[TRENCHES] Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - Guest Art - Nick Trujillo
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Guest Art - Nick Trujillo
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/guest-art-nick-trujillo
Guitar Hell-o
AnonymousGreeting fellow soldiers!
I had the most profound privilege of working on a certain plastic musical instrument title that had numerous spin-offs and sequels (you know the one).
I remember one Summer, a handful of us were “Drafted” to a special project where the game was going to release DLC for a music album the same day as the actual music album.
Because we were working with unreleased music, we were subjected to ridiculous security measures as the band in particular is notorious for being protective of their music.
The farcical security measures included:
- A mandatory use of headphones when listening to the title OR playing with the sound muted (on a music game) for 8 hours a day.
- The inability to talk about song tracks out loud. We had to alter the names of the song titles with brief snippets of the lyrics instead, even abbreviations of the tracks would garner “stern looks” from the leads.
- And of course, no removal storage devices or burned media of any kind could enter or leave the special rooms. To ensure this was done, a security guard was HIRED to scan us with a metal detector any time we left the room, including bathroom breaks.
Early on in the project, one of the security guards even told my friend to “leave his car keys, in his car” because they “keep setting off the metal detector”. To which my friend replied “Leave my car keys, in my car? ARE YOU F#%$ing SERIOUS!?”
My friend was reprimanded for cursing out the security guard (it might even have affected his impending promotion) and was removed from the ‘special’ project.
From that day on, the security guards let us keep our car keys with us however…
Victory for the little guys!
Posts
You have metal. In your pocket. Take it out. Of course it will beep.
This wasn't a day one incident. It was a repeated thing, where the doofus never removed shit from his pockets when he went to leave the building/room.
This whole thing puzzles me. Didn't they have a little tray to put your keys and other metal objects in before you go through the detector? Those are certainly standard at airports, government buildings, hell any place I've ever been with a metal detector.
Ugh. Well at least you can be sure those guys hated their jobs every bit as much as you did.
People will still not take things out of their pockets and hold a line of people up and sigh extremely loudly as though it is security's fault.
I had people do it every day for 5 years. Every. Day.
I've never been a security guard, but my years in customer service tell me this is truth. Some people are perfectly willing to add extra tedium to their own lives in order that they might inflict tedium on someone else.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
(Fixed your quote
Ah, that makes sense. Being government employees it was probably nigh impossible to actually fire them, so the next best thing was putting them on the piss-watch detail.
I think it's less out of spite than it is just pure laziness. Sure, they could take their keys out, but that requires effort. Nevermind the future effort of having to be wanded or whatever every time, or the inconvenience to the security guard / other people :P
I'm not trying to piss anyone off, but I'm sick of the fact that every time I visit this site there's no comic. I come to this site because I want to read comics, not because I want to see characters drawn in different scenes or other artists' renditions. 1.5 months is a really long time to go without any story update at all.
I am really not trying to troll here - I genuinely want to see more comics. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
Nah, it's like this at contractor-owned facilities too, and it's just as irritating from the other side. Anyone in the secure area who isn't cleared needs to be escorted, so every day one of the software engineers needs to follow the cleaning crew around for like twenty minutes, standing there awkwardly while they vacuum the cubicles and such, and shouting "uncleared!" as they walk around so that everyone nearby turns off their monitors. It's irritating to the developers and demeaning to the cleaning staff.
At least where I am the bathrooms are outside the secure area, so there's that.
I went back and I checked the start and end dates of the seasons so far, and the breaks between them.
Season 1 08/09/11 - 02/16/12
Season 2 03/20/12 - 11/15/12
Season 3 01/08/13 - 09/05/13
Break between Season 1 & 2: 33 days
Break between Season 2 & 3: 54 days
Break between Season 3 & 4: 55 days (so far)
So it is the longest break between seasons, but not by much (currently). It does seem a bit ironic though that the recent change in both author & artist for the strip, ostensibly in order to keep Trenches in production on a regular schedule, was quickly followed by the longest break so far. Have Ty Halley & Monica Ray had to move or something? Their regular comics seem to be still being regularly updated. Also, I think Monica is the other character in this comic by Ty, suggesting they're working together:
http://journalcomic.com/comic.php?p=326
It seems like maybe they want to feature one guest art from each of the Strip Search contestants. There were 12 contestants, and 2 are now the main creators of the comic, leaving 10 potential guest artists, and they've run 5 so far. So maybe another 2 1/2 weeks until a new strip?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-search/artists
As an aside, the "About the Authors" page still hasn't been updated with the new author and artist info:
http://trenchescomic.com/about
*Abby just had to cut back Junior Scientist Power Hour to one update a week from two in order to accommodate The Last Halloween, so I wouldn't expect one from her.
*Lexxy just got done moving to Arkansas (congrats, Lexxy, by the way) and that presumably is the cause for the recent lack of updates to The Cloud Factory, so I wouldn't expect one from her.
*Katie just managed to get Camp Weedonwantcha up and running, so that obstacle's behind her now; I could see a piece coming from her but wouldn't expect it given that she may have something else going for PA.
*Tavis, don't know what kind of workload Tenko King is laying on him but given that Amy and Maki didn't let prep time for their comics stop them, I could see him contributing.
*Erika looks to have stabilized her schedule fine and dandy, so I could see her joining in as well.
When did they announce this change? I managed to miss it.
You guys probably want to muffle this convo before Tube starts handing out infractions.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
I'm capable of speaking for myself, thank you.
In short, "my job had rules, and then later we went out of business."
Ah, thank you for this. I was wondering why CF wasn't updating.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
The handing off to other comic creators seemed like a good idea at the time, since The Trenches had always seemed like the redheaded stepchild of the PA family, not getting the attention it deserved, with season finales announce after the season ended, irregular breaks, etc. However, the fact that it's still the "second comic" for each of the new artists apparently means it's still suffering a bit from a lack of priority.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/would-you-like-a-bonus-with-your-bonus
Question: If the studio closed, how did revoking bonuses to avoid bankruptcy help?
I really have to wonder how on earth this treating QA as second-class citizens started. Any experienced developer should know that QA is the second most important job in a code house. (Developers are more important only because without them there would be no code to test.) And even management should know that if you don't have a QA team to test then your developers need to do it. And you pay your developers a whole lot more money to be inferior testers because they are too close to the code. They make unconscious assumptions that make their testing weaker than a dedicated team.
Really, anyone who does not understand these basic truths has no business running a coding house.
The same principle seams to be playing out with companies outsourcing QA to India and trying everything they can to pay QA as little as possible and to simply work the dog shit out of them.
This is causing some push back, and some companies are working on making a few changes, but that is more in line with not breaking the law as opposed to being a human being.
You may recognize that particular job position as the same one Katie had going into the house. (She says this won't affect The Trenches.)
No, no it is not. It is no more of a cost center than the developers are. And it's pretty well known in development circles that the absolute worst places to work are those that treat development like a cost center. Mainly because you know that there is absolutely nothing you can do to be recognized; you're only going to be looked at as draining money from the company, no matter how much your work is necessary or even saves the company money.
Because while our work is critical, it's hard to quantify the benefit.
To put it silly metaphorical terms, we kill Hitler. (I swear I am not godwinning give me a chance)
IE... if you went back in time, killed Hitler, and stopped WW2 from happening, all the rest of the world would see is you murdering some slightly annoying dude. Explaining to people "But I just stopped a global war and a massive atrocity", they would just think you are crazy.
That's QA. We prevent disasters, but since it's hard to predict the future, it's hard to explain to people just how valuable this service is. Until someone removes QA from the equation, and things go to hell. But then it is too late.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
But your missing the point. I was explaining a why, not proffering a position I believe in. I think that by spending a little more on QA you can get rid of poor performing employees, and get quality help as well as a quicker turnaround which allows for a lower overall development cost.
Well that explains how management can treat QA like that, but let's be honest they treat everyone like that if they can get away with it.
What I'm more concerned about is why the devs get in on it. If anyone knows the value of QA it should be the dev that had one of their bugs pointed out. Maybe it's just young guys hired right out of college who haven't had any perspective in life yet who don't like having their flaws pointed out.
One day I'm going to open my own coding house (because there's a lot of money to be made in that arena if you know where to look) and if one of my developers ever treats QA as anything less than respected colleagues I'm going to be looking for a new developer. Of course, I won't be making games, so kids out of highschool won't be crawling all over themselves to get hired into my QA group though.
I can tell you the most successful projects I have worked on in the past had a dedicated QA team. That's not to say that the others failed, but they had a lot more production bugs that had to be worked out. (So there was a QA group, it was just our customers.)
Generally, or at least in my personal experience, you're pretty spot on there. Most of the devs I've worked with know the value of QA. Often, if something slips through and we get yelled at, they apologize. But you always get a few that get pissy when their bugs get pointed out, and they are generally the younger ones. I also get devs sometimes that get cranky when stuff they didn't directly work on gets bugged to them. IE, 'someone else's problem'.
Another aspect, the larger studios often keep QA and devs completely seperate, sometimes in totally different buildings or even states/countries. It can be very easy to villainize people you only interact with via e-mail or bug reports, because it's this faceless entity that slows you down. I mean, it's our job to say 'no' to stuff that they want to release.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/small-devs-large-devs
Anyone else find it ironic that the comic has apparently stalled on a guest sketch that proclaims "Yo, we got dis!"?
As a dev, I can say that's a large part of it. It's not even thinking that I'm perfect or anything. It's just that I'm so tired of working on this project, and every time a bug comes back, it means I have to continue working on this pile of shit. So unfortunately, some of my frustration gets taken out on QA.
Now I should point out that this involves snapping at them, and being in a foul mood toward them. It in no way means that I'd want them to be excluded from company events or company bonuses, or anything else that would make them feel like they were less than a regular member of the team.
Not to be negative, but they are. Or rather, often, they're contractors, which means they don't get a lot of the perks. Partly because companies want to save money, and in CA, at least partly because theres a weird law about the topic. But that's a management thing.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Well, let's see... she has her own comic, she has Trenches now, she just finished doing an art book for Desert Bus For Hope which she estimated at 20 pages, I know she's still got some straggling Indiegogo rewards to sort through. And she got an interview to do storyboards for Nickelodeon which, if she got it, would require relocation to Los Angeles. There's probably some other project or other to throw in there that she can't talk about or that I just missed.
Trenches isn't dead, but she will be. Monica's gonna frickin' kill herself.
Anyway, no new comic, but new tale, at least for Tuesday:
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/mobile-hell
Apparently there was neither a new tale nor comic for 11/14.