[TRENCHES] Thursday, April 12, 2012 - Exile
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Exile
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/exile
Project Disaster
AnonymousThis tale is about a project - not the project I was on, but Project Disaster, our publisher’s “other” project. The big budget, popular-movie-licensed, high-profile developer attached title.
Project Disaster was a black hole. Its waves of destruction rippled through anything and anyone nearby, turning people to empty husks, and decimating any other projects the publisher had. We were one such project, watching all of this from the sidelines. Like a particularly nasty crash, all you could do was watch.
Xbox Live was still in its infancy, and to make the experience fun for players, our team thought it would be great to add the online features (back before the 360, setting up things like friends lists, matchmaking and so on were optional, and up to the developer). While hooking it up was fairly painless, and initially testing was okay, Project Disaster had suddenly turned its steely gaze upon US.
Our external testers all but disappeared within a matter of days - all redirected onto Project Disaster in a sorry attempt to try and discover the tsunami of problems it had. This left us - three testers - comically on our own, trying to test an online game that supported up to 8 player simultaneous online play. We tried our best, but when there’s three of you trying to find out all possible outcomes for an online game, you’re bound to miss a few things.
Our project didn’t review too well. But at least we did better than Project Disaster.
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Poor Not!Project Disaster.
And hey, Isaac's sticking up for his team. Way to not be a jerk, buddy.
Of course, if he'd reported the issue earlier when he first discovered it, a lot less damage would have been done, and the rollback might have been averted. It would be downright unethical had he noticed it before the launch.
Any guesses on notProjectDisaster? I'm trying to think of a game with 8-player multiplayer from the original Xbox.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I can't remember if Deathrow was 8 player but that fits the bill.
Issac screwed up, in an entirely unprofessional and immature way, and is partially responsible for Marley getting fired.
Wal-Mart (and Asda in the UK) like to talk about rolling back prices.
That's a really weird phrase, but ok
No, it's entirely of his own accord. When you make a mistake you own it, it's that simple.
Pretty much. Though I assume Q should have noticed the issue when Marely handed in reports signed off by an imaginary creature.
Its odd so far two of the supposed main cast have vanished. I wonder if they'll be back.
Only fitting Isaac should now be trying to save a fellow tester's job after one got fired to make room for him in the first place (though against his will). It's taken a while and had too many backwards steps along the way, but I'm enjoying seeing Isaac slowly develop into a more "heroic" protagonist, if that is in fact what's going on, and become more part of the team after initially seeing himself as above everybody.
Maybe this is going to be the event which brings Q back? He gets busted back to QA for letting the fuckworld bug slip through?
Oddly enough, financially speaking it would be better to do the rollback after the first month when people have already paid their sub fees. They put something in the small print of the EULA that says sub fees are non refundable, ever, under any circumstances and they'd be good to go. At that point, the reviews have been made based on the first week or two, people who are going to buy have likely already bought, people who are going to sub have paid in. The only thing you have to worry about then is rage on the official forums, and since there's always rage on the official forums about any changes, that's not a huge deal.
Didn't Isaac find the bug when they were away from the office, on break? When I'm at a shitty job, with no support from upper management, I do my 9-5 thing, and then stop thinking about any work on "my time." It's obvious the Isaac didn't know the repercussions of what would happen, or maybe he would have said something, But I'm pretty sure I don't feel bad for what Isaac did, even though he logged a bunch of bugs on his own time (because he's stupid). Get paid for the work you do, is my motto.
The worst time to not have access to a game is right after its launch. I got Portal 2 for the PS3, because I approve of cross platform Steam Support and thus wanted to vote with my wallet. Then PSN was hacked and shut down for over a month, thus meaning I lost access to half the game on that platform. I suspect that had I not been given a free PC Copy of Portal 2 I might not have bothered going to the Multiplayer stuff. I suspect something similar might happen here, where people just starting to get into the intricate Lawstar universe are closed off from it and thus their interest moves on to other games.
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
Slothman's Home Tree
But he needed that sweet, sweet armor.
Also Marley can't be fired, he's my favorite!
Yeah, he pretty clearly didn't recognize the enormity of the problem. Although when the node started to accumulate its crust and halos and was well on its way to true "fuckworld" status, you would think it might have begun to dawn on him.
Rotten to the core.
The assumption of responsibility and the social norms attached to it do not equate the observed manifestation of circumstantial reality.
It's just a pedantic way of saying "Just because you say that, doesn't mean it's true". Also known as the "nuh-uh" argument.
Yes he did. He saw the problem very clearly.
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/raiment
That second panel isn't Isaac saying "This isn't a huge game-breaker". It's Isaac saying "This isn't a huge game-breaker because nobody could possibly find it, right?". This is someone who was ostensibly a developer or project manager of some kind before he took this QA job, and is a gamer as well. And he didn't understand how an infinite gold exploit could damage an online game? No.
Maybe this storyline is the beginning of him getting past it, but currently Isaac is a terrible tester. Or at the least, not the kind of person who should be testing. He either doesn't care about the game, his job, or both. While that's somewhat understandable given how testers get treated at a lot of companies, it's still not professional.
In a real situation, Marley would probably still have lost his job either way, but Isaac could have saved his employer a lot of embarrassment.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I meant that if isaac knew Marlan was going to get fired, maybe he would have said something earlier. I've been in the situation where you report something and through the process of dealing with that, someone else gets fired.
Second, He signed up to be QA, found tons of bugs, which were ignored for pushing the game live, and then finds out he's on the live team. (apparently they give the live team the weekend off or something, which is weird).
anyways, I like this comic.
Also he missed a preposition.
Exactly. Did you not read the first season? Where he tried to get any job and was told he was too qualified, then browbeat the management into giving him this super shitty job that he doesn't want, but needs because lol car living, trying to do good at it during the first season and then realizing that it doesn't matter anyways.
Prices always go up due to inflation, but at the discount store they have rolled back the price to previous cheaper price...
Wal-Mart graphics also sometimes showed the numbers for each digit as on a rotating flip clock, and so would be physically rolled back to a cheaper price.
Diablo 1 had a dupe bug. No hacking was necessary.
But you could dupe awesome gear and trade it :P Same thing
Err... yes, this was the thing I was pointing out. We agree.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I also believe that there were several methods to enable that exploit (the one I specifically recall was via the town portal mechanism).
You cannot own a mistake anymore than you can own success. Neither are a property nor can they be made one's possession.
Essentially what's at the heart of his statement is the concept of accountability, which is a social norm. And the notion that one's mistakes should be attributed solely to them as though they operate in vacuum is quite a misguided derivative of it.
By ideologies formed out of social norms (such as moral) one is expected (if not forced) to bear responsibility for their actions, mistakes included. But one is not necessarily (the sole) responsible in all scenarios and situational environments and their influences vary. Moreover, in accordance it may at times be that not only one is not entirely accountable, but may not even be responsible. Not to mention such occurrances whereas one is not at all in control in the first place.
Of course, it is far more 'clean' and 'easy to process' if there's only one person to blame and one cause for an effect as people, in general, do not have the patience to indulge too deeply onto what they do not care much for and as result there are usually many over-simplifications of events.
What's a preposition?