[TRENCHES] Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - Anachronism
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Anachronism
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/anachronism
Fourth Time
AnonymousThere was a time when I thought being selected to test video games was an honor. What wasn’t to like? You went to a studio or a headquarters, banged around on a yet-to-be-released triple A title and got paid to go and do it. Two summers ago, I had been selected through an agency that specializes in this kind of thing to test a new rhythm game that was to be shipping later in the year.
Little did I know…
I had considered myself pretty good at rhythm games, having made a fool of myself at parties for ages hammering away at plastic instruments while my friends drunkenly sang around me. This assignment was supposed to be cake: test the near-gold version of the game for final bugs. I had agreed to play on the “Expert” setting for this test. It was important, they told me.
My assignment was for eight hours a day for seven days.
The first day, I learned what we were doing. The Beginner, Normal, and Hard players were to be playing through the “career” mode of the game to determine if everything worked all right. A small handful of the Expert players were doing the same. Five of us “Experts” were selected for the “special assignment.” We were to play through a song and gain a perfect score.
Four times.
The same song, over and over, until we managed perfection four times. Then we would move on to the next one.
The test lead insisted that they encountered severe bugs pertaining to this test. I still think he was lying to us. I sincerely believe he wanted us to suffer.
The five of us were locked in a room, basically, and told to play. One slip, one single mistake, and you started over. After you achieved perfection to the fourth power, you moved on to the next one. I could hear the songs in my sleep, play the game with my eyes closed. My fingers hated me more than I hated myself.
At the end of the assignment, I had my ill-gotten gains but nothing more to show for it. I see this game on the shelves now and I can’t even bring myself to buy it despite the fact that I love it.
It’s hard to shell out money for something you’ve already perfected.
Four times.
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It makes so much sense!
I assume this was one of the "Stringed Instrument Champion" genre of games...
It is within my greatest hope that even though the tester may have flubbed up on a few notes early on -- or even partway through -- the song... that they continued playing to the finale of the number... else they may have been testing in an ill-conceived manner --
If one restarts the "level" as soon as one encounters an erroneous note, then one does not learn the encounter equally.. One would benefit from attempting the entire "level" as to familiarize oneself with the entirety of the encounter.
Otherwise, one would clear the earlier sections of the "level" with relative ease, whilst struggling with the "end boss".
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Beohrn, 70 tauren druid
random alts.
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--Metroid Prime 3
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But I can understand why someone would feel like they are in hell testing the same song over and over till they got it right even with the bugs
That, that is a shift in tone I had not expected.
"You are at Khal's wedding. Invite ten friends to give the Khal your wedding gift!"
"You have reached Mount Doom. Proceed to throw the ring in? Sorry, you're out of energy. Buy an energy pack!"
it's the chocolate factory problem
One of the achievements was to get something like 25 million points. A perfect song got you 250,000 points. The way we went about this is to pick the shortest song in the game and try to get perfect on it over and over (on the same profile).
This meant someone had to sing a shitty cover version of 'Time of the Season' 100+ times.
Bar none.
Testing music games sounds genuinely haunting.
The only fun I've had testing music games was a special assignment on Guitar Hero Metallica that only lasted one week. It was me and a team of 4 Guitar Hero expert testers alone in a large empty room of our office that was being renovated, with a huge 7.1 sound system turned way up and a 42 inch screen. That was the most fun week I've had there.
The flip side of the coin to the oft-repeated "Find what you love, then do that for a living" canard.
Wait. What?
Cora's dad so far is a total boss.
Why would the studio give out free copies? Unless the testers were not paid to work on them , they were compensated for their work. It would be nice if they gave them free copies, but that does not make them cheap if they don't. Also how many people would even play the game after testing it? Sounds like a waste to hand out free games to people who have already been paid to play them to death....
As you said, after testing it isn't worth buying for most of them. However, you always want the viral marketing of players, so giving free copies to your employees increases the chance they'll at least play some, and maybe thereby sucker some friends and family into playing. Otherwise, your staff probably won't bother to buy the game at all.
When I tested games, the companies fostered (or tried to, anyway) a feeling of camaraderie among the staff, that everyone, from the accountants to the testers, was pitching in to produce something. At the end of projects, instead of giving people bonuses, the companies would eat the $10 - $15 profit from a game sale and give those who worked on the games a copy. I don't know if, say, the people who run HR for Activision are being buried in mounds of games just because they happen to work there. But for those who did participate in a project, it's nice to be given a copy even if it's never opened, just to keep in your collection and say "Here's a thing I helped make."
I'm not saying that people who test games are owed one by the corporation, but it was certainly a tradition that many people from different companies were familiar with. Perhaps my use of the word "cheap" here was inflammatory, and for that I apologize, but there was a sense that if you didn't get one, it's because the company was more concerned with cost-cutting than with that team spirit stuff that was being crammed down your throat during crunch time.
The company I'm currently with does not offer free games to testers (full-time staff do get them, though). Instead, part-time staff are given the option of buying the game at wholesale, and yes, testers do purchase the games they've worked on, even after hundreds of hours of working on them. How many of those end up on Ebay or sold to GameStop is less than 100%.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Indeed. I worked at a bakery once. After laboring hours on end all day long making Pitas at the factory manufacture line I couldn't stand Pitas anymore.
For a whole month afterwards the mere sight of one made me recall the intense scent of flour and induce heavy vomiting.
Because BioWare got bought by EA during development, I had to buy my own copy of Mass Effect after work was completed. Which I did. I also played it countless times despite having worked on the game because MASS EFFECT.
Other than that though, I received a copy of pretty much every game I worked on. The only one I never got around to playing after the fact was Halo 3, probably.
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I don't know, I worked at a Domino's for a while and I still like Domino's.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
Well, sure, if you order it with cheese. But why would you ever do that with a pizza anyway?
The unspoken caveat is that the thing you love is probably not inherently profitable. Building a sustainable business model around that thing you love, or working for someone who has, may require quite a lot of things you will not love and are probably terrible at. The real trick is finding a COO Khoo to make all that shit happen so you can focus on what you love. And, ideally, "making that shit happen" will be the thing that they love.
When you see how the sausage is made, though, you kind of feel like going vegetarian might not be a bad idea.
You don't think you'll be able to play through DA3 after launch?
I worked at Cheeburger Cheeburger, and I still go back there for hamburgers.
Fortunately the software I write these days gets seen and used by, like, maybe ten people on the entire planet, so it doesn't affect me much
I can say this isn't true with 100% certainty, because I tested Wario Land: Shake It and not only did I buy the game when it came out, I got 100% on it. I loved the fuck out of that game.