[TRENCHES] Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - Strata

Geth

Strata
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/strata

Promoted due to incompetence

Anonymous

First off, I’m an artist not a member of a QA team.

I worked for this one company in England (Cambridge to be exact), and one member of the QA team would always add art critiques as bugs, offering their opinion. This normally would be frowned upon, but it was known to be a direct order from the owner of the company to this tester.

Now this went on for about a month during which time the art director wasn’t on speaking terms with the owner… yeah I know. So everyone thought that these “bugs” were legit.

Then one day (shortly before our big E3 playable) we received this bug:

“(insert name here) feels flags need to be blue not red and should have this logo in it’s place. please revise.”

This took us some time to change and push to the new build, because there were a LOT of flags. Well the owner lost it. He couldn’t believe the art director made such a sweeping change without his consent, blah, blah, blah. Until I pointed out the “bug” and a whole string of other “bugs.”

So of course instead of dealing with the problem in a logical manner, the QA person was moved onto the design team.

RMS Oceanic

I sense a comedic resolution to everyone's grievances! Well, not all their grievances. Well, not everyone's grievances. Well, possibly one or two grievances.

klemming

Today's tale:

Let slip the dogs of war.

04/23/2013 - Anonymous

QA testers have an unusual relationship with gaming press. I’d like to elaborate a little. You see, every time a member of the press plays any game that requires a second player, you’re playing alongside a member of QA. We have the most experience, and handing the game off to some unpracticed marketing guy with no idea what bugs dodge would be a catastrophe.

So here’s where it gets awkward on the QA end. We have collectively spent the last 6 to 9 months playing nothing but this game for 8-16 hours a day. Once you hit 1000 hours spent playing a single game you ascend beyond mortal skill. Multiplayer games against each other are measured in single bullets and millisecond reaction times.

Now imagine asking these people to lose.

We are asked to collectively throw the game while playing you. To appear like we are trying but never kill you. To make you feel like a champ. I really hope that didn’t shatter egos.

Now to rein this back in and turn it into a proper story.

It was roughly 4 years ago, and I was on the 30-ish person large Multiplayer team for a AAA Shooter. The brutal grind known as the prep for E3 was winding down and it was game time. The name of the game was 3 days of non-stop multiplayer against the press. Breaks and lunch taken at our desks. The entire time only maintaining the facade of a game taking place. Bullets flying everywhere but to no real effect. Like storm troopers.

We periodically get feedback from the attendants on the floor with the press. Things like “he’s lost over by the docks, someone get over there and keep the action going,” or “people are noticing the bad lighting on those trees. Keep the action elsewhere.”

While we were getting feedback from our liaison, some obnoxious dude was hanging out near the booth loudly proclaiming “Wow, is that the best AI you could come up with? Those bots are terrible!”

Our lead asks what Marketing wants us to do about it. Our Marketing liaison utters the magic words through the speakerphone.

“It’s an hour until we pack it up, Let ‘em off the leash.”

The ground shook. The heavens split. The world exploded.

Henroid

Wait, so does the end of that story imply the QA testers were allowed to wreck the gaming press that were playing for the last hour? Because that rules.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

astronautcowboy3

Man, that story was great.

A duck!

Yeah, that's a fantastic story.

zepherin

It is something to be proud of that once a person reaches a certain level of skill they can at will force a tie or barely lose without the other player realizing it.

Ori Klein

Ah, yes. When the restraints are removed.

El Skid

Definitely my favorite story so far!

Chris FOM

Good comic, better tale. Easily one of the best, if not THE best. It probably looked like that Uncle Drew skit that Kyrie Irving did.

SwashbucklerXX

That's a great story.

Reminds me of my press preview for Guild Wars 2 with ArenaNet. One of the devs (who is generally notorious for his PvP skills) was leading about 25 of us jounos into a world v. world PvP match against the QA team, who were in their office. We'd only played the game for a few hours at that point, but by ordering us around via headphones (and with the help of a siege golem he'd built), the dev somehow managed to herd us into faking out the QA team and capturing one of their forts while their main force was otherwise occupied.

Another dev walked into the room at that point, and declared, "Dude, they're PISSED over there." As we were on our way towards the next destination, flush with victory, over the hill came a zerg of angry QA folks. We were immediately smooshed into a fine paste, at which point our demo time was up. Hilarious, and frankly more effective than falsely stoking our egos. It's not like we didn't know we sucked at the game at that point.

Mutak

I cheered (inwardly) at the end of that story! Score one small and pointless, but none the less magnificent victory for the downtrodden!

Warlock82

For some reason I thought this comic was fantastic

Sephirex

I thought the bat guy's name was Tony. Now its Wayne?

Chris FOM

Tony Wayne perhaps? Batman reference?

pweent

I choose to believe that as part of Q's progressive hiring policies, there are multiple Vampire Americans on staff.

plki76

I lived in Atlanta many years ago and got hired on to demo a new controller. My role at E3 was to stand/sit there and play a fighting game with this new controller.

I had been hired about 3 months before E3 and they had shipped me a prototype controller to play with and get familiar with before the show.

So E3 rolls around and I'm asked to play against the computer or people that come to the booth. People that beat me get a T-shirt. And so marketing wants me to destroy the computer opponents but mostly lose to humans. But not lose too badly because that would look bad. Oh, and to remember to smile and congratulate everyone when they beat me.

Ok, sure. It's a paycheck and I get to check out E3, so I can do that.

Except the problem was that this controller had a very large learning curve. Even players who were good at the game had trouble at first, and I had three months of practice with this specific controller on this specific game.

Do you know how hard it is to lose to someone who is randomly punching and kicking, sometimes in completely the wrong direction? Now imagine that your job is to lose to someone who is button mashing and flailing around while that scrub trash talks you. You grit your teeth and smile and congratulate them on their skills but inside you know you could perfect KO them in about fifteen seconds.

Ahh, good times... good times...

Gaslight

So I probably wouldn't have noticed if Erika hadn't pointed it out on Twitter but they finally put info on the New Readers page for The Trenches.

http://trenchescomic.com/new-readers

Dark Raven X

Neat!

I was just looking at those a couple days ago, thought it was funny they still weren't descrambled.

MichaelLC

pweent wrote: »

I choose to believe that as part of Q's progressive hiring policies, there are multiple Vampire Americans on staff.

Excuse me, we prefer Nospanics or Vladinos.