Comment by Agentlien

For the online games I worked on (a few of the recent NFS games) the items database was similar to the final set quite early in production and we kept an ongoing discussion about load times.

I really liked this article, but I am a bit surprised that this made it into production. I have seen a few instances of this type of slowdowns live for very long, but they tend to be in compile times or development workflow, not in the product itself.