I've read those articles when they were written, and have even read the book Death March. Those situation are obviously not how things should be.
Patio11 responded to Abrash saying near the end of the project there were rough patches and that eventually they all were tired of working on it. No matter how well run a project might be there will always be rough patches and you'll likely be sick of working on it at the end. Quake is a great game, but imagine running the same level or even worse, same portion of a level all day long looking for obscure bugs. Even if you planned for this time, doing this for weeks is going to suck at some point. It's just the nature of working on a long term project and taking it from working to shippable.
Patio11 responded to Abrash saying near the end of the project there were rough patches and that eventually they all were tired of working on it. No matter how well run a project might be there will always be rough patches and you'll likely be sick of working on it at the end. Quake is a great game, but imagine running the same level or even worse, same portion of a level all day long looking for obscure bugs. Even if you planned for this time, doing this for weeks is going to suck at some point. It's just the nature of working on a long term project and taking it from working to shippable.