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Re: QA. Anytime a buggy game ships, i guarantee you that
(a) QA knew about the bugs but production decided to ship it anyway AND/OR
(b) QA was understaffed/underresourced (and likely still knew there were bugs they weren't finding).
(1/3)
(a) QA knew about the bugs but production decided to ship it anyway AND/OR
(b) QA was understaffed/underresourced (and likely still knew there were bugs they weren't finding).
(1/3)
In almost every greenlight meeting, QA is the most reluctant to say 'ship this thing'. They KNOW where the bodies are buried. They've probably spent MONTHS trying to raise the alarm. In many orgs, they're low on totem pole, & fight against being called Chicken Littles.
(2/3)
(2/3)
Blaming QA for a buggy ship is like getting in a horrific car crash, and then blaming the seat belt you decided not to wear because it chafed. Anytime QA gets blamed publicly, my eyebrow raises like the Rock.
(3/3)
(3/3)
You'll be astonished how often they'll be delighted to talk to someone who takes their concerns seriously. https://twitter.com/onalark/status/1349597506716397568?s=20
A game would be a truly blessed game if it only ever shipped with Pri-3 Minor bugs or lower. I'm the guy in the triage losing my mind because we don't get those Pri-3 bugs. https://twitter.com/m3mnoch/status/1349602668843417600
Thread. QA is often taken less seriously early on - it's usually undermanned and there's a whole lot of 'why should we address these now, future features will make 'finishing' this obsolete. https://twitter.com/jertim/status/1349602246292615168
The difference between good QA and bad QA is far too often the ability to add repro steps that verifies it works on a 'real' build. https://twitter.com/crowder/status/1349605826227408897
(The difference between good QA and great QA is KEEPING A CLEAN BACKLOG. Regress that old shit, get rid of the dupes, get rid of the 'suggestions written as bugs' the producer tries to sneak in)
The majority of your team is too focused on one part of the elephant. Worldbuilders don't know what the AI programmer is doing and whether what they're doing is half-done- you're spending too much time fixing your own ship to investigate much of the time https://twitter.com/lumensimus/status/1349604544519364610
I don't doubt it. https://twitter.com/legalminimum/status/1349603753461121024
Or my personal favorite 'We can't fix it right now, so let's deprioritize it. That way, it'll get lost with all the other Pri-3 issues and we'll forget about it right up until someone reminds us we can't ship with it." https://twitter.com/Mike_at_Arms/status/1349602943838765057
I swear, someone should film a 2-hour triage meeting for an MMO that's a month from shipping. Everyone not a dev would LOSE THEIR FUCKING MIND.
Or, I don't know, deciding that you don't want to do more testing in a Pandemic because it'll make your numbers look bad.
NO WAIT ITS EXACTLY THE FARKING SAME. https://twitter.com/Scherlis/status/1349617463932149760?s=20
NO WAIT ITS EXACTLY THE FARKING SAME. https://twitter.com/Scherlis/status/1349617463932149760?s=20
The GM of the studio is trying to put pressure on the Producer, who is supposed to magically find that time out of thin air. Usually, the right answer is to cut features, but when you cut bugfix time with serious Pri-2s, that's when trainwrecks occur. https://twitter.com/crowder/status/1349617909069344768?s=20
Napkin math 10 years ago was that it costs 10K per dev per month, once you factor in salaries, benefits, office space, machine, support cost. So call it 2 weeks = 2.5M for a 500 person AAA team. https://twitter.com/crowder/status/1349618078078799873
Those are old numbers (thankfully I don't run balance sheets anymore), and a lot of calculus has changed (outsourcing for example) but burn rate math gets absurd fast if you're doing something AAA.
This is before you get into things like missing Christmas.
This is before you get into things like missing Christmas.
I've definitely encountered bad QA. But this is still a management fail. Any producer and/or creative director worth their salt should have a rough idea if QA is being effective. https://twitter.com/maltzen/status/1349617096922177537
Cutting features almost always saves time but producers have a tendency to think it cuts 5 weeks to 0, when in truth it at least takes a few days to cauterize the wound where that feature would have been. https://twitter.com/maltzen/status/1349620124442095617
Also, if you're not following me on Twitter, you should stop, think long and hard about what you're doing with your life, and then smash that 'follow' button.
Depends a LOT on the discipline. Engineering bugs are usually the bottle neck, so if your date moves, your artists and/or designers may be able to dig into the P3s (if your producers can resist adding new shit to fill the void). https://twitter.com/Talarianjs/status/1349624037920579585?s=20
This. Also, they’re valued so little that when layoffs come, some companies will let go the ‘expensive’ senior QA guys with experience and keep the cheap junior guys because a warm body is a warm body, amirite?
This always is a disaster. https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1349729179600711682
This always is a disaster. https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1349729179600711682
Nobody wants to ship a shitty game. The counterpressure comes with being late is monumentally expensive. Employee burn rate is expensive, missing your marketing window is expensive, missing Christmas is expensive. https://twitter.com/CopyCatCaster/status/1349721807239208967?s=20
Getting Project Managers from other industries isn't necessarily useful. All tech quarters have problems with overscope, feature creep, stupid management, etc, but few other than games have the uncertainty that 'iterating until you find the fun' requires. https://twitter.com/CopyCatCaster/status/1349744205040656384?s=20
Also, and this is stupid, PMs inside the games industry - especially mobile - refers to ProDUCT managers - the guys who manage your monetization.
ProJECT managers manage the schedules (and usually aren't making decisions but are funnelling info to producers who do).
ProJECT managers manage the schedules (and usually aren't making decisions but are funnelling info to producers who do).
SWTOR once went through a particularly nasty refactor that ultimately resulted in design not seeing a new build for a whole summer.
The resulting build was not great. https://twitter.com/nearl_v/status/1349776401679978504
The resulting build was not great. https://twitter.com/nearl_v/status/1349776401679978504
