Chocolate

tim-cain team-building studio-culture morale obsidian interplay productivity

Abstract

Problem: How do you organically build team cohesion, boost morale, and facilitate cross-discipline communication in a game studio — without forced "team-building exercises"?

Approach: Tim Cain shares his lifelong passion for chocolate and how he turned it into a daily 15-minute "Chocolate Eating Meeting" at his studios, creating a casual ritual that brought together programmers, artists, designers, QA, production, and sound.

Findings: The daily chocolate break became one of the most productive 15 minutes of the day — enabling cross-team knowledge sharing, onboarding new hires naturally, and building genuine camaraderie without the artificiality of structured team-building events.

Key insight: Organic, low-pressure social rituals (like sharing chocolate) accomplish what forced team-building exercises never can — they get people talking naturally, which leads to spontaneous problem-solving and real human connection.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUaellOkDGc

1. Tim Cain's Chocolate Obsession

Tim is serious about chocolate. He maintains a blog with thousands of entries, each cataloging a different chocolate bar — who gave it to him, where it came from, cacao percentage, type (milk, dark, white, or ruby/"rose" chocolate, which he calls "the plasma of the chocolate world"). At his peak, he could taste a bite of chocolate and identify the cacao percentage within 5%, and often name the country of origin for single-origin bars — recognizing earthy, fruity, floral, or berry notes unique to Ecuador, Madagascar, or Ghana.

His collection habit started in grad school when a roommate suggested he keep the labels from the chocolates they ate. He filled six physical photo albums before going digital, which became the foundation of his massive chocolate blog.

2. The Chocolate Eating Meeting

As Tim got older (especially in his 40s), his doctor told him to cut back. He still wanted to try new chocolate, but couldn't eat it all himself. The solution: the Chocolate Eating Meeting — a daily 15-minute gathering at 3:00 PM.

The format was simple:

  • Tim would place a new chocolate bar on his desk
  • He'd break it into pieces and display the label
  • Anyone free could stop by, try a piece, and look at the label
  • No obligation — if you're in a meeting, stay in your meeting

Some people came occasionally; some came almost every day. The regulars developed refined chocolate palates. Tim even converted milk chocolate lovers to dark chocolate, while making a case against white chocolate.

3. The Smoke Break Insight

The idea had roots in an observation from Tim's Interplay days in the 1990s. He noticed people who seemed to know each other despite never being on the same projects, sitting near each other, or going to lunch together. The connection? Smoke breaks. Smokers formed cross-team bonds during their shared ritual. Tim realized chocolate could serve the same function — without the lung cancer.

4. Cross-Discipline Magic

The meeting drew people from every discipline — programmers, artists, designers, QA, production, sound. Conversations started with chocolate, movies, TV shows, and local restaurants, but inevitably turned to work:

  • "Hey programmer, did this new tool finish? Did this feature go in?"
  • "Hey sound guy, I heard this song that would be great for this area in our game."
  • "Hey level designer, I got stuck in geometry in this level — did you know it's not big enough for combat?"

One day, a programmer mentioned he was about to implement something, and another programmer told him it was already coded in an existing module. That single interaction saved a day or two of redundant work. Tim realized: the chocolate meeting was paying off.

5. Natural Onboarding

The most powerful effect was on new employees. Tim would invite new hires to the 3:00 meeting. Some were intimidated — "Why is the director inviting me to his office?" — but when they arrived and found a dozen people crammed in, eating chocolate and casually discussing the game, they relaxed.

New people would listen to discussions about Easter eggs, cool features, and game problems. Some came every day just to listen, even without saying anything. One new hire mentioned he couldn't figure out Perforce, and a veteran immediately offered to show him the folder structure — a two-minute interaction that probably saved hours of fumbling.

Tim contrasts this with typical sterile onboarding — buying donuts, scheduling forced lunches with different groups. Those aren't bad, but they're fabricated. The chocolate meeting was genuine.

6. Why It Worked

The meeting rarely lasted longer than 15 minutes. The chocolate would get eaten, someone would mention something interesting, and people would migrate to someone's desk to look at new art, a new level, or a feature being coded. It was simultaneously:

  • A mental break from tough problems
  • A team stimulation moment that got people excited
  • A knowledge-sharing session that happened by accident

Tim was asked at Interplay how he kept team morale so high, and at the time he didn't know. By the time he was at Obsidian, decades later, he understood: the chocolate meeting was designed for eating chocolate, but its side effects — team bonding, cross-pollination, natural onboarding — were the real product.

7. The Anti-Team-Building Exercise

Tim draws a sharp contrast with formal team-building exercises ("break into groups of six and see who can support an egg with rubber bands"). People who clammed up at those events would come to the chocolate meeting and open up — talking about Girl Scout Thin Mint brownies, their daughters in Girl Scouts, their lives. It was fun. It was human. And every now and then, a really important game discussion happened.

8. Chocolate Adventures

Tim's passion extended beyond the office. He visited chocolate stores with coworkers on weekends, planned entire afternoons around new shops, and worked chocolate pilgrimages into his travels — visiting La Maison du Chocolat in Paris (2006) and five chocolate shops in Sydney (2016), photographing himself at each one. Coworkers caught the bug too: they'd check Tim's blog while on vacation to see if a bar was new, and bring it back triumphantly for the next meeting.

9. References