are the ones that determine whether it is acceptable to launch.