Genesis
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/genesis
Fevered Dreams
AnonymousMy first testing gig was on a turn-based strategy game. After a couple of months, I was getting really good, but the scenarios that were part of the main campaign were very hard. We had to save often and reload regularly just to get through some of the initial scenarios.
During one particular scenario, I’d been reloading, and reloading, and reloading, trying different permutations of whatever options I had, but I couldn’t get past a particular point. At the same time, I’d caught some kind of flu and was starting to feel it in the back of my throat. After almost a whole day of just trying to get past this particular scenario, I went home, feeling sicker and sicker as the day wore on.
The following night, my fever reached its highest point, while at the same time, my mind kept ruminating over the scenario I couldn’t get past. During one of my fevered dreams, I found the solution to my problem, and I got past the part of the scenario where I’d been stuck, at work. I woke up immediately after and realized that the solution I’d dreamed would actually solve the issue was having in the real world.
I hope some QA managers and game producers are reading this. Sleep is not just “time when your people aren’t working.” Sleep, and especially dream time, lets the brain process what it’s done and learned during its waking hours and rearrange all this information in various configurations, leading to new solutions and better productivity.
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Everyone needs a day off. You'll make far less mistakes, and work will actually get completed faster.
On another note, the mythical man-hour is always a tough thing to explain to people whose job it is to create charts that break complex projects down into numbers of men and numbers of hours. Doesn't make it any less true, of course.
I agree for the most part. You can't maintain productive 12 hour days. However, doing one once in a while does provide a boost. So if you do it only during crunch times, it can be beneficial. I've put in plenty of long hours coding, and so long as it isn't the 2nd or 3rd week of it, you get probably 30 or 40% more work done from 50% more time, which ends up being worth it.
The problem is people who end up doing 10 hour or 12 hour days every day burn out, and lose focus, and don't realize that the answer is less time spent, rather than more. Once you're exhausted, it might very well take you 10 or 12 hours (or more) to do what a well rested person can do in 8. And if you don't realize that exhaustion is the problem, all you'll see is that you're working 12 hour days, and you're barely getting your work done, so therefore you need to keep working 12 hour days.
I was actually thinking they were going to fire him for stealing company assets.
Also, if a resident screws up then his buddies cover for him. If a QA tech screws up then he tends to be accountable.
Why do you think there's no fucking players...
Alternately, if your testers are having trouble with the game it might be too hard.