[TRENCHES] Thursday, July 12, 2012 - Crux
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Crux
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/crux
Scrap It
AnonymousNearly a decade ago, I worked a stint as a mid-level tester on a certain console-based first-person shooter. We were less than two weeks from Gold, and each member of our relatively small testing team had carefully delegated assignments.
I had been tasked with testing a new gameplay mode - a single-player survival-type level which used AI from the campaign but behaved like a multiplayer mode. Midway through the mandatory 120-hour testing phase, the boss confronted me with a “shortcoming” on my part - I had not yet completed testing the new mode.
I tried to explain that other than brief tests of other features, I’d been working nonstop on the survival level since it was assigned to me. He wouldn’t buy it; apparently completing the hours as fast as physically possible wasn’t fast enough. “This needs to be completely done, or it can’t ship,” he reminded me, deaf to my protests that it *was* being done and I simply needed to complete the testing.
Despite the misplaced incrimination, he had a point - this was a console game, and if there was a major problem with anything we couldn’t patch it after release. Although I kept assuring him I could finish the testing before release, my pitiful human limitations that prevented me from logging more than an hour’s work per hour apparently exceeded his patience.
The new mode was scrapped and never shipped. I was given full culpability for the matter and fired upon release. The industry rolled on, and I rolled on to a different career.
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The fuck did they expect?
Unfortunately this is not a concept exclusive to the gaming industry. Most senior management know for shit people are unable to work faster than they can in a set time frame (you can't play an hour faster than an hour, unless your a Timelord), but it doesn't tend to register with their waking thoughts. Even though the whole point of management is to actually 'manage' people and projects (and carry the can for failures, that's why they get the bigger bucks) for about 20 years this seems to have been forgotten.
Managers can not be seen to be failing by anyone, from the people above and below even when they know it's happening. So in many businesses, the management tiers have their head in the sand and when it goes wrong, directly blame the staff for their own failings. This is the reason so many high level bosses get bonuses regardless of performance.
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
It wouldn't have mattered. It was a survival game mode, most of which are made to scale incrementally with the addition of new players (so multiple people testing on the same game doesn't decrease the difficulty) and if the game mode was designed to go beyond 120 hours of play there's the possibility that they would have absolutely 0 chance to complete it in less than 120 hours. Spawn rates, upgrade rates, and a lot of other things in survival modes can't be modified sufficiently to make them move at anything other than their designed pace.
They probably needed a comic where Q directly told each person someone different, I have to go back and read about that now as I missed it.
Ha I figured he just kept changing his story for the hell of it. Clever
And I guess that game from the story was an older one, since obviously you *could* patch a modern game (I guess maybe not a Wii game?)
Warlock: It says nearly 10 years ago, so if you say... 8 it was last gen. I am guessing ps2/xb1. If I had to guess completely without thinking, I would say brute force.
Haha, really? They did three entire comics about that exact thing. :P
Wow, there were even people in the comic threads at the time pointing out Q's plan was the same as Tyrion's "The queen must never know" gambit from Game of Thrones.
But yeah, the problem is that this plan breaks down if the three people you told the three different stories to compare notes. In Tyrion's case, his three suspects were all egotistical, suspicious, paranoid types who wouldn't be likely to share information with each other, so that wasn't a problem, but I'm not sure why Q apparently thinks the testers never talk to each other...
He already warned Cora. She's being very stupid and he's probably gonna save her but he really shouldn't.
Also, who reads threads to get comics? I just came to complain there was a 4th panel for nothing. Threads are for complaining for this comic.
Yeah I feel double dumb for not getting it until now.
Or at least, I hope it's going to be something convoluted and interesting rather than something so predictable.
Yeah no.
It's pretty clear where there going with this.
yea, the plan backfires on Q and he is forced to take the black.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Because Q saw this exact same scenario in that Game of Thrones/Lawstar fanfic episode and thought that surely he was as devious as Tyrion and could make it work in real life.
Life trying to imitate art.
However, from my very basic understanding of it, thing just follows the usual tropes, backstabbery shenanigans and in the end everybody dies (just like Defcon!).
So, really, what's with the spoiler crying?
"Thpoilerth!"
Fuck that, I spoiled nothing, all you know from my post is that Tyrion used a gambit similar to Q's. Which was already pointed out in the threads for the comics where it occurred WEEKS AGO, and which was depicted in an episode of the TV show which aired MONTHS AGO, and in a book that was published YEARS AGO. I didn't tell you what his plan was about, who he used it on, or what the outcome was. Chill out.