[TRENCHES] Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - Reprisal
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Reprisal
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/reprisal
I am that Guy
AnonymousI am the “truly insufferable co-worker” from this post:
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/you-are-not-your-fucking-bugcount
The title was Neverwinter Nights 2. The licensed property was Dungeons and Dragons.
The original poster’s portrayal of me is a little misguided: I never cared about my bug count. I’ve been a D&D geek for sometime, and I owned all the books…and yes, even brought them to work. I’d been a weekly GM for years, and loved the Forgotten Realms universe and story.
However, I never cared about my bug count. I didn’t care how many bugs I submitted. All I cared about was how good a game we made. I loved Dungeons and Dragons so much, I wanted the game to be perfect.
As a QA Tester, bugs were the only voice I had: I tried to use that voice to make the game better.
If the poster had ever talked to me, he’d have known how passionate about the game I was. If being passionate about Dungeons and Dragons is a crime, color me guilty and proud of it.
He only saw my bug count as a chore I inflicted…I saw them as the only way I could help him develop the game.
Posts
I think his problem is that they CAN (and do) play musical instruments. As in, 'my original design features dangerous sloths with long claws, and you've turned them into flute playing pets, you printer carrying wanker!'
Well the story is about a rhymeblade lutesword thing - I think the implication is that sloths wouldn't be interested in it, cause they wouldn't be able to play it
No, his superiors should have noticed what he was pointing out and changed his position to one where he could correct the games lore errors. As rdx pointed out, licensed properties are often heavily judged on their accuracy to their parent material. I'm fairly certain they would have been able to refill an entry level QA position after moving Mr. Truly Insufferable to the story department. You don't punish effort.
That's very nice and dreamy, but if people worked like that, no game would ever get released, ever.
Balancing videogames and PnP games are two completely different tasks. And scrounging crap from 15 year old rulebooks helps no one.
I had the displeasure of dealing with a person like today's poster, they're not unsung heroes fighting a lonely battle for the faithful players, they're arrogant, disruptive, socially-challenged assholes, who usually talk down to the others with a huge insufferable holier-than-thou attitude.
So if you have a nerd determined to do QA on an effort area you've deliberately decided not to focus on, they're running counter to your project and need to be removed.
In all parts of the business world you sometimes make trade-offs, and a member of the team who ignores an executive decision to move in a certain direction is hindering more than helping, even if they have best intentions.
You've never worked for like, a company before, have you?
1) The author seems to think that the person who wrote the original tale was a developer, since he talks about how the "bug" reports were "the only way I could help him develop the game." In fact, the author of the original tale was a fellow QA worker.
2) The original tale mentions that the "insufferable coworker" changed his ways after a dressing down by the QA lead. This tale doesn't dispute that bit, so it's presumably true. Whatever his motivations, he was obviously going outside his job description, and the company had to tell him to straighten up.
I'll add that one of Blizzard's lore historians got his job pretty much exactly the same way (which is to say, he started in Q&A and documented a ton of lore inconsistencies in quests and dialog).
Side note - this the first Trenches story that outright calls out what game it's talking about?
The attitude at this link, kids, is why we can't have nice games.
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As to the tale: Cool, they named the game (the detail keeps the discussion grounded).
I understand why the guy did what he did, but he was a bit out of line. He was giving notes on design decisions when he should have been focusing on programmatic errors. What he should have done is document the lore inconsistencies and then tried to get a meeting with a dev to ask about them. The dev might have said, "thanks didn't notice that," or "We're going by source book <X>/<statement from IP owner> which is now the official cannon," or "Due to game balance we have to over look various minute of in-universe physics." Whatever the case it would have been better than sending up a phone book sized bug report mainly of what amounted to design criticism.
This guy wants to be a designer but doesn't understand what being a designer is - it's not just slavishly copying your source material. A QA guy who puts in *good* game design bugs will get moved up to designer - happens all the time. Guys like this invariably stay in QA.
Not that I don't agree with you, but it's funny that you're talking about the necessity of change in adapting to video games in the thread for a comic where someone gets punched for his changes in adapting something to a video game.
- If you can, understand the goals of the company and the impact of issues you raise. "There's no way that mechatonian armour could allow a slashing weapon to penetrate the armour like that- it's 8 inches of mechatite, which is said to be 14 times stronger than steel!" doesn't really seem like a relevant problem, because it only impacts the small part of the user base that knows this fact and recognizes the armour and cares if it's not exactly right. If you could write it as something like "When you use a slashing weapon against this type of armour it looks unrealistic and breaks user immersion" it is a hell of a lot more likely to get investigated and fixed. It also has the bonus of: If you can't write it that second way, you can probably save your breath because you can't tell them why they should care in a meaningful way.
- Be on good terms with your superior if possible. Bring things up with them as "I know this isn't really my job, but I don't think this thing is good because of xxx". If they agree, either they will tell you to log a defect against it (and you can put their weight behind getting the issue fixed), or they will raise it through the appropriate channel and you still get to use their weight. If they don't think it's a problem and tell you to drop it, then you drop it (no matter how bad you think it is) and move on for that one issue. If you can manage to get them on your side, you can get things accomplished a lot more effectively than you can on your own. And if not, you pursue another avenue of attack.
- Don't keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. That's the definition of insanity. If you file 5 bugs and 4 of them come back as "not a bug", you look for a better way to get your message out. You don't log 5 more of the same kinds of bug because then you're just annoying people.
Basically, most places I've seen actually care for the overall quality of their product(s), and appreciate people bringing things up even if they are outside the scope of their current position. But you have to bring it up the right way, or else you're just an annoying QA guy logging useless bugs and wasting everyone's time. And when you do bring up something that probably should be fixed nobody listens to you.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
If someone is putting effort into an area that management considers a poor ROI, then it's up to management to make it clear they feel that way. Until he was asked to stop, I'd consider this poster to be doing his job, namely finding ways to improve the product. Once he was asked to put his effort elsewhere, it sounded like he did just that.
The original poster claimed "49 out of 50" of the filed bugs were closed without a fix. Exactly how long did this QAer's manager let him go before stopping him, if they thought he was going down a path that wasn't worthwhile? Maybe the manager should have stepped in sooner to make sure his employee's time was better spent.
Give me my money
You think Toots is going to cover for you?
Where is my money. Is Mr Anders going to have to choke a bitch?
I'm sure you're not posting 50 "NAB"s a day, anyway.
Plenty of poorly run ones, yes. So I speak from experience, and also from a QC perspective (much different industry).
There's a difference between bugs - things that aren't working as designed - and differences in design from derived material. Knights of the Old Republic derived a lot from D&D, but it was also different in a lot of those things utilized from D&D.
Tales drama!
He had no sway, he wasn't going to have sway, and he will not have sway. At least not as a QA tester. Doing what he did with the bug reports wasn't ever going to change the game it was just going to end up losing him his job. You have a problem with the game, talk to the story writers.
As for authenticity, DnD throws that out the window as much as any game based on the franchise for the purpose of balance.
No, you don't punish extra effort. You punish the hell out of someone not doing their job and trying to do someone else's job instead. If he wanted to try and change the lore, he should have tried to find a way to do it on his own time. That's extra effort. Instead he tried to do it while he was supposed to be looking for legitimate bugs. That's wasted effort.