Pixel Grater is a "brand" for my humour posts about video games, the idea being if you see the term in front of a post it's a humour post and is meant for entertainment not informant. Quality Assured is a fictional diary, any resemblance to actual people is coincidental and company names are used parody purposes only. The fact it echoes the real world is a depressing side effect of the real world.
My name is Quentin Andrews and I work as a Q&A tester for EA Kredix. We?re officially known as the ?smaller projects team? which a good 85% of the time means ?we?re going to cancel this game?. You?d think that would make me find my work quite depressing, but sometimes it feels more like I?m a custodian of quality, making sure that these games never see the light of day. Still, if a game makes it this far then that means someone up top approved of it at some point and that thought alone is usually more depressing. I work with 2 other colleagues; Chris Plus and James Valent and all of us hate our job. I?m 25, live in a one bedroom apartment with my loving but unemployed girlfriend. I used to have ambitions. Here?s what we?ve been up to this week.
Monday
So it turns out that despite constant reassurance from the press, the community and the sales figures that we?ve had our fill of motion controlled games they are somehow still being made, and I?m not talking about high budget nightmares like Star Wars Kinect. I mean that special brand of sports/minigame/nobody in their right fucking mind actually buys these unless they genuinely have 3 minutes in a game shop and some 8 year old to appease before sundown. No less than 4 turned up in the in tray this week, and the three of us drew straws as to who had to test 2 of them. Guess who lost?
So because I got the short straw I got to pick first. I decided to do my absolute best to avoid back pains and selected the Wii title ?Tennis is for Everyone!? Despite its slightly totalitarian title I figured it looked kid friendly, meaning easy. Plus Wii games in general require less movement than other titles, so I figured I could save myself the repetitive strain injury. James took the Playstation Move title ?MOlf!? which I can only assume is some sort of typo combined with an advertising budget to secure it?s irrevocability from the box. He?s going to have all sorts of fun revolving every golf club in augmented reality mode to check for faults. And by fun I mean miserable hours of tedium. Chris opted to try and work his body into a coma by playing ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? for Kinect, a game not only a clearly terrible rip off of Dane Central but also a seemingly quite racist. The set list consists of ?FUNKIFIED? classics, such as ?Can?t get yo? out of mah Head!?, ?Baby got Black? and my personal favourite ?Nigs in America?. I can only hope Chris has enough mojo, cause his shit is about to real fo? sho?.
As for my bonus game it?s a curiosity, a downloadable only title for Kinect called ?Cold Sweat?. The documentation didn?t fax through correctly so all I know is that I?m supposed to play for ?no longer than half an hour, and to avoid caffeinated drinks?. Seems a bit dodgy but I drew the straw, I deal with the consequences. This week is going to be all kinds of painful.
Tuesday
?Tennis is for Everyone? is awful and not even by retail terrible standards. It?s terrible by "I have to play broken games for a living" terrible. I can forgive bugs and glitches in early stages but when your game doesn't even have a visible floor I get the feeling the developers have some massive fucking in joke. I sent off a report informing them of the glitch. They sent back an email saying they knew. I sent them another email saying that if they knew why did they send me this game at all. They responded by asking me to test the physics. I asked them if this was a joke. They have yet to respond.
The ?physics? of ?Tennis is for Everyone!? are comparable to that of the moon. I understand that in a kids game you want to make things slower so they can keep up, but when it takes a full 10 seconds for the ball to travel from one side of the court to the other you?re not making the game ?easy? you?re making it ?unbearable?. This means the average game of tennis lasts around half an hour, and this is against the Easy AI. I say, easy, what I really mean is nonexistent AI. I swear it has yet to hit the ball. It just runs around the court, swinging wildly and frantically, with the one exception being when the ball is in front of them. Then it quickly dives in the opposite direction. I?ve genuinely spent hours trying to get it to hit the ball once. I felt like I was training an animal, at one stage I was kneeling in front of the screen screaming ?JUST ONCE! PLEASE! JUST DO IT ONCE!? It reminded me of my first girlfriend.
Not touched ?Cold Sweat?, I had to drink some coffee to deal with the inanity of ?Tennis is for Everyone? so I decided to take the curiously sinister memo?s advice. Besides I can?t get to the Xbox, Chris has been shaking his booty in front of the Kinect so it?s taken. He says the game isn?t actually half bad, but whoever is in charge of ?ghettoing? it should have been stopped at stage one. When I asked about how bad it was he pulled me in front of the score scheme. It seems that the bar for measuring the score is a pimp cane along the base of the screen, the more bling that gets piled onto it the better you?re doing. Not only that, but if you enter the ?Gansta? multiplier mode some rather buxom black beauties flip the cane up and start pole dancing on it. I don?t think the developers of ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? have met another human being, let alone a black one.
James has described ?MOlf? as probably one of the most misguided examples of development pririties he?s ever seen. The game features over 1000 licensed clubs, nearly 10,000 branded golf balls and, to quote the box, ?An extensive range of caddy cars?. It only has 5 holes though. Not 5 courses, holes, individual levels. He beat the game inside of 15 minutes; all that?s left now is testing every variant of golf ball and club combination. I think I heard him openly weeping.
Wednesday
I've given up on ?Tennis is for Everyone!? It took me all of today to finish one cup, and I didn?t lose a single point. I?ve made a genuine list of bugs and glitches of around 20 and filled the rest of the document with my premade list of over 200 common and unremarkable bugs. They?ll can the game almost immediately after a report like that. Once again put off Cold Sweat because I had to stay awake during that hideous Wii monstrosity and ended up drinking an entire pot of coffee. My leg won't stop shaking.
Chris came in with a black eye and broken arm today. Turns out he went to dinner with his wife yesterday and when he talked about work a black guy heard him and didn?t give him a chance to explain his words. Myself and James found this hilarious, but our mirth was short lived when we got word through that ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? had been officially canned and that Chris was now officially not being forced to shake his sweet ass all day. I asked him if he?d help me test Cold Sweat, but when I saw James tear stained face I suggested that perhaps ?MOlf? needed his attention more. James simply whispered ?thank you?. It felt good to be the good guy for once.
Thursday
HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCKING HELL! WHOEVER DESIGNED COLD SWEAT SHOULD BE SHOT, SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD! It turns out Cold Sweat is a bit of a twisted little experiment, the kind that Nazi doctors do. It?s best described as ?horror yoga?. What it does is make you go through some yoga poses, gets you nice and limber and tangled up and then it screams at you while showing flashing horrific images. It?s apparently some kind of shock therapy designed to cause your body to test its limits. It turns out I have very low limits, as I?ve destroyed my back after a single "shock session?. As a result I cannot stand up any more, and must hobble around like the Hunch-Back of Notre fucking Dame. I'm just going to send the developers of Cold Sweat a two word email. It shall be a strongly worded email.
James and Chris are nearly finished testing ?MOlf?, and by nearly finished I mean they?re going to give up any minute from now. They?ve technically tested every club now; the balls are a work in process but the combinations testing is a lost cause. It seems unlikely anybody would find a game breaking combo, so we?re not too worried about that. James looks like he?s having difficulty discerning reality anymore, he?s started treating the Move controller as if it?s about 4 foot long now by default, and when Chris is testing near him he always take several steps back. It?s getting to the stage where he tries to lean on the controller and just falls over. It?d be funny if it wasn?t so sad.
Friday
All reports are finished and shipped, hopefully none of these games will ever see the light of day. We got our on-time bonuses; mine will cover one session with a chiropractor, Chris? will cover the medical bill for his arm and James?... well I think he earned his. When I got home my girlfriend said she?d got me a treat, and ushered me into the front room. It turns out her friend doesn?t want her Wii anymore. I haven?t the heart to throw it out. Yet.
My name is Quentin Andrews and I work as a Q&A tester for EA Kredix. We?re officially known as the ?smaller projects team? which a good 85% of the time means ?we?re going to cancel this game?. You?d think that would make me find my work quite depressing, but sometimes it feels more like I?m a custodian of quality, making sure that these games never see the light of day. Still, if a game makes it this far then that means someone up top approved of it at some point and that thought alone is usually more depressing. I work with 2 other colleagues; Chris Plus and James Valent and all of us hate our job. I?m 25, live in a one bedroom apartment with my loving but unemployed girlfriend. I used to have ambitions. Here?s what we?ve been up to this week.
Monday
So it turns out that despite constant reassurance from the press, the community and the sales figures that we?ve had our fill of motion controlled games they are somehow still being made, and I?m not talking about high budget nightmares like Star Wars Kinect. I mean that special brand of sports/minigame/nobody in their right fucking mind actually buys these unless they genuinely have 3 minutes in a game shop and some 8 year old to appease before sundown. No less than 4 turned up in the in tray this week, and the three of us drew straws as to who had to test 2 of them. Guess who lost?
So because I got the short straw I got to pick first. I decided to do my absolute best to avoid back pains and selected the Wii title ?Tennis is for Everyone!? Despite its slightly totalitarian title I figured it looked kid friendly, meaning easy. Plus Wii games in general require less movement than other titles, so I figured I could save myself the repetitive strain injury. James took the Playstation Move title ?MOlf!? which I can only assume is some sort of typo combined with an advertising budget to secure it?s irrevocability from the box. He?s going to have all sorts of fun revolving every golf club in augmented reality mode to check for faults. And by fun I mean miserable hours of tedium. Chris opted to try and work his body into a coma by playing ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? for Kinect, a game not only a clearly terrible rip off of Dane Central but also a seemingly quite racist. The set list consists of ?FUNKIFIED? classics, such as ?Can?t get yo? out of mah Head!?, ?Baby got Black? and my personal favourite ?Nigs in America?. I can only hope Chris has enough mojo, cause his shit is about to real fo? sho?.
As for my bonus game it?s a curiosity, a downloadable only title for Kinect called ?Cold Sweat?. The documentation didn?t fax through correctly so all I know is that I?m supposed to play for ?no longer than half an hour, and to avoid caffeinated drinks?. Seems a bit dodgy but I drew the straw, I deal with the consequences. This week is going to be all kinds of painful.
Tuesday
?Tennis is for Everyone? is awful and not even by retail terrible standards. It?s terrible by "I have to play broken games for a living" terrible. I can forgive bugs and glitches in early stages but when your game doesn't even have a visible floor I get the feeling the developers have some massive fucking in joke. I sent off a report informing them of the glitch. They sent back an email saying they knew. I sent them another email saying that if they knew why did they send me this game at all. They responded by asking me to test the physics. I asked them if this was a joke. They have yet to respond.
The ?physics? of ?Tennis is for Everyone!? are comparable to that of the moon. I understand that in a kids game you want to make things slower so they can keep up, but when it takes a full 10 seconds for the ball to travel from one side of the court to the other you?re not making the game ?easy? you?re making it ?unbearable?. This means the average game of tennis lasts around half an hour, and this is against the Easy AI. I say, easy, what I really mean is nonexistent AI. I swear it has yet to hit the ball. It just runs around the court, swinging wildly and frantically, with the one exception being when the ball is in front of them. Then it quickly dives in the opposite direction. I?ve genuinely spent hours trying to get it to hit the ball once. I felt like I was training an animal, at one stage I was kneeling in front of the screen screaming ?JUST ONCE! PLEASE! JUST DO IT ONCE!? It reminded me of my first girlfriend.
Not touched ?Cold Sweat?, I had to drink some coffee to deal with the inanity of ?Tennis is for Everyone? so I decided to take the curiously sinister memo?s advice. Besides I can?t get to the Xbox, Chris has been shaking his booty in front of the Kinect so it?s taken. He says the game isn?t actually half bad, but whoever is in charge of ?ghettoing? it should have been stopped at stage one. When I asked about how bad it was he pulled me in front of the score scheme. It seems that the bar for measuring the score is a pimp cane along the base of the screen, the more bling that gets piled onto it the better you?re doing. Not only that, but if you enter the ?Gansta? multiplier mode some rather buxom black beauties flip the cane up and start pole dancing on it. I don?t think the developers of ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? have met another human being, let alone a black one.
James has described ?MOlf? as probably one of the most misguided examples of development pririties he?s ever seen. The game features over 1000 licensed clubs, nearly 10,000 branded golf balls and, to quote the box, ?An extensive range of caddy cars?. It only has 5 holes though. Not 5 courses, holes, individual levels. He beat the game inside of 15 minutes; all that?s left now is testing every variant of golf ball and club combination. I think I heard him openly weeping.
Wednesday
I've given up on ?Tennis is for Everyone!? It took me all of today to finish one cup, and I didn?t lose a single point. I?ve made a genuine list of bugs and glitches of around 20 and filled the rest of the document with my premade list of over 200 common and unremarkable bugs. They?ll can the game almost immediately after a report like that. Once again put off Cold Sweat because I had to stay awake during that hideous Wii monstrosity and ended up drinking an entire pot of coffee. My leg won't stop shaking.
Chris came in with a black eye and broken arm today. Turns out he went to dinner with his wife yesterday and when he talked about work a black guy heard him and didn?t give him a chance to explain his words. Myself and James found this hilarious, but our mirth was short lived when we got word through that ?FUNK IN DA TRUNK? had been officially canned and that Chris was now officially not being forced to shake his sweet ass all day. I asked him if he?d help me test Cold Sweat, but when I saw James tear stained face I suggested that perhaps ?MOlf? needed his attention more. James simply whispered ?thank you?. It felt good to be the good guy for once.
Thursday
HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCKING HELL! WHOEVER DESIGNED COLD SWEAT SHOULD BE SHOT, SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD! It turns out Cold Sweat is a bit of a twisted little experiment, the kind that Nazi doctors do. It?s best described as ?horror yoga?. What it does is make you go through some yoga poses, gets you nice and limber and tangled up and then it screams at you while showing flashing horrific images. It?s apparently some kind of shock therapy designed to cause your body to test its limits. It turns out I have very low limits, as I?ve destroyed my back after a single "shock session?. As a result I cannot stand up any more, and must hobble around like the Hunch-Back of Notre fucking Dame. I'm just going to send the developers of Cold Sweat a two word email. It shall be a strongly worded email.
James and Chris are nearly finished testing ?MOlf?, and by nearly finished I mean they?re going to give up any minute from now. They?ve technically tested every club now; the balls are a work in process but the combinations testing is a lost cause. It seems unlikely anybody would find a game breaking combo, so we?re not too worried about that. James looks like he?s having difficulty discerning reality anymore, he?s started treating the Move controller as if it?s about 4 foot long now by default, and when Chris is testing near him he always take several steps back. It?s getting to the stage where he tries to lean on the controller and just falls over. It?d be funny if it wasn?t so sad.
Friday
All reports are finished and shipped, hopefully none of these games will ever see the light of day. We got our on-time bonuses; mine will cover one session with a chiropractor, Chris? will cover the medical bill for his arm and James?... well I think he earned his. When I got home my girlfriend said she?d got me a treat, and ushered me into the front room. It turns out her friend doesn?t want her Wii anymore. I haven?t the heart to throw it out. Yet.