When a developer has to prepare demos for events or just as a release on XBL, how does that effect the testers?

I’ve heard that demos can make it hard to meet deadlines and I figure it would be really hard on testers especially with events such as E3 where you are on a very tight schedule with very early builds of games (remember the Too Human demo??).

Do you guys haveppattent attornys in the gameing departmeny running around looking at new ips and making sure people dont infrenge and wat not. Also ones that l;ook at consels and consel updates??

To be honest martial arts are the only thing that i am good at. i am 17 and i have been doing a range of different martial arts for about 12 years. i have won a few different competitions in and outside the uk, so im not just some kid flinging my arms and legs around. i could go into more but im not hear to boast, ‘just wanted to know if there is a way i can put it to some use.

thanks guys

Is it a matrix based organization? i.e. you may be a skilled team member one project and then reassigned to a lead role the next and then back to a standard team member as required by the work at hand?

I’m in the QA field myself and was really close to becoming part of the MGS QA staff at one point. Here are some of my questions, not all of them need to be answered of course:

1) On average how much automated testing is done and on what type of components of the game?

2) As games become more complex, how do you see automated testing become part of the QA cycle?

3) Generally, what’s the time between a bug being reported and it being fixed?

4) What’s the environment like for the QA and DEV teams from a third-party game? Do they usually have a small team of DEVs on hand to help with bug fixes? I only ask because at where I work, the QA and DEV team are really close. All I have to do is walk a few feet from my desk and ask a DEV if an issue is really a bug or for some clarification.

5) Other than “playing” video games for living, what’s are some reasons you enjoy the QA field?

Are there ever any jokes people play on each other..i.e. deleting gamerscore, changing screen names?

Do you guys plan on playing video games all your lives?

is there room for promotion with your position inside the company? In other words are you guys stuck as testers or can you be Peter Moore one day…by Peter Moore I mean head of something.

Thanks for your time great podcast.

Just curious

Later

Loving the podcast – thanks for opening the door on a side of the gaming biz that we would never normally get to see

Anyway, I have a question, if you would be so kind. Listening to you discuss the sort of things you do in both your cast and in Major Nelson’s podcast, where you explain how you will go in and give feedback to the devs about placement, interation and gameplay mechanics, I wondered…what happens when the game is an absolute lemon when it gets to you?

What I mean is, what happens when you are faced with a game that would need a rebuild from the ground up to make it into a fun game? Not mentioning any names here **cough cough Hour Of Victory cough cough **, the game was of such a poor quality (mechanically) that there was nothing about the game that could be considered “fun”. Everything was broken! How do you approach such a situation where you yourselves can see that just about everything is unbalanced or clunky or not up to scratch?

I can imagine that a lot of listeners would have the mindset that if a bad game ships, then some liability would fall to yourselves for that. but I would argue against that and counter with the point that you will have most likely offered feedback to the developers, but it was not heeded, and they merely ensured that the basics for certification were built in and nothing more.

Obviously I don’t expect you to comment on a specific game, but you will no doubt have come up against this more than once…so who’s right? I would imagine you can get quite frustrated by this…does it often feel like you are getting apportioned blame unfairly for “allowing a bad game to pass”?

I’d love to hear your side of the story

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to ask our questions to you!

Here’s my question:

Since you guys are testers, are you playing games (for fun) differently then you did before you got into testing? Do you look at them from another standpoint?

Thanks!
Thomas from The Netherlands