[TRENCHES] Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - Concept Art - Fire!
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Concept Art - Fire!
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/concept-art-fire
Should have read that form more carefully.
AnonymousI spent a little over two years volunteering as a focus group tester for a very large gaming company. When you signed up with these guys they gave you an application with a little questionnaire asking what sorts of games you were interested in playtesting for them. My preferred style of gameplay involves as much gory viscera as possible, so I selected every genre where it was theoretically possible to murder a dude. Shooters, RTS, fighting games. You know, the fun stuff.
Pretty soon I got my first call to come in for a group. I was super excited. What kind of game would I get to see? Would it have guns? Swords? Epic space battles?
Nope. Turns out the only part of my application the company actually looked at was my gender. I happen to have a uterus, so I was put into a group with six or seven other young ladies and told to provide feedback on a new browser-based flash game about caring for virtual babies. It was the most vapid, idiotic pile of steaming horseshit I’ve ever had the displeasure of interacting with. For some reason the other girls were eating it up. They kept asking questions like ‘do we get to dress them up?’, ‘how do we feed them?’, ‘do they talk?’
After about twenty minutes listening to this inanity I decided to ask a few questions of my own. First, would it be possible to starve the babies? No, I was told, it would not be possible. The babies couldn’t die. Oh, then would it be possible to neglect the babies to the point of inducing a psychotic break? No, absolutely not. The babies cannot go insane. Well, would it be possible to somehow pit the babies against each other in gladiatorial combat? If I give my baby a sword, can he learn to dismember the flesh of his enemies? Is my baby large enough to wield a sub-machine gun? (The only answer I got to any of those was a horrified stare.)
About a month later I was called back to playtest another game. This time it was a tactical shooter. I broke their physics engine by filling a room with corpses. They never asked me to provide feedback about babies again.
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Fund it.
See, if that was a spawn bug and you just mowed the enemy down, I am impressed with your aggression. If on the other hand you killed people all over the place, and then dragged the bodies into the room to create a Dark Throne of Severed Limbs, I am fearful of that single-minded drive and vision.
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Indeed. All Hail Our Lady of the Bloody Stump, Commander of the Fearful Toddler Armies, Long May She Reign!
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In a pinch, gutted hulks trailing wisps of atmosphere and frozen bodies will do. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate, etc etc.
It was the latter scenario. They told us to play the game "in whatever way made the most sense" and so I proceeded to murder as many soldiers as possible in order to drag/kick their bodies into a small concrete bunker over by the corner of the map. Not to build a throne - though that is an excellent secondary motivation - but because it just seemed like a good little alcove to fill with dead dudes. (I mean really why else would they put it there?) The game shat itself trying to render all the flailing limbs.
During that same session I was asked to "gain entry to an enemy base camp and disable their tactical computer" or something to that effect. The stealth mechanic was fucked beyond belief so instead of sneaking my way in there (as the game clearly wanted you to do) I found a pickup truck and drove it off a cliff directly above the objective. By some stroke of luck or skill I managed to use my shield function and a well-timed jump to avoid being caught up in the resultant fireball. The computer was destroyed, thus completing the mission. The observing devs were not as impressed as I felt they should have been.
Ah, man, I really miss doing those playtests...
EDIT: Hahahahaha oh good lord my signature. Guess how long it's been since I've logged into these forums you guys.
Who still uses these? I don't know. Losers, I guess.
You are awesome.
(This story kinda made me mad though. 'Well we know you wrote you like shooter and fighter games but uh, you have a vagina so that can't be right. Have a game about babies!')
No, you're awesome.
And it made me mad too when it happened. I get treated like a dainty little lady quite a lot thanks to being a wee child-sized munchkin of a human being so at first I was sitting there thinking "ah fuck me here we go again" and planned to play along until the end of the session then never ever come back. But then I got pissed off, because when a girl specifically indicates that she'd like to shoot some fuckers it is not okay to lump her in with the estrogen brigade. So I fought back in the only way an utterly non-threatening little waif can: with a litany of deranged morbidity coated in a veneer of sugary sweetness. I've had more than enough practise to ensure a really unsettling performance.
Luckily that tactic worked wonders and I ended up having a lot of fun experiences with the playtesting program over the next few years. I can only hope they learned their lesson after my comments and that the preferences of future female playtesters were treated with a bit more respect.
EDIT again:
If anyone had a desire to put a face (and a voice) to the story I was featured in the first Nerdcore Rising documentary about six years ago. I'm not linking this to be narcissistic but because I think the tale gains hilarity when one can see just how absurdly small I am.
Who still uses these? I don't know. Losers, I guess.
Sadly, executives never 'got' gamers and never will. They're just not the type. It is our thing, not theirs. Just like chasing bottom line figures over bodies of others isn't ours.
I take it that you are the self-fashioned "academic nerd"? Looks legit.
Hey, wait a minute...little girl...core gamer...gore aficionado...is Ann Archy based on you?
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/16116
Then I came to the thread and had a guffaw at the part about "flailing limbs". I would have liked to see the bug report.
pretty sure ann is gabe or tycho's niece