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Trenches comic: Thursday Sept. 29, 2011
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
No... wait... go back over there... dammit.
09/29/2011 - Anonymous
After being part of the mobile test team for a year, my hard word paid off and I was assigned to test a REAL game for our Japanese parent company. I was excited to dig in since the game was part of a franchise I loved, and after doing a fair bit of research on the title, I arrived at work bright and early, ready to test.
I entered the room I was assigned to and closed the door behind me, eager to play, but when I turned around I found nothing but a TV and a DVD player. No PC. No Console. No controllers. No nothing.
It turned out the parent company wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of passing around playable builds, so their level of paranoia had reached new heights. For the next few weeks, I was to “test” this game … by watching pre-recorded footage of the developer playing the game.
Not awesome!
Bogey on
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also I am having a hard time feeling sorry for this tester who apparently was looking forward to testing a REAL game because mobile games aren't real??
I'd gather testing mobile games is probably more migrane inducing than console titles. The level of repetition they have by default is maddening.
I'm not even sure what you could be "testing" doing that. Maybe the next line of the story is ".. and then I was fired for not finding any new bugs."
Also, mobile games have come a long way even in just the past couple years. The story doesn't say when he was testing mobile games so for all he know the work he was doing before was on some shitty Tetris clone played on a 1.5-inch screen. Stuff like Fruit Ninja and Battleheart look like AAA titles compared to where mobile games were just a few years ago.
In the first panel we are looking from the other side of the mirror.
I think this is irrefutable proof that there is a mirror universe at play in this story. Probably much like Spock with a goatee, the mirror universe Isaac is the exact opposite of his normal counterpart. The question is, which one are we reading the adventures of? I'm guessing that the evil Isaac has somehow crossed over and is working to destroy this company while the REAL protagonist watches helplessly from the other side of the mirror.
As for her nose, it used to be jelly-bean shaped but now it kinda looks like she's got a Band-aid brand adhesive bandage on her face.
A. The developer should do the bug checking. QA is a second pair of eyes meant to try to do things in the software that the developer wouldn't think to do. Having a developer play the game defeats the purpose of QA because the developer is going to play it the way he/she thinks it should be played.
B. Watching a video instead of having control of the gameplay will find a bug that the developer couldn't find himself by making the video in the first place.
I call bull-oney on this story. Sounds more like someone made it up just to get it posted in Trenches. The person probably hasn't ever even worked a day in QA.
As for the comic, something just dawned on me - I wonder if we're ever going to learn what exactly the job is that this guy is doing. If that manages to remain vague for a long time, if not forever, I'll be amused.
This kind of feels like filler...
EDIT: And yeah, my objection to that story is that the dude playing the game in the first place would probably be doing the bug reports. Japanese companies are very efficient, I find it hard to believe they would hire someone just to watch the video.
I'm still loving the comic. I'm more of a continuity guy than I thought.
If you don't like it by now I doubt you're going to ever
I don't know why people constantly feel the need to pretend like they're Professional Webcomic Critics about this comic
http://www.audioentropy.com/
B...but I took a class and everything!
That's what I've been saying since this shit started.
What kind of moron walks into the woman's bathroom and doesn't notice he's in the wrong fucking place?
It's real.
I'm not the submitter, but I've worked for the company that this is about. I suspect I even know the game.
I work mobile testing and honestly I prefer it, but clearly mileage will vary here.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I once walked into a bathroom at Wal-mart. There was a little girl there, and we both looked at each other with very confused faces. My thought was why is she in there. I'm sure she had a similar thought in her mind. All of the sudden it struck me and I turned and ran out of there.
I'm glad there's someone "in the industry" who says this could be real. Because that story is so ridiculous I just want it to be real: that some where, some how, there's a company that dumb.
also "I was excited to test a game I loved" - OOPS. not something you want to wish for honestly, you'll end up hating that game and never want to see it again.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Given some of the QA tasks that I've had (open and close the main menu for eight hours is my personal favorite) I can see this being a thing that happened.
Also, given some of the QA personnel that I've worked with (WoW guy, Revealing info about the game we're working on in the official forums guy, Using the company computers to code flash games for kongregate guy, etc.) I can understand where the developer's paranoia was coming from.
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Most often that is for breast feeding, they get out of the public eye but its not cool to make them sit on the toilet each time the child is hungry. Alternatively for pumping but the same concept.
Our building had a lactation room too. Coming back from lunch and passing the door... "I'll be in my office!"
edit: Also, wtf. Human Shield is sort of right, shouldn't his hair be backwards in the first panel if that's a mirror? None of this makes sense, at all.
The comic has quite a pace. Like a monotonous plodding. Kinda like QA.
I just took the second two panels as us basically standing behind them, viewing them in the mirror.
Hey, so maybe that's the deal, they're just being super meta here. "This comic is not to entertain you with the hilarious antics of people working in QA. This comic is to make you feel as if you are working in QA when you read it."
Maybe we're supposed to be pointing out the issues with the comic and logging tickets so they can fix it and re-post?
Really, the inconsistencies in the first panel are funnier than the strip itself. His hair does not reflect correctly at all, and the hands are just two stumps splashing, as if trying to call the attention to the fact that they do not belong in reality.
Also, her lips say "Hey" but her eyes say "Jesus christ what is wrong with that reflection"
I think you've touched on one of the major problems with Trenches. It cannot live up to the hype of its parent projects.
Couches are an institution from the 1950's or 60's, where those women would go when they're getting 'the cramps' or some other such BS to avoid working.
But seriously, it's really more of an issue of removing and getting rid of a couch that's been sitting in the women's restroom for 20+ years than leaving it in there.