[TRENCHES] Thursday, March 22, 2012 - Raiment
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Raiment
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/raiment
An Incorrect Assumption
AnonymousOne of the most common assumptions people make when they think about the horrors of testing games is that you might be forced to test a kid’s game for 8 hours a day or more. “Can you imagine, you could be on Barbie Horse Adventures!” I’m here to finally speak on behalf of the testers of the kids’ games.
To be frank, it’s fucking awesome. Having worked on AAA titles as well, I would never want to trade back. The thing about games for kids is that I have no desire to play them. At all. That means I don’t have to ruin a game that I would otherwise want to play and like by logging thousands of hours into it and associating it with some of the most mind-numbing and awful times one can have with a video game.
Because you have to remember, you’re not *playing* these games, you’re testing them. And by the time they’re in any kind of state that’s not riddled with crashes and is actually playable you don’t really have much interest anymore.
But it’s not just because I won’t ruin a good game. They also have nice, short development cycles since there usually isn’t much to them.
That way you don’t wind up looking at the same game for quite as long. But the best part of kids games, THE BEST, is when you’re working with licensed intellectual property. Because the thing is, the good people at Mattel, for example, have an image in mind for Barbie, and they don’t want anything that would possibly ruin that image. So those adventures she’s having with the horse? If that horse’s head ever goes anywhere near her crotch, if anything looks like it could be interpreted sexually between her and that horse, that’s a HUGE issue. It makes for a database of hilarious bugs as well as a crew of testers that are the dirtiest motherfuckers around so that they’ll catch anything that could possibly be interpreted the wrong way.
So next time you think that you can’t imagine a worse hell than working with Dora the Explorer yapping in your ear all day, think again.
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When two VERY bad animations showed up (an animal licking a little girls butt (with her giggling) and a man doing a repetitive "sword swallowing" act with a stick), the testers first confronted the lead animator who called them perverts and refused to change anything... leaving it up to me to figure out how to bring this to the attention of our boss.
"I want to work in video games, because video games are awesome. I'll work in an industry where I'm seriously underpaid compared to any other thing I could do with my skill set in order to work with something I'm passionate about."
"Wow, this has changed my perspective on the things I love. It ruins video games a bit for me."
"Well, I'll work on video games I don't actually like. That way I'm not working with something I love and ruining it, but I'm still sacrificing the more lucrative career track in order to work with something I love. Except I don't."
shoulder pads are too small
I giggled at this joke. I know, simplest form of humor and all.
Is that a list of other players or locations or equipment or something?
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Pretty sure that's an equipment list, but yeah couldn't help but think about NiN when I saw it. Not sure if intentional.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
And one named Haruspex, which IIRC is someone who reads the future in chicken entrails.
Naturally there was a strict 'child friendly' rule but no explicit instruction on this. So we did the best we could and presented our Alpha version for their executives to take a look at. Apparently the executives sat through the presentation quietly taking notes, then afterwards complemented us on our work and pointed out the things they particularly liked so far, and then launched into what they found potentially offensive. It was, as one of our executives called it, "a rollicking circus of depraved one-upmanship" in which anything and everything that could be mis-interpreted as filthy was, exponentially, to the point that Chris Rock would have been in awe. I wasn't in that meeting but we all heard about it and saw the bug reports it generated. One of the bug reports I got was "The banner Dumbo is pulling (as he's flying across the screen) looks like it's tied to a butt plug." It was tied to his tail. We eventually had to cut that module anyway since it allowed users to enter text into the banner Dumbo was pulling and no mater how hard we tried we couldn't create a text filter strong enough to prevent Disney executives from entering something filthy into it.
A few days later I got a new bug report via one of the executives with a screenshot of the Pinocchio module I was working on. In this module Pinocchio and Figaro (his cat) wander around the screen independently doing random things in at random times. Figaro can chase a butterfly, clean his front paws, take a nap, etc. etc. while Pinocchio can dance, take a bow and tip his hat, spinn around crazily on his strings etc. etc. and so on. Somehow that executive had caught Figaro cleaning his paws at the exact same moment Pinocchio was in front of him taking a bow, leaning over so it could be interpreted that Figaro was licking his butt. It must have taken them DAYS to capture those completely random behaviors happening in exactly that combination, but I had to spend a day putting locational awareness into the module to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
If those guys couldn't find some suggestive innuendo in something there was simply none to be had. Thus the Disney Collection Screen Saver was clean, family safe entertainment for children around the world.
Which more lucrative career track would that be?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Holy shit, dude. The whole time, I kept thinking 'and this was in the 90's.' Ridiculous. I guess Disney learned it's lesson from Ariel's Dick Tower, the couple fornicating in the window in The Explorers, the S-E-X leaves in Lion King, etc..
Secondly,
I wondered why people got into game testing as well, but I think I understand. After all, not only are there people who move on into development, production, the art department, etc., but game testing in smaller companies, or companies outside the US, is probably more pleasant than the horror stories mainly perceived. Add to that that it's a creative field in which credentials aren't absolutely required, so that some people might not have any, and that marketable "skill set" might not be all that.
Also, I find something admirable in the obstinacy of game testers. They must be incredibly passionate to endure some of those experiences, just in hope of snatching that better job. For them, that hope of the job they truly want is worth more than the semi-security of the job they could have and tolerate.
I used to, then I realized you can teach yourself to make games, and do it for fun, for yourself. It seems more likely to lead to making money as a game developer, and as a bonus, you get to find out if you actually have any good ideas.
"I'll do a mind-numbing job along with 50 others guys for that 1 in 1000 chance of being promoted" doesn't seem very proactive.
There's a perception these days that all good indie games are successful and make the creators money, but it's really not a sure thing for a developer at all. Platform and advertising matters a lot, along with a healthy dose of luck. A lot of indie developers will spend a year of their life making a game and end up with nothing at all at the end of the line, which is a risk many people can't afford to take.
Not to say making indie games is bad and you can certainly learn a lot, but it's not a reliable path to success. Most indies fail, often for reasons that have very little to do with their particular ideas or talents.
Eh, it was just blind luck for me. I needed a job, so I got in on a PS3 game in the middle of crunch. The good thing about being there at crunch is that, if you're even mildly competent, you will stand out. When companies hire during crunch, all they're looking for is if you have eyeballs, and hands.
I was one of probably 10 that made it out of 80 testers. Became a full time tester, Assistant Lead, QA Lead, and now Associate Producer.
Needless to say... your mileage may vary...
This line here? It's my new favorite thing.
Probably testing/QA for something other than games. I don't know how different the pay/benefits is in other places compared to the game industry, though.
Oh, I definitely understand that. My point was less about commercial success and more about personal enjoyment. I'd assert that probably as many testers that want to become developers fail to achieve their goal as indies who want commercial success.
They pay more. They also require skillsets that a game tester won't necessarily have.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
If you keep up with the Penny Arcade Fourth Panels and series, you know that one of Gabe and Tycho's acquaintances had a job working QA at microsoft where he repeatedly put the DvD into a computer tower, over and over, for days on end to make sure it loaded every time.
Whoah, there were sexytimes in the background of Explorers? I never noticed that and I've seen that movie a dozen times. Got to watch more closely from now on....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rescuers#Controversy
Explorers was a Paramount film, not Disney.