Sorry for being gone longer than intended, but I'm back and ready to finish off that last batch of questions...
Batou667 said:
Is the job really as crushingly tedious as it sounds? Do you get many young guys apply for the job thinking they're going to be paid to sit on a couch and enjoy playing games?
Well, that depends on what you meany by "crushingly tedious". Sometimes you have to play the same game over for weeks on end, but usually testing out different areas of it (missions, menus, error messages, etc.). They try and add a bit of variety to it, but it can get quite systematic, repetitive, and boring, especially if submissions dates are approaching and you have to double, triple, or quadruple check certain things to make 100% it's free of issues.
Batou667 said:
In terms of bugs and glitches, are there any real clangers that got past you? Any finished games you've played and gone "Haha, look at that wonky bit of level geometry, that was Dave's department, looks like they missed that"? Or worse "Oh shit, that was *my* department, I hope nobody notices that..."?
I must admit that both can happen on occasion. I've missed a few issues in my time and cringed when I saw them but could no longer fix them. However, when it comes to missing stuff, it's less humorous and more along the lines of, "I don't want this game to not get past Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft because I messed up." and everyone works together as a close-knit team to do their best to make sure this doesn't happen. While this isn't true for smaller projects, for larger ones, there's rarely just one tester for an entire area of the game. Functionality testers would usually be responsible for wonky bits of level geometry, and there're several orders more of them that there are of localization testers. When testing is at its peak, some really huge AAA titles might have as many as two or three dozen functionality testers replaying levels and testing game mechanics as opposed to perhaps one to three testers per individual language.
That being said, some of the Warchief death glitch videos of
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor that popped up on YouTube a few days after the game was released did make some of us facepalm, not that it was anyone's fault. The game's so massive and has so many variable that it was almost impossible for something to avoid slipping through the cracks. Could I ever tell you crazy stories about some of the weird things we had to test...
Batou667 said:
Does extensive testing actually make you good at the game? I mean, as well as having an encyclopedic knowledge of the engine and mechanics, do you also end up with a proficiency for the game? Any titles you're ridiculously good at as a result? Would you say it's made you a better gamer in general?
I wouldn't say I have an encyclopedia knowledge of engine and game mechanics since my specialty is proofreading and translation, but you do get faster and better at performing repetitive tasks if you have to do them over and over again. What matters, though, is testing things quickly and efficiently. If you have to regress bugs (check to make sure they've been fixed), for example, your goal is to get to the problem area or situation as fast as possible and try to reproduce the issue. The fastest way to do that is to use cheats. Functionality testers are trying to break the game, so they usually develop almost godlike skills. Localization testers less so, though they do develop a pretty good idea of what problem areas are worth checking since they appear so often in games. Since you put it that way, though, I guess we do develop a kind of "linguistic proficiency" since we're responsible for keeping things consistent. There was a racetrack in
LEGO Universe that ended up having seven different names because the development team apparently didn't have a glossary, so it was my job to untangle that continuity snarl.
SweetShark said:
- Did you ever found a Easter Egg while game testing? How the publishers react to this?
Define "Easter Egg". While testing a Nicktoons game several years, I noticed that they'd snuck the house from
Invader Zim into the background, but that's probably not what you mean.
If you mean genuine hidden content - and by that I mean kept a secret from even testers - then I would say no and that's probably because it's a very, very dangerous thing to do. Considering that games can fail submission if untranslated text shows up or objectionable content is found, full disclosure is in the best interest of the publisher. I mean, in
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the art team decided to get cute and slipped in some booze bottles with labels that essentially consisted of an image of a very famous alcohol mascot with an alien head photoshopped over his. One of the functionality testers spotted it when it accidentally whizzed into frame while he was using his Force powers during a barfight scene. That was totally flagged for removal before someone's lawyers started banging on the door claiming copyright infringement.
SweetShark said:
- Does the files of a game reveal interesting informations about the story of the development?
I can't go into details, but yes. You sometimes see information about things that never made it into the final game and think of how awesome it would've been if it had. Of course, the flip side is that you sometimes find stuff that is truly tasteless and cringeworthy and thank your lucky stars that it didn't.
SweetShark said:
- How often you "broke" a game while playing?
Hard to say. I'm a localization tester, so breaking a game isn't my job, but it has happened while just playing normally and happens very often if you're using an alpha or early beta build. I've dealt with some games that were completely unplayable and couldn't even reach the title screen before dying on me. One popular first person shooter had a horrible bug in the PlayStation 3 version where there was a 10% to 20% chance that the save data would auto-corrupt and delete itself if you exited the game normally and turned the system off. That made completing a playthough a pain in the ass, let me tell you. But, needless to say, games gets a lot better the closer to the final build you get.
SweetShark said:
- Did you ever disagree with other game-testers about the performance of a game?
Not really. Usually, what affects one language affects all languages equally.
SweetShark said:
- Where do you test the games? In a normal workplace or you are free to test it in your personal space?
Using your own personal space is almost impossible for several reasons. Games are tested on a so-called development kit, a special version of a console that has all kinds of special features. The Xbox 360 one, for example, allows you to create free Xbox Live Gold profiles from a special menu and it's compatible with a special Windows software bundle which includes a built-in game disc emulator, screenshot and video capture options, and a lot of other bells and whistles. You don't want to let something like that out of your sight, much less any pre-release games that a thoroughly dishonest or spiteful tester could leak to the Internet. That's why you generally work in an assigned workspace with multiple levels of security, including security clearance, signing your games in and out so management can keep track of them, and sometimes code names for the games. There're some cases where projects might allow you to work outside of the office, but these are extremely rare and have only personally occurred to me two or three times in the eight years I've been working as a tester.
SweetShark said:
- How the developers/Publishers make sure the game tester won't reveal sensitive informations about a game?
The threat of an immediate firing and a possible lawsuit usually keep testers in their place. And they're dead serious about this. You screw up, you're gone in a flash.
