The Cabal met four days a week, six hours a day for five months straight, and then on and off until the end of the project. The meetings were only six hours a d

The Cabal met four days a week, six hours a day for five months straight, and then on and off until the end of the project. The meetings were only six hours a day, because after six hours everyone was emotionally and physically drained. The people involved weren’t really able to do any other work during that time, other than read e-mail and write up their daily notes. I find this a staggering amount of work for the planning stage of a game. Is there anything like this amount of planning at games outside of Valve?