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Yea, Quality Control and Risk Management. You really don’t want even the slightest risk of messing up the build or the product just so that you can bury some secret treasure in the code! We’ve all at some point been responsible for a big goof-up in code that we believed to be harmless.


Yeah but you write the easter egg in one product cycle and you put it in the code at the beginning of the next, so it has all the time in the world to 'bake'.


Not that I don't also wish for a return of more whimsy to software development, but those risks are real— there have been some pretty high profile embarrassments over the years in connection with pranks and easter eggs. The GMail "mic drop" is an obvious one, also the Spider-Man PS4 proposal was another, plus of course stuff like the GTA Hot Coffee minigame.


Also from a Risk Management perspective, you might be embedding the name/photo of a future sociopath or someone who is litigious. The "human" aspect cuts both ways.


A consequence of drawing the risk line that far to one end is that products end up having no soul. Perfectly valid for a business to decide that. But it just connects back to my main post and how 80s/90s apple had that vibe that today's apple lacks. They Risk Managed and/or Product Designed until they had a sterile, lifeless product.

I think it's what I pick up on when I feel annoyed at the emulated soul they try to instil with their design/branding/commercials.

I think another example, sibling to easter eggs, would be April Fools. Mind you I hate April Fools, but the soul was sterilized as they Risk Managed their way to jokes/pranks that were guaranteed to be safe.




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