[TRENCHES] Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - Guest Art - Amy T. Falcone

Geth

Guest Art - Amy T. Falcone
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/guest-art-amy-t.-falcone

We’re not all monsters

Anonymous

I’m a game developer working on AAA titles, and some of the stories I’ve read here are just plain sickening.

At my company, nobody slaps food out of the hands of testers when we have catered lunches. Nobody makes them fight tooth and nail for supplies for testing the game. Their opinions are actively solicited -
at the end of the day, the responsible developer is making the call, but I know for a fact that feedback is taken into account. Nobody has been locked in a closet to work. I’ve actually heard the executive producer say variations of the phrase, “There’s a special place in Hell for people who abuse QA testers.” Hours are long for QA, but they’re long for everybody in this industry.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying that these things happen. We’ve all heard the stories and many of us have lived them. It’s also definitely true that QA is a rough job even when you’re not being actively denigrated. The hours are long, the pay isn’t good, it’s repetitive… really, it’s no more than a step or two above flipping burgers in terms of quality of life. And you know what? That sucks. It’s not hard to treat someone else like a human being.

I just wanted to point out that game devs aren’t all monsters.

Angry_Samoan

Nice, but isn't it all really guest art at this point?

Tube

No.

zepherin

Actually I think that burger flippers are better treated than some testers (better paid too). A more apt term would be QA testers are a step or 2 above laborers.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful, and the job is hard, but the way they are treated is worst than I treat laborers, and I'm rough on laborers. "Here is a suit. I don't know where this conduit comes out, but it comes out somewhere in that crawl space. If you see a raccoon don't fuck with it."

Neuroskeptic

Awesome art but heh, is that Isaac... or a Worms worm?

RedCrow7

Love it

justsomeguy

I find the stories here amusing and shocking precisely because it differs so greatly from what I've seen in the last 16 years in the industry. But in that time, I've seen many many small companies start up with just an idea and a goal to capitalize on a current trend. Their goal isn't to create a lasting legacy, it's to make a quick buck. So I can believe most of these stories, as QA doesn't seem like an important aspect when your goal is to minimize costs and maximize profits.

forty

On the other hand, burger flippers (potentially, depending on position) have to deal with customers all damn day. QA in general is not going to have to interact with the asshole public.

Ori Klein

forty wrote: »

On the other hand, burger flippers (potentially, depending on position) have to deal with customers all damn day. QA in general is not going to have to interact with the asshole public.

I've seen many a QA get thrown onto the grinder of CSR under the false guise of "fast track to promotion" (more like "fast tract of the beast"), as a company policy for efficient use of disposable human resources, in several studios.

marsilies

Similar to last week, the comic hasn't been updated today, but the tale has:
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/orders-of-magnitude

Orders of magnitude
10/10/2013 - Anonymous

The stories posted here are mostly for testing games. Games that ship without testing or without addressing issues found in testing leads to buggy games. That is, I’m sure, very frustrating for the testers and the consumers. I am a different kind of tester, I test equipment being purchased by a government, one you may be familiar with. Instead of shelling out $50 of your own hard earned bucks for a game, the government shells out $50 million hard earned bucks of other people, people you also may be familiar with. But hey, governments need stuff, so at least they test it, right?

The problems start early. For my program, they never wrote proper requirements, so no one really knows what this thing is supposed to do. After working around the clock for month, testing the equipment in an inhospitable wasteland, I have to write a test report in a couple days to meet a deadline made up by some contract weenie that has never even read, much less written, an 80 page technical document. The system literally falls apart during test and doesn’t meet a number of critical requirements, all of which is detailed in the report. The vendor and program manager (the guy that decides whether or not buy the equipment) take turns complaining about how I conducted the test, how I came to my results, and how I wasn’t being fair. After I give up a lot of ground, the equipment still end up failing miserably. So, do they say “No, we aren’t buying this crap”? Of course not, the government tells the vendor to fix everything and come back in three
months. Back to testing for me…

They put on some fresh loctite, fix a handful of the most egregious bugs, throw on an extended warranty, and my wife gets some quality alone time. I brief another test report and the take away is “wow, they really improved”. Of course, when your baseline is, it doesn’t work, it barely works seems great, I guess.

The worst part is that I am actually the customer. It’s my damn taxes going to buy this crap. If you test My Little Pony Adventures and it crashes at every turn and they ship anyways, at least you are not legally forced to buy it after it ships.

Arminas

Are the new artists/writers changing the schedule or is the lack of regular updates a thing now?

Gaslight

They are still in the break between "seasons."

forty

Ori Klein wrote: »

forty wrote: »

On the other hand, burger flippers (potentially, depending on position) have to deal with customers all damn day. QA in general is not going to have to interact with the asshole public.

I've seen many a QA get thrown onto the grinder of CSR under the false guise of "fast track to promotion" (more like "fast tract of the beast"), as a company policy for efficient use of disposable human resources, in several studios.

That's a different job then.

DoctorAwesome

Orders of magnitude
10/10/2013 - Anonymous

Reading this really reminded me of the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle story in the book The Pentagon Wars, by James Burton. The development was so ridiculous that HBO turned the story into a comedy. Having read the book well over a decade ago, I finally got around to watching the movie when I was actually in a U.S. Army unit that had Bradleys, and this scene from the movie made me laugh AND cry at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyakI9GeYRs