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WildMongrel
Canada30 Posts
Just wondering if anyone has done any testing at any point and what kind of advice they would have for someone just starting. I'm a temp employee hired through a company called VOLT, want to do everything I can to make sure I have the opportunity to convert to an EA employee after my work on this project. Thanks in advance! | ||
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CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
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Hokay
United States738 Posts
Anyways from what I heard is you either like it or hate it. It can get very repetitive when trying to figure out a bug. Imagine playing a level a 100 times trying to figure out or replicate a bug. There is lots of overtime too during "crunch" modes before release. As long as you have good writing skills, excel skills, communication skills and good bug hunting skills you should be ok. At least with Sony, it seems like they want long term workers for QA to work long hours who are available anytime during the week. Fuck that BUT this can be a stepping stone into the gaming industry.. | ||
Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
- When you find a bug, the most important thing to report is the exact sequence of steps the developers must perform to reproduce the bug. Once you've written the steps down (or while you're writing them), make sure you try them yourself, from scratch, to make sure they actually reproduce the bug. - Attention to detail is very useful. A sentence missing a period at the end is a bug, period. - Work with the developers, not against them. Sometimes it feels like you vs them, like when both parties disagree on whether an issue should be fixed. Don't let yourself think that way, though. In such disputes, it might help to look at the situation from their perspective. - If you're the only person testing something (probably unlikely in your case, but anyway), don't go searching for small, obscure bugs, at least not until you've tested all of the normal things that 99% of the players will be experiencing. - Software is never perfect, and parts that worked fine in the past have a tendency to stop working in future versions for weird and strange reasons when seemingly unrelated parts are changed/fixed elsewhere. Unless they're giving you the release candidate to play with (and even then), you will always find bugs. And if the game is still in development / bugs are still being fixed, then expect new bugs to show up in places that worked just fine in the last version. | ||
micronesia
United States24666 Posts
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Archaic
United States4024 Posts
"Your pony died because it wasn't pretty enough. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" | ||
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caution.slip
United States775 Posts
I mean the game was buggy and it crashed a bunch of times, but overall it was a fun experience. the game will suck by the way, don't spend money on it | ||
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Goosey
United States695 Posts
- There are testers we love, and testers we hate. Testers we love will not report duplicate bugs. Testers we love will attach screenshots, core dumps, and very very very detailed steps to reproduce. Testers we hate will submit bugs with titles like "inventory is broke!". Testers we hate don't stay around very long... - The testers at our company don't work insane hours, but they do have them pretty tightly packed. I have heard much worse stories though. - You will be playing the same game over and over and over and over for months. Also, it is very unlikely this game is going be 'that game' that you would do this on your own. You must view this as a real job, not as a way to play games.. because even if you are testing a game you think you will enjoy playing every single day, you won't after enough time. - Testers get paid dirt, but they are still a way to get a foot in the door. One of our designers started as a tester. In the end I wouldn't recommend trying to start a game industry career as a tester. You are much better off getting a good education and going in the front door, rather than trying to work your way up from the bottom. Go to The Guildhall, thats where I schooled.. They have like a 95% placement rate. Also be a programmer, we make the most money, have the best job security, and get all the bitches. Edit: Also, NEVER EVER take things personal. Sometimes programmers are under a lot of pressure, working overtime, and stressed out. If they respond to a bug with something snappy try to not let it get to you. It is unprofessional and reflects badly on them, but if you respond back with something equally snappy it will be bad news for you. And also don't phrase things in bug reports in a personal way. This isn't "your" bug, or "Joe's" bug, this is just "a" bug. | ||
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HamerD
United Kingdom1922 Posts
On June 04 2008 06:11 HelloWorld(OD) wrote: Anyone watch Pure Pwnage? "Your pony died because it wasn't pretty enough. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool i remember that :D | ||
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WildMongrel
Canada30 Posts
PS: My Lachesis mouse and Destructor mousepad just got here and they are the stone cold nuts. | ||
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DhakhaR
United Kingdom721 Posts
for those of you who know how the show works, each time you selected a box, the person behind it said a terrible one liner as they opened it. playing through the game many many times meant i had to endure these unskipable one liners repeated times. not fun. | ||
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DamageControL
United States4222 Posts
On June 04 2008 09:07 WildMongrel wrote: Thank you all much of this has been very helpful.. I have read a lot on the subject and am aware going in that this is not always the dream job that some people expect it to be. However I am hoping that a lot of the negative reviews are from straight up lazy guys who don't appreciate the other aspects of the job like working with a team of guys who wildly enthusiastic about a lot of the same things you are. Anyways wish me luck! PS: My Lachesis mouse and Destructor mousepad just got here and they are the stone cold nuts. My razer gear was warm when I got it in the mail...i dunno why | ||
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mnm
United States4493 Posts
Don't push the developers buttons. You can give them suggestions but they get the last say even if you feel you would know better because you've been playing the game over and over and you know it in and out like the back of your hand. Don't feel too bad if they don't listen to most things you say. Chances are some things may slip through and you can take pride in that. You will be treated like a kid. QA is like the lowest job on the totem pole so don't expect too much out of it. Also, you will want to fall asleep a lot. Try to resist since this looks bad but take short breaks when you can. The job can be very mundane and you may find that you want out asap but you may get stuck in the habit of continuing the same existence as everyone else around you. Take note that this is just one step and try to push yourself to the next level whenever you see an opportunity for it. Step up when you can. QA is a long and hard path up the development ladder but its good to know your roots when you climb up. On the upside, the QA community tends to be close knit and fun to hang out with. Its like getting stuck with the same thing and misery loves company. Don't expect to love the game you are assigned to towards the end of your project. Know that you're probably going to be on the same project for a very long time and you need to learn patience. Most people who QA a game will have a gazillion complaints about it because they know everything that is wrong about the game and they may feel like it can be improved if their opinion was followed but the developers just aren't listening. At the same time though getting stuck with the same people for a long time develops a sort of bond built through time. Anyway, hope you enjoy your experience. You should ask Excalibur_Z about his too. Let me know if you have any more questions. | ||
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Snet
United States3573 Posts
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Manifesto7
Osaka27140 Posts
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Excalibur_Z
United States12235 Posts
It really all depends on what you're testing, to be honest with you. I've tested platformers (Ty the Tasmanian Tiger), FPSs (Medal of Honor: Frontline), RPGs (Xenosaga II, Tales of Legendia), Adventure games (Nightmare of Druaga), racing games (Street Racing Syndicate), RTSs (Warhammer: Mark of Chaos), MMOs (first tester on Hellgate: London), fighting games (Tekken 5, Soulcalibur 3), party games (One Piece Grand Adventure), flight combat games (Ace Combat Zero), mobile games (PAC-MAN et al), just a ton of different genres. Since you said you'll be on the next Need for Speed, I'll relate my experiences on Street Racing Syndicate. SRS was an extremely long test cycle of like 8 months or so. It went through so many massive revisions, from being a GTA-clone to a NFS-clone to something kind of like Underground to some indescribable game. The game made little sense, had no compelling story, and was not particularly enthralling or even interesting. How you will perceive the game is entirely dependent on your attitude. At first I hated the game and would rather have been placed on Tales of Symphonia or Time Crisis: Crisis Zone which were also in test at the time, plus I was just on the E3 demo which meant you could only play for like 30 seconds before the game would return to attract mode. I found it monotonous and agonizing, but the fun of the game industry is you make friends with your coworkers and force yourself to find things you like about the game. Case in point: our E3 demo testing eventually devolved into rating the attractiveness of the 13 "girlfriends" (most of whom are porn stars like Aiko Tanaka, Tila Tequila, or Sasha Singleton, or import racing models like Courtney Day) in various categories like face, body, dancing ability, and overall cuteness, which became fun. Then we got a full build of the game after we completed the E3 build and that's where the real fun began. There were more tracks to play, more cars and parts to buy, more things to do. Eventually it gets stale and to the point where you hope for a new build ASAP. The game did have multiplayer though which was okay at the start, then got boring, then my cubemate and I revitalized it by running into each other head-on at 200mph (crashing the game at least once). Anyway this continues until you start doing overtime hours and we also did a couple of 24-hour shifts for that title. The point I'm trying to make is that the game is what you make of it, and even an average game like SRS can become fun if you come up with enough fun things to do and remain creative in your testing. When you get your first build, you'll want to play like the end-user plays, straight through as far as you can go. Then once you've played the opening parts of the game for the hundredth time you've pretty much exhausted all "normal" test methods so you can just start doing wacky stuff, like collision testing at varying speeds. For example, in the Miami races there's a stretch of road where the wall is almost "rubbery", bouncing you off of it when you get close to the edge, but if you run straight into that wall at high speed you'll push through it and fall out of the world. On the flip side, if you run into the exact corner of a guardrail at a very low speed your car will fly backward and into the air like 50 feet, spinning all crazy. Some of the bugs you find will be pretty funny and entertaining, but again, the bugs you find all depend on how creative and perceptive you are. For bug-writing, follow the format as closely as possible and make sure you are very descriptive without being verbose. It's much better to write "After the second turn, run into the left guardrail at a high speed (50+ mph)" than "Go left, then right, speed up to 50 mph, turn toward the wall, then hit the guardrail". Include as many landmarks in your bug writing as necessary, and if your game has a debug feature which displays coordinates, include the coordinates as a note. EA tries to push a daily bug count of 10 per tester, but that is not enforced and tends to cause an inflated bug count with a bunch of nonsense or low-priority bugs. For some bizarre reason EA likes to focus on the quantity of bugs found, not necessarily the quality, so you will probably end up bugging anything and everything. Training will familiarize you with the forms of bugs (progression halts, textures, seaming, crashes, stuck bugs, text, suggestions, sound, third-party standards violations). Note that you should never mention what you think the problem is (the EA training manual specifically references memory leaks for this, but it applies globally), simply mention the exact steps and a thorough description of the issue. Anyway that's about all I can think of at the moment, good luck to you. | ||
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WildMongrel
Canada30 Posts
I will let you guys know if anything interesting happens! At this point I think I am hoping to become a lead QA. Having said that, are there ever any opportunites to express my opinions of the game and how it could be improved? edit: I hope I can sleep, I'm a little anxious.. wish me luck! | ||
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On June 04 2008 14:39 Excalibur_Z wrote: EA tries to push a daily bug count of 10 per tester, but that is not enforced and tends to cause an inflated bug count with a bunch of nonsense or low-priority bugs. lol, that is disgraceful.  Edit: On June 04 2008 15:27 WildMongrel wrote: At this point I think I am hoping to become a lead QA. Having said that, are there ever any opportunites to express my opinions of the game and how it could be improved? There had better be. Otherwise I'd suggest getting some experience at EA first that you can put on your resume, then finding a job at a better, more competent company. (Actually, based on all the bad stuff I've heard about EA, I suggest that anyway.) | ||
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zizou21
United States3683 Posts
anyway, this is if you really want to invest yourself in the project | ||
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kerr0r
Norway319 Posts
I'm bumping this because of a banner ad currently on TL.net, namely this one: ![[image loading]](http://www.skjermskudd.com/out.php/i3006_ScreenShot025.png) Basically they say they can hook you up with game companies in need of testers, and I'm wondering: - Is this legit? - And is it worth the $45 price tag? | ||
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