This is looking to be a rather long and tedious work week for me, so, to everyone I didn't get to this time around, don't worry. I'll get to you as soon as I can.
RICHIERICAN said:
Has there ever been a game you thought really sucked and you told them but they released it anyway? Not a buggy game but a game that really did suck!!
Oh, I've seen more than my fair share of games that really, really sucked. But the answer to that is a resounding
no.
One of the common misconceptions about being a video game tester is that you get a say in what goes into and gets taken out of a game outside of a bug report. You don't. It's your job to make sure it lives up to the quality standards of your client and the requirements outlined by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. No more, no less. You're not there to pass a value judgement on the game.
Just to illustrate how big of a no-no this is: one of my former co-workers told me a story about a tester who was working alone for months on a tediously boring project. One day, apparently needing to vent a little, he named his save file "ihatethisgame". Somehow, the client caught wind of this and wasn't amused. It ended up costing him his job.
That being said, some developers are very friendly and open-minded and solicit feedback from testers on possible improvements. However, this is the exception rather than the rule and, needless to say, all such suggestions are vetted by a project manager to make sure they're appropriately worded. Diplomacy and politness is key.
There's something else to consider, though: a lot of the functionality testers - the people paid to break the game - are hardcore gamers who think outside the box and are used to doing crazy things no one else might even consider. Asking them for advice might not be in your target audience's best interest. I remember one game where they supposedly found the final boss too easy and asked the developers to make him harder to beat. Unfortunately, the developers complied, and, while he definitely ended up being a challenge to them, he was an absolute nightmare for everyone else.
SweetShark said:
One last question for me please:
Do you have a personal way you test the videogames or you must always follow a specific protocol to test them?
There's no quota on asking questions. If you think of any more, feel free to ask.
To answer your question, though, that depends on what the client wants you to do. If the game is new and being tested for the first time, you usually get free reign, though you might want to start with the menus and then do a normal playthrough. As the game continues to improve, you may be asked to concentrate on new areas and features missing from previous builds and skip over old ones you've checked before. Sometimes you're given a checklist and explicit instructions.
In localization testing, for example, your goal is to see and trigger all the translated in-game text and audio, so you need to figure out the most effective way to do that. A systematic, step-by-step approach usually works best.
A functionality tester might start with a regular playthrough, then check if game mechanics - items, weapons, power-ups, etc. - work as intended before moving on to more advanced things, like seeing if you can pass through solid objects, fall out of the game world, etc.
Compliance testers try to check all the in-game text and audio that contain terminology and button icons, such as a message describing a game's autosave feature or the controller map in the options menu. However, it also means triggering error messages by doing things you're not supposed to do or that aren't supposed to happen, like removing memory cards while saving is in progress or corrupting DLCs and save files, then seeing how the game responds.
IceForce said:
How long do you typically spend on a single project? Is five months a short amount of time, a long amount of time, or about average?
That really depends. Usually, most projects can last months, but it usually involves testing in multiple rounds of increasingly shorter duration (which makes sense, since the game not only gets more stable with each successive build, but testers are also getting better at playing it). Rounds can last anywhere from one to three weeks with breaks of week or two in between as clients fix all the bugs that the testers have found.
However, there are instances where a new version of the game is created every few days and testers play it continuously, concentrating on multiple areas, until it's completely free of issues.
Spending months on the same game without a break is generally the exception rather than the rule, but it depends on what's being tested. The most time I spent on a game was nine months on
LEGO Universe but that was an MMORPG and I probably could've been on it for
years like some of the other testers were. The second longest I've ever been on a game - and now that it's September 30th and the game's officially been released, I can actually name names for the first time - is five months on
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. And I'm still not done with that one yet.
