As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Trenches comic: Tuesday Nov. 8, 2011 - Animus

BogeyBogey I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
edited November 2011 in The Penny Arcade Hub
i-Nn2VnV8.jpg
The Reality of the Situation.

11/08/2011 - Anonymous

I work for one of the largest publishers in world, and they treat the development of games as a machine (which I believe is representative of many testing environments). The issue with these policies is that it systematically breeds a disdain for actually assuring (or ensuring) quality.

In the last few months of testing, 95% of bugs will be marked WNF (“Will Not Fix”). The idea is that fixing a bug could cause a new bug, and if the bug is not high severity, it’s not worth the risk. So if the project is running longer than planned, most low-severity bugs (and some mid-severity bugs) get ignored. Of course, the project always runs longer than planned, because the producer’s goal is to cram every game into a one year development cycle, even if it really should have been a two or three year game.

What makes matters worse is that many of the producers running things used to be QA Testers. These are the ones who stuck with it for years. Usually they have an easy-to-get-along with personality, a good record of being on time, a decent record with bugs and a tendency to not complain. These are the guys who took the eventual QA mantra, “Ship it!” to heart.

“Ship it!,” by the way, means “Fuck it.” It’s the realization that after enough trials and tribulations, you just don’t care about the quality of the game anymore because the game NEEDS to get out the door (or so says the folks upstairs).

Testers are still judged by their bug counts (though some leads will try to say otherwise to their testers), even when the bugs won’t be fixed. So the grunts are still expected to cover QA’s collective ass by entering everything they find, presumably to convince the higher-ups that we’re actually working. The result is a sense that your job… your high-overtime job, and therefore your life… has no purpose. It’s just you and the guy next to you, yelling at screens, finding and entering bugs that won’t be fixed, in a soul-crushing room the color of bile and shit, trying to earn $9.50/hr. In Los Angeles, where $9.50 might buy you lunch, and a month’s worth of pay might cover your rent, if your parents are very generous in what they charge you.

Fitocracy: Join us in the SE++ group!
XBox LIVE: Bogestrom | Destiny
PSN: Bogestrom
Bogey on
«1

Posts

  • Man in the MistsMan in the Mists Registered User regular
    Ah yes, FISI. I know it all too well. Especially since the results usually match what the acronym implies.

  • AthenorAthenor Battle Hardened Optimist The Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
    So here's a question, after reading this comic for a few months:

    What can we do to change this? More expensive games? Less solid release dates? Rejection of the product if it is buggy as all hell?

    It sounds like the gaming industry has developed a kind of vicious cycle that feeds on itself; the game has to be put out, so quality drops/bugs are allowed in the system, which causes people to not care about their jobs, which causes more bugs to make it into the next game. At least, this is how this scans to me. If this is an open secret about the gaming industry, then why has no one tried to fix it?

    He/Him | "A boat is always safest in the harbor, but that’s not why we build boats." | "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." - Suletta Mercury, G-Witch
  • jackaljackal Fuck Yes. That is an orderly anal warehouse. Registered User regular
    Because it works... mostly... sometimes.

  • IvarIvar Oslo, NorwayRegistered User regular
    Because we keep buying the games no matter how buggy they are. Most platforms now have the possibility of patching.

  • rabidmuskratrabidmuskrat Registered User regular
    Kind of sad that it's the people with the "fuck it" attitude that are the ones getting promoted.

  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Athenor wrote:
    So here's a question, after reading this comic for a few months:

    What can we do to change this? More expensive games? Less solid release dates? Rejection of the product if it is buggy as all hell?

    Nothing. Today's story is dead on for about 75-85% of publishers and there are dozens of people eager to replace every person who leaves in disgust.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • CobellCobell Registered User regular
    MuddBudd wrote:
    Athenor wrote:
    So here's a question, after reading this comic for a few months:

    What can we do to change this? More expensive games? Less solid release dates? Rejection of the product if it is buggy as all hell?

    Nothing. Today's story is dead on for about 75-85% of publishers and there are dozens of people eager to replace every person who leaves in disgust.

    This isn't just the game industry or even software in general. This happens everywhere. It's almost impossible to ship any piece of complex software or hardware without some kinds of defects. That's why there are patches, security updates, product recalls, complex statistical algorithms to calculate cost of lawsuits vs. fixing things, etc.

  • King RiptorKing Riptor Registered User regular
    I bet Portallis only has like 750,000 doors. They always round up.

    that story is depressing.

    It is good to know my general attitude towards work actually is rewarded in some corporate structure though

    I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
  • FandeathisFandeathis Registered User regular
    This was my absolute favorite story. It summed everything up really well regarding what is wrong with the industry. Just look at the incredible game that is Battlefield 3, and then be totally bummed at the fact that EA shipped it so buggy, that I still have to go through a 20 minute long process of trial an error to play on the same squad as my friends. RAGE was unplayable at launch, and still has major graphic bugs for me. Dead Island shipped with so many bugs, that my friends already gave up on trying to play it with me. These are all good games that have been ruined for many people by bugs that could have been fixed with more time and care. It's a sad state the industry is in, and they are making record profits.

    You fuck wit' Die Antwoord, you fuck wit' da army.
  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    I'm calling it. The story is about Ubisoft. I have long said they lack a decent QA department - this would fit that assertion quite nicely :P

    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • Ori KleinOri Klein Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Athenor wrote:
    So here's a question, after reading this comic for a few months:

    What can we do to change this? More expensive games? Less solid release dates? Rejection of the product if it is buggy as all hell?

    It sounds like the gaming industry has developed a kind of vicious cycle that feeds on itself; the game has to be put out, so quality drops/bugs are allowed in the system, which causes people to not care about their jobs, which causes more bugs to make it into the next game. At least, this is how this scans to me. If this is an open secret about the gaming industry, then why has no one tried to fix it?

    It's the same in every industry. The details just change a bit. But in the end it's all about company's board of directors making a boat of money upon the grunts' backs and often the grunts who try to do good honest work realize that their efforts are meaningless, because the higher ups aren't interested in helping them doing good work, "just barely good enough to pass" seems to be just fine for them, so long sales are made.

    The only way to change it would be for someone with some ethics and deep pockets to go about founding a business in any industry, successfully compete with the established pseudo-sweatshops while instilling a high sense of moral code and protocols deep onto the corporate structure, and turn good profit. The trick will be to find good managers who shares the vision and will work very hard for much less (after all, in all those companies the grunts earn 5-10% while the top percent of the company's executives collect the other 90-95% of the gross profits onto their wallets - and that's why they keep running them) than his competitors offer, under which good workers will want to come and work for.

    Ori Klein on
  • jfdimarcojfdimarco Registered User new member
    I have worked in the room that this post refers to, at the company that they refer to.

    And I say to you that every word of it is true.

  • Fatty McBeardoFatty McBeardo Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Why does Q gotta hate so?

    Regarding the anecdote - is the state of testing and QA any better in the world of software development outside of games?

    Fatty McBeardo on
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Warlock82 wrote:
    I'm calling it. The story is about Ubisoft. I have long said they lack a decent QA department - this would fit that assertion quite nicely :P

    I was thinking Vivendi or THQ actually. Who knows. It applies to so many places.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • BursarBursar Hee Noooo! PDX areaRegistered User regular
    Why does Q gotta hate so?

    Regarding the anecdote - is the state of testing and QA any better in the world of software development outside of games?

    It depends. If you have spent a truckload of money on advertising, making sure that stores have space available on their shelves, manufacturing, shipping, and other factors to ensure that your product gets to the consumer, you're not going to choose to throw a monkey wrench into the entire works because "little" non-fatal bugs are piling up.

    I guess the solution to that is to not have release dates, because then you can release it "when it's done" instead of being beholden to a spot on the calendar you picked out a year ago when everything was bright and full of promise. Even then, stores don't like not knowing when products are going to arrive without lots of lead time to prepare, and you certainly can't just drop a shipment off on their doorsteps and tell them to put it on the shelves. This applies to "virtual storefronts" like XBLA and PSN, too; your release date gets picked out months ahead, and you'd better be ready with all your documentation and code several weeks beforehand, or else there's going to be trouble.

    If anything, I'd hazard a guess that it's really only better on QA with products that:
    a) don't have physical copies
    b) are self-published
    c) are being created by people who are already independently wealthy, so they don't need to worry about releasing the title just to put food on the table

    ...Which pretty much leaves me with Minecraft and Steam. Huh.

    GNU Terry Pratchett
    PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
    Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
    egc6gp2emz1v.png
  • ninja.icebergninja.iceberg Software Tester Registered User regular
    At my work, low severity bugs or high risk bugs that will take time to be fixed are usually put into a patch bucket. It's horrible that games are shipped with bugs but we never usually have enough time. "Ship it" is totally dead on. Producers and devs don't want to ship with these bugs either but they have to meet ship dates placed on them by marketing. You'd be surprised how much pull marketing has on a dev team.

  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    At my work, low severity bugs or high risk bugs that will take time to be fixed are usually put into a patch bucket. It's horrible that games are shipped with bugs but we never usually have enough time. "Ship it" is totally dead on. Producers and devs don't want to ship with these bugs either but they have to meet ship dates placed on them by marketing. You'd be surprised how much pull marketing has on a dev team.

    This is also very true.

    I had one job where every month they nominated a VIP and gave them a gift certificate, etc... Every damn month QA worked hard, sometimes until 2am on major projects. Every month, someone from Marketing won.

    Because they bring in money.

    I've seen my share of stupid producers though, especially the upper management ones who suddenly decide to start promising two day turnarounds on a build without consulting QA or the producers under him.

    MuddBudd on
    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Ultimately, releasing a perfect product is probably either impossible or unreasonably expensive and time-consuming. If it's good enough that people will still enjoy it despite whatever issues it has, why not release it?

  • GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    I had an uncle who was an engineer and worked at McDonnell-Douglas for about 30 years on defense contracts.

    He told me the lesson he learned was, "The perfect is the enemy of the good enough."

    If this is the philosophy adopted by people working on things which could potentially kill thousands or millions of people and be vital to national security, then you can't expect industries which are basically producing toys to make a quick buck to stop cutting corners.

    Of course, from what I understand, nothing my uncle ever worked on in his 30-some years with McD-D ever actually got put into production (talk about feeling like your job is pointless) because it didn't pan out or the government changed their mind or whatever, so take what he said with a grain if salt if you want, I suppose.

    Gaslight on
  • SyphyreSyphyre A Dangerous Pastime Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    The way you wrote it makes the quote read a little weird, I prefer "The enemy of 'perfect' is 'good enough'" i.e. when something is good enough to work, it usually never ever hits the "perfect" point. And in truth, nothing out there is engineered absolutely perfectly. The question is, what is the "good enough" point.

    When you're talking about engineering bridges and buildings, the "good enough" point is usually a factor of 2 or 4 more than what you actually expect to put on it. Yeah you could build it to last 2000 years, but you know what, this will last the next 50 at a pure minimum.

    When you're talking about consumer software on the other hand, the "Good enough" point is usually "will people buy this, and will they buy more of it in the future if our marketeers are good enough"

    Back in the NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 days, your game's "good enough" had to be extremely playable from start to finish and almost bug free, and if that meant pushing the date of release back, -it actually happened- quite a bit.

    Now, "good enough" means "the network module to patch the game is accessable. Ship!"

    :(

    Then again I rarely buy any of the latest blockbusters anymore and it seems like those are the games that consistantly get the bad rap. (though I am getting Skyrim, so we'll see, hahahaha right).

    Syphyre on
  • KochikensKochikens Registered User regular
    Syphyre wrote:
    Back in the NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 days, your game's "good enough" had to be extremely playable from start to finish and almost bug free, and if that meant pushing the date of release back, -it actually happened- quite a bit.


    just because you don't remember them having bugs didn't mean they didn't have any. Just, as an adult, you know who to get angry and outraged at. As a kid, well, at least when I was a kid I just accepted that I had to restart my system because my dude stopped moving. And then I went and got myself a cookie.

  • SyphyreSyphyre A Dangerous Pastime Registered User regular
    Oh trust me, I know they had bugs, in fact I discovered some reproducible ones on my own. The key is by and large, they did not prevent you from playing the game. The major bugs that we're seeing in some of the AAA games put out today? They prevent you from playing the game.

  • KochikensKochikens Registered User regular
    I remember playing the earlier version of Monster Hunter because the newer version glitched out so much in one part I couldn't play it. I didn't get mad. I just played the old game instead.

  • GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Syphyre wrote:
    The way you wrote it makes the quote read a little weird, I prefer "The enemy of 'perfect' is 'good enough'" i.e. when something is good enough to work, it usually never ever hits the "perfect" point.

    I didn't write it weird, I wrote exactly what I intended to write, which was a direct quote of what he told me: 'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough.' ;-) His point was that perpetually attempting to refine everything to perfection is futile and you will never actually "finish" or accomplish anything that way. The best you can pragmatically do is find the point where the project is good enough to more or less satisfy all of the practical requirements it was designed to fill, and where the amount of improvement to be gained by further refinement isn't worth the amount of time and resources which would have to be invested.

    In relating this, I'm not trying to make a judgment about the relative merits of different philosophies of design or engineering or QA. I'm just saying that when people working on projects which could literally be matters of life and death feel that they are compelled to adopt a philosophy like this, it's foolish to expect companies making mass-market leisure items like video games to be more idealistic.

    Gaslight on
  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    Athenor wrote:
    So here's a question, after reading this comic for a few months:

    What can we do to change this? More expensive games? Less solid release dates? Rejection of the product if it is buggy as all hell?

    It sounds like the gaming industry has developed a kind of vicious cycle that feeds on itself; the game has to be put out, so quality drops/bugs are allowed in the system, which causes people to not care about their jobs, which causes more bugs to make it into the next game. At least, this is how this scans to me. If this is an open secret about the gaming industry, then why has no one tried to fix it?
    From a consumer stand point. Simply don't buy the game until they fix the bugs. Unfortunately it would require many people to take that stance to be effective. From a development standpoint, you need a publisher with money that doesn't waste too much time, and pushes for bug fixes as opposed to extra features. In the end it comes down the consumer, in Japan a game that comes out that buggy doesn't sell, there is a cultural bias that simply won't buy any product that isn't polished. Here we have a culture of instant satisfaction and we want it now. So until we fiscally punish publishers for forcing out products too soon, nothing will get done.

  • HewnHewn Registered User regular
    zepherin wrote:
    So until we fiscally punish publishers for forcing out products too soon, nothing will get done.

    Agreed. But at the same time, many buggy games are ambitious in nature. And it's good to reward that kind of ambition so future products are funded, and potentially less buggy, and at the very least more polished. I think the Elder Scrolls (and Fallout 3) are a nice example of this.

    Steam: hewn
    Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Hewn wrote:
    zepherin wrote:
    So until we fiscally punish publishers for forcing out products too soon, nothing will get done.

    Agreed. But at the same time, many buggy games are ambitious in nature. And it's good to reward that kind of ambition so future products are funded, and potentially less buggy, and at the very least more polished. I think the Elder Scrolls (and Fallout 3) are a nice example of this.

    Is it safe to say that time spent fixing bugs and time spent developing features exclude each other at nearly a 1 to 1 ratio?

  • PikaPuffPikaPuff Registered User regular
    Decieveing thread title

    jCyyTSo.png
  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Hewn wrote:
    zepherin wrote:
    So until we fiscally punish publishers for forcing out products too soon, nothing will get done.

    Agreed. But at the same time, many buggy games are ambitious in nature. And it's good to reward that kind of ambition so future products are funded, and potentially less buggy, and at the very least more polished. I think the Elder Scrolls (and Fallout 3) are a nice example of this.
    I think we need a more balanced approach, and maybe just better time management in the industry. I have always thought the gaming industry would benefit from utilizing a construction style project management set as opposed to the entertainment version they use now. Actually the entertainment industry would likely benefit too, because they are too resistant to change and you are only as successful as what you did last week.
    jothki wrote:
    Is it safe to say that time spent fixing bugs and time spent developing features exclude each other at nearly a 1 to 1 ratio?
    Well if you mean a minute spent fixing bugs means you can't spend that minute developing features? Than yes. If you are referring to productivity and utility it is a murkier question. As a general rule, fixing bugs requires less overhead and oversight than adding another feature. If only because adding a new feature requires a full test run, while a bug fix tends to have a more limited test, unless the bug fix causes a new bug. Of course there are times when that is totally not true because they already have the features pre-planned and the implementation aspect is just pop in and link.

    zepherin on
  • NotorietyNotoriety Registered User new member
    I interned for Microsoft last summer, and there, if not at other places, there's a saying: "Shipping is a feature too." In other words, you could fix bugs in your millions of lines of code until the end of time and have a perfect product, but you would never ship, and shipping a product is what a business is supposed to do. Thus, you need to be strategic about the ones you choose to fix. If a bug is not serious or is only going to be hit in a very unusual scenario, it might not be worth fixing, especially as we get late in the product cycle. Now I can predict a lot of people who don't know shit saying "well we know how poorly that works for M$ Windows LOLOL," but as someone who uses Windows and OS X, I realized over the summer that in most places in the industry it really is just about people trying their best to solve hard problems.

    In short, I wouldn't say that it's inherently bad to decide you're going to log some bugs, leave them in, and punt them to the next cycle. This is perfectly reasonable, and there's a distinction to be made between a company that launches a product with known bugs and a company that just knowingly launches a bad product.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Notoriety wrote:
    I interned for Microsoft last summer, and there, if not at other places, there's a saying: "Shipping is a feature too." In other words, you could fix bugs in your millions of lines of code until the end of time and have a perfect product, but you would never ship, and shipping a product is what a business is supposed to do. Thus, you need to be strategic about the ones you choose to fix. If a bug is not serious or is only going to be hit in a very unusual scenario, it might not be worth fixing, especially as we get late in the product cycle. Now I can predict a lot of people who don't know shit saying "well we know how poorly that works for M$ Windows LOLOL," but as someone who uses Windows and OS X, I realized over the summer that in most places in the industry it really is just about people trying their best to solve hard problems.

    In short, I wouldn't say that it's inherently bad to decide you're going to log some bugs, leave them in, and punt them to the next cycle. This is perfectly reasonable, and there's a distinction to be made between a company that launches a product with known bugs and a company that just knowingly launches a bad product.
    I can agree with that statement, however there is also a need to have a valid QC process, and even in my above construction example, you can't get everything perfect. There are going to be things missed, things not quite right and sometimes you catch a punch list that makes Tolstoy look like a back to school pamplet. The QC process in every industry tends to get scrapped when money is tight until a crappy product gets put out and everyone scrambles to not get fired.

    zepherin on
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Actually, that IS starting. As a QA tester in the process of studying to take the PMI Project Management test, I have learned that the PMBOK is more and more often getting applied to games development.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    MuddBudd wrote:
    Actually, that IS starting. As a QA tester in the process of studying to take the PMI Project Management test, I have learned that the PMBOK is more and more often getting applied to games development.
    I support you getting your PMP. More software engineers could use it.
    Fair enough, but they are a long ways away from accepting PMMM. On the plus side some studios are using TQM correctly which is a good start. I think the resistance to management techniques comes from an old disdain from programers towards managers. I would just like to see well defined scopes, and keep the stakeholders and the programers from scope creep. Of course I work in government so I spend most of my time preventing contractors from mucking with my scope to keep costs in line.

    zepherin on
  • BrymBrym Registered User regular
    Gaslight wrote:
    Syphyre wrote:
    The way you wrote it makes the quote read a little weird, I prefer "The enemy of 'perfect' is 'good enough'" i.e. when something is good enough to work, it usually never ever hits the "perfect" point.

    I didn't write it weird, I wrote exactly what I intended to write, which was a direct quote of what he told me: 'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough.' ;-) His point was that perpetually attempting to refine everything to perfection is futile and you will never actually "finish" or accomplish anything that way. The best you can pragmatically do is find the point where the project is good enough to more or less satisfy all of the practical requirements it was designed to fill, and where the amount of improvement to be gained by further refinement isn't worth the amount of time and resources which would have to be invested.

    In relating this, I'm not trying to make a judgment about the relative merits of different philosophies of design or engineering or QA. I'm just saying that when people working on projects which could literally be matters of life and death feel that they are compelled to adopt a philosophy like this, it's foolish to expect companies making mass-market leisure items like video games to be more idealistic.

    Correct. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is a standard saying, which you and your uncle are using correctly.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Syphyre wrote:
    Oh trust me, I know they had bugs, in fact I discovered some reproducible ones on my own. The key is by and large, they did not prevent you from playing the game. The major bugs that we're seeing in some of the AAA games put out today? They prevent you from playing the game.

    Oh don't bullshit. The number one error for game breaking bugs is almost always corrupt saves. Which weren't even a feature in most nes games.

    Additionally, teams are huge nowadays and games are tens of times more complex than they were back in the day of the super Nintendo. As such there is a shitload more code and more people working in paralell which means the chances of bugs increase exponentially. QA probably catches more bugs than ever before because QA departments now actually exist. Back when PoP was first made it was one dude, it was relatively free if bugs because if he encountered an error since he coded everything he was intimemtly familiar with it and he could squash it fast.

    Also, the original saying is, art is never finished, only abandoned.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Also, look a DNF. That is what happens when you have unlimited time to work on shit.

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    jothki wrote:
    Is it safe to say that time spent fixing bugs and time spent developing features exclude each other at nearly a 1 to 1 ratio?

    No, it's far worse than that. Developing new features increases the complication of your test cases and usually also lengthens the build/test/fix/rebuild cycle, so time spent developing new features excludes time spent fixing bugs at a more than 1:1 ratio. I suspect it's something like 2:1.

    But then I'm not in the game industry; I write software for a defense contractor. We have a somewhat higher standard for catching bugs and we prefer to let features slip instead if that's possible, but yeah, stuff slips through. I mean, you go ahead and mention this to anyone in the defense industry and just watch the expression on their face.

    Another problem is that sometimes management will drastically underestimate how long testing and debugging and integration will take, and then they'll start complaining "well why didn't you write it properly in the first place!" or something silly like that. In my experience, the usefulness of a software manager varies inversely with the amount of time it's been since that manager was one of the developers. (If you're writing software and your manager was never a developer, well, there you go.)

  • IvarIvar Oslo, NorwayRegistered User regular
    Daedalus wrote:
    jothki wrote:
    Is it safe to say that time spent fixing bugs and time spent developing features exclude each other at nearly a 1 to 1 ratio?

    No, it's far worse than that. Developing new features increases the complication of your test cases and usually also lengthens the build/test/fix/rebuild cycle, so time spent developing new features excludes time spent fixing bugs at a more than 1:1 ratio. I suspect it's something like 2:1.

    But then I'm not in the game industry; I write software for a defense contractor. We have a somewhat higher standard for catching bugs and we prefer to let features slip instead if that's possible, but yeah, stuff slips through. I mean, you go ahead and mention this to anyone in the defense industry and just watch the expression on their face.

    Another problem is that sometimes management will drastically underestimate how long testing and debugging and integration will take, and then they'll start complaining "well why didn't you write it properly in the first place!" or something silly like that. In my experience, the usefulness of a software manager varies inversely with the amount of time it's been since that manager was one of the developers. (If you're writing software and your manager was never a developer, well, there you go.)

    And that is why you should always pad your estimates. At least a little bit.

  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    The complete resistance by game consumers to have prices on their games hiked across the last two decades has probably had some significant impact, too. The amount of resources required to create a game is significantly larger, but prices haven't really adjusted nearly as much as you'd expect.

    What is this I don't even.
  • FireflashFireflash Montreal, QCRegistered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Warlock82 wrote:
    I'm calling it. The story is about Ubisoft. I have long said they lack a decent QA department - this would fit that assertion quite nicely :P

    I'm pretty sure it's not Ubi, unless they have a development studio in LA I'm not aware of...

    Also, what I've witnessed is that it can be possible to put out a successful high profile title in a year or less if the devteam is strong and talented, and if they put in the soul crushing hours needed to do it. In the end people are tired but happy they managed to release a great game despite the time constraints. But because they were successful, upper management sees that it's doable (despite burning out their employees) and expect the same to be done next year.

    Fireflash on
    PSN: PatParadize
    Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
    Steam Friend code: 45386507
Sign In or Register to comment.