You can dress and look however you want. And, in return, you draw in the kind of creative, interesting people that care about that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, this is not a given at all software jobs.

There's not a lot of process and formality. Less time writing TPS reports, more time making software. This doesn't mean it's all unstructured cowboy coding, just that there's less pointless overhead than at other companies I've seen.

Lots of kidding around and laughing. Less people taking themselves too seriously.

> Laid back, to me, means "Oh, we had to work 60 hours last week, so this week I'm gonna leave around 4 pm on Thursday. I'll send an email to the team lead to not expect me tomorrow"

I think that depends a lot on the project and schedule. Certainly, the worst crunch was right before a deadline, and things were more lax after it. Taking several days off after a big push wasn't unusual. The months following shipping a title which were mostly focused on writing design docs were often "nominally 40 hours but really closer to 35 and we aren't exactly killing ourselves during those hours either".

> From the stories I've heard, "laid back" in the game industry means "great news! it's 7 pm on Sunday evening, everybody go home and be with your kids"

Well, of course the stories you hear are always extreme. Otherwise, they wouldn't be a story. No one ever says, "Breaking news today, area man works 40 hours in one week."