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david_a

Always bet on Duke [Update: It's official]

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I applied to be a temp tester at BioWare. I didn't get the job. My friend who works there mentioned they said they wanted to hear the word "fun" a lot in the interview. Well, fuck me for being technical then. :D

It wasn't minimum wage; it was $12/h for roughly six months. This is still worse than the lowest paid tech support jobs around here. Apparently people who are excellent at that job can move up in the QA department. It would have been an interesting gig for a little while, but I do think they wanted people who were really into their games.

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Makes sense, they want play testers to be people who find bugs. They want focus groups to tell them if their game is fun or not. It certainly never sounded like something that would be fun, it's hours and hours of finding things that are broken, in the same area, trying the same way multiple times to find out if it can be broken. Color me surprised that it would be a miserable, if necessary job. Beats scooping out shithouses or digging ditches in the sun, but still not the ideal of fun.

Back on topic, I have to say that gameplay video of Duke looks awful. The Halo references are not unwarranted. It's playing on an Xbox, it has wonderful little pop-ups to tell you what button to use for things in case you're completely retarded, on-screen flashes that tell you which direction damage is being taken from, what looks like the ability to only carry two weapons due to the prompts to swap weapons, vehicle combat, and a dedicated melee button using the weapon. I never expected it to be great, as I never found Duke 3D to be that great, but after 12 years I didn't expect it to be a Halo clone with titty jokes and farts. Or titty fart jokes.

Really the thing that annoys me about it most though, is those damn button prompts. It seems to crop up in every 360 game I've played at some point, it completely breaks immersion. They create these atmospheric environments, work so hard to draw you into the game, then "PRESS BLUE X BUTTON TO OPEN THIS DOOR!" "TAP L AND R TO MOVE THIS LEVER!" pop up in the middle of the screen. It doesn't seem necessary to break immersion just to remind people what button does what. And it's not as if the function usually changes much. An action button can be used to open doors, pick up weapons and ammunition, operate switches and buttons, it shouldn't have to tell you every time.

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Lizardcommando said:

It's kind of funny that there was actually a "reality" show where you'd actually win a chance to become a game tester. Oh man, I would have loved to see the look on the winner's face when they realize just how "awesome" being a game tester really is.


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From 2004-2008 I played Action Doom 2 every day. I kept a txt document open to record bugs... played the game, wrote notes, did some mapping/decorate... played, wrote notes... for 4 years.

I haven't played Action Doom 2 since it was released.

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My project's only been in development (on and off) for 1 year, and I'm starting to understand...

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