Nope, artist are weird.
When you put some time and effort into your work sometime its hard to take criticism, especially in rude harsh form. But on those 2 projects everyone burned out from extra hours and idiotic management.
Is there any other tales? So far I only saw this one.
I'm an artist, not a salesman.
You didn't miss much 8)
Usually developer is under NDA, but most of the smaller companies doesn't formally employ people to avoid paying taxes. Its more of a verbal agreement currently.

From the games I worked on I guess you'll only recognize STALKER, other few is Silverfall, Unbound Saga and Syndicates of Arkon.
Frustrating, but I still getting paid, so its kind of okay I guess.
Game developer yes. 2d/3d art.
Heh, you don't know the half of it, mate 8)
Few weeks ago my boss forced me to remake application icon to make it look like "my little pony" icon (color scheme, composition, curly thingies at title) so people would buy our crappy game by mistake.
Though later he got cold feet and dropped this idea(with few days of my work >8((( ) - someone explained to him that he'll probably end up sued and banned at appstore.
Nah, he is probably a skinhead.
Why bother with HL3 if you can fix few Source bugs and release another CS on this brand new updated super engine?