qa
Latest
Volition QA staff lost in THQ restructuring [update]
THQ's wild swings have finally brought the axe down on Red Faction and Saints Row creator Volition, reportedly culling the bulk of the Champaign, IL studio's QA staff out from the developer's ranks. Speaking with Kotaku, a THQ spokesperson confirmed that Volition lost 86 employees in the cut, including 47 temporary workers and 39 full-time staff. The numbers represent the lion's share of the QA department's 102 employees, with quality assurance duties now "primarily" falling to "THQ's centralized QA facilities, with a small staff remaining on-site in Champaign," according to a THQ statement. The layoffs are part of THQ's larger move to eliminate nearly a quarter of its jobs in an effort to cut costs and keep analyst bankruptcy predictions from coming true. Update: THQ's Julie MacMedan chimed in this afternoon to clear the air as well as any confusion regarding these layoffs, which according to the corporate communications VP only affected the publisher's QA facility in Champaign, IL and left Volition's "core development teams" untouched. "This will result in the eventual closure of the facility with a transfer of sixteen employees to Volition," wrote MacMedan in an email statement. "It will not result in any layoffs within the core development teams at Volition. Volition remains a key development studio within THQ and will continue to employ 236 staff." Confirming earlier information, she added: "The layoffs include 47 temporary employees who will not be having their service extended. Unfortunately, fluctuating headcount among the temporary staff is common based on when our games ship. In addition, 39 full-time staff will be laid off." In conclusion, and in a refreshing change of pace to these sorts of reductions, MacMedan wrote: "All laid off employees (both full-time and temporary) will be given at least sixty days' notice. We will do what we can to assist them in finding work in the community or elsewhere in THQ."
The Queue: Who cares about 3.0.8, where's 3.1?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.The title above is only half-joking. Patch 3.0.8 didn't supply any real content which is what we're all waiting for, but at this point rolling out patch 3.1 too quickly would be a disaster. I think game quality is worse now than it was before 3.0.8, so I'd much rather see things working smoothly again before they throw patch 3.1 at us. Of course, I'm also pretty bored with Wrath already, so...Zoidberg asked...So, what do we know about 3.1? What do we know about dual spec? Anything about Ulduar? Anything about DK nerfs? Warlock buffs? Will I get any Silver Covenant rep?
Rumor: Mythic layoffs hit QA, playtest and customer support
Speculative information is coming down the vine via Joystiq that Electronic Arts' new cost-cutting initiative has "cost" Warhammer Online roughly 21 customer support staff, half of its QA department and all of it's playtesting group. According to EA, they currently has no plans to make any additional cuts -- although that doesn't mean we aren't worried about it. And when asked about the future of the game and it's team, EA was unable to give any answers to Joystiq. Our deepest condolences go out to everyone who lost their jobs, and we sincerely hope that all land on their feet as soon as possible. To those who remain, we definitely hope that don't see anything similar happen to their livlihoods at anytime in the future.
Anybots rolls out QA, the telegenic telepresence robot
Also making the scene in Las Vegas this week, QA is designed specifically for telepresence. This guy stands 5 feet tall and is kitted with a 5 megapixel camera, forward-mounted display, WiFi and optional 3G connectivity, and a laser pointer for, well, pointing at things. Available for purchase sometime in late 2009, the price will be somewhere in the $15,000 - $25,000 range. Video after the break.[Via Get Robo]
Mage solos Naxxramas Military Quarter
WoW Insider's inbox has been absolutely flooded with tips about the video you see above. Yes, what you're seeing there is a Mage soloing the Military Quarter of Naxxramas. Not the 10-man Naxxramas, but Heroic Naxxramas.This crazy stunt comes from the same crew that pulled off the two-man Loatheb kill, and uses another pretty funny gimmick. This one uses a combination of Spellsteal on specific mobs, a talent called Incanter's Absorption, and a talent called Burning Determination.The Bone Armor that is cast by the Death Knight Cavaliers was able to be spellstolen, and it absorbs 1,200,000 damage. You could get up to hundreds of thousands of points of spell damage, in theory. In practice it probably comes out to much less than that most of the time. Still, as you can see from the video, 100,000 spell damage was completely possible. Burning Determination was necessary because those same mobs like to spam Strangulate.
The Queue: The spirit of betrayal
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Today, I'll cut the crap and not pretend to be funny, for your sake. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow, the gloves come off. I will pretend to be absolutely hilarious until the cows come home.matthew asked... So I did a quest in Sholazar to kill Artruis and accidentally changed from Oracle to Frenzyheart. How exactly do I change back to oracle because I want to get the egg?
BluFocus beefs up Blu-ray control labs with BD-J / THX certification
At the front end of this year, we heard that BluFocus was getting a facility going to help studios pumping out Blu-ray Discs to the adoring public make sure no terrible backlashes occurred. Now, the quality assurance specialists are offering up two more critical certifications: THX and BD-Java. What does this mean for you? Hopefully nothing that you can tell, but it's not like we're complaining about one more layer of scrutiny before a flick hits the open market.
EVE dev blog charts much improved customer support experiences
Long petition queues, particularly related to expansions, has long been a problem in EVE Online. These long waits may very well be a thing of the past, according to GM Nova, Senior Game Master for EVE Online. GM Nova's latest dev blog, "Such stuff as dreams are made on," deals with the deployment of the Empyrean Age 1.1 patch in early September, as seen from a Customer Support perspective. "We at Customer Support, being at the front lines so to speak, are in a unique position to judge or evaluate whether a patch was successfully deployed and if ther is any fallout or unexpected problems involved, as the potential torrent of problems are directed at us to pass on," he said.GM Nova points out how that 'torrent of problems' has slowed down to a trickle, using graph data of the Trinity expansion deployment (predictably an insane amount of petitions), the subsequent Empyrean Age 1.0 patch (so smooth they thought their petition system had crashed), and finally Empyrean Age 1.1. The trend evidenced by the graphs is that their patch deployments are becoming less fraught with complications, meaning happier players in the long run. GM Nova goes on to discuss some of the structural changes made to CCP's Customer Support department that improve petition response time, saying,"We are happy to announce that our average petition age is currently two days with most normal requests handled in hours. We hope our efforts shine through in the level of support we are able to offer." Would you agree with GM Nova's assessment, and have your own petitions of late in EVE Online been resolved in a reasonable amount of time?
Q&A with the developers of Koi Pond
Macworld has published a chat with the devs of one of the much-loved Koi Pond. Of course, the weird thing about Koi Pond is that it's more of a nice iPhone demo than anything else -- but just the same, it's cool to hear from designer Bill Trost and engineer Brandon Bogle.They used to work on MMOs for Sony (and now work with a new company called Trion, also developing MMO games), and bought their first Macs specifically to try out the iPhone development program. The program was designed as a water simulator, and the koi were added later (as opposed to many of the devs we've heard from so far, these guys were actually concerned that their app was worth less than $1). And the little stories about feedback on the app are really interesting -- apparently a therapist has used it with Alzheimer's patients as a quick form of therapy.Unfortunately, they won't mention new projects, but they do give some good advice to other iPhone developers: don't consider the unique, device-specific functions of the iPhone secondary. We'd have to agree -- there are several ways the accelerometer and touchscreen can tweak even the most traveled genres and forms of video games and software. Just recreating old Palm and PDA apps isn't good enough -- iPhone-specific apps like Koi Pond are what will really make a splash on the App Store.
Joystiq E3 Q&A: Spore detailed
During our time at E3 last week, we were able to spend about an hour with a very patient Maxis Producer Thomas Vu, who guided us through a near-final build of Spore (the whole thing) and answered a barrage of questions. Here's what we gleaned from our play session, broken down into each phase: Part 1: Cell / Tribe Phase (after the break) Part 2: Civilization / Space Phase Part 3: General Information %Gallery-27987%
AoC update pushed back to tomorrow, July 10th
The weekly update for Age of Conan won't be taking place today as would be the norm. During the testing of the latest patch, Funcom's QA department discovered an issue that needs to be fixed up so that it isn't unleashed on the live servers, and the patch has been rescheduled to the 10th of July, at 4AM GMT for the European servers and 7AM EDT on the US servers. While those that are keenly waiting for a big fat update might have to hold on for one more day, it's for the best that things are ironed out properly, rather than having additional downtime on the live servers for a hotfix later on.
Izuna 2 QA causes a lot of pink hair pulling
Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns is about more than mini-posters and sexy ninjas -- a lot of work goes into getting a game like this localized. Not only does a good localization team have to focus on the translation, but they also need to fix any bugs or problems that gamers found in the Japanese release. Apparently, fixing bugs for a roguelike is especially hard and frustrating, as you might have guessed.Here's the Quality Assurance stat breakdown, according to Atlus: Number of testers on Izuna 2: 6 Number of DS systems almost thrown against the wall: 6 Number of system-type bugs our testers reported: 104 Number of text bugs our testers reported: 259 Number of times the testers nearly gave the project lead a heart attack with a fake system bug: 3 Number of bugs our testers reported to which we responded: "That's not a bug, that's the way this game works:" 17 Number of monkeys we could have hired to do their job: 0 The production diary is actually a really interesting read that not only Izuna fans, but also people interested in the localization process should give a look. Besides, we always appreciate more insight on how the other side of the gaming industry works. Gallery: Izuna 2
Amidst speculation, Blizzard VP implies completely new game
Blizzard fans all over the internet have worked themselves up into a frenzy over a vague splash screen at the company's website -- a melting wall of ice adorned with rune or sigil-like markings. Everyone's speculating. Is it Diablo 3? Maybe it's just a promo for Wrath of the Lich King. After all, the ice motif seems to fit, right?Maybe not. During a Q&A session at GDC Paris 08, Blizzard VP Rob Pardo was asked to comment on "the new game." He replied saying, "So you want me to announce the game before the announcement?" That was a classic press conference or Q&A blunder; you're not supposed to accept the premise of an unwanted or hostile question!
New TR patch shoved out the door
Well, that was quick. I'm not too sure why I'm surprised, but players woke up this morning to find that Tabula Rasa's patch 1.5 had snuck out the door last night, and is patiently waiting on player desktops. Players didn't quite have a full week to fully digest the patch notes after they showed up on the public test server before they're going live, which is either helpful or incredibly reckless depending on how much stock you put into the QA process. In this case we're going to go with "reckless" because early reports (confirmed after we ourselves downloaded the patch) show a strange bug where the game resets your resolution every time you load up the game, causing crashes for some (this blogger included).As to the content of the patch itself, we've already talked about some of the neat things that players will find within. One of the changes we didn't get around to talking about are the changes to the Spy class. They've reworked the way Traitor works in PvP to make it more like a traditional Mind Control, in addition to throwing in a new melee attack for Spies that is similar to other players' melee attacks, and takes into account bonuses to damage and knockdown given by putting pumps into hand-to-hand. (Spies are one of only two melee classes in the game, so this new attack is distinguished from their normal blade attacks.) Oddly enough though, Spies do not get a respec. Full patch notes available after the jump.
My Eye Media enters Blu-ray quality control arena with Blu-Qual
After seeing a wave of faulty Blu-ray Discs a few months back, we've heard relatively little about further mishaps. Still, that's not stopping firms from hoping in the quickly-expanding quality control arena. On the docket today is My Eye Media, which is broadening its service portfolio with Blu-Qual, a BD testing solution "designed to analyze the complexities" of the format. More specifically, it's out to "identify impairments, artifacts and technical anomalies much earlier in the production process than traditional optical media testing methodologies have allowed," and while you'll likely never know what titles it touches, we're all for making sure shipping products work as advertised.
BluFocus working with studios to ensure Blu-ray disc quality
Barely a month after Microsoft revealed the Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator in hopes of speeding up development of HDi, we're seeing a new company emerge with bolstering Blu-ray Disc quality as its top priority. Of course, anyone paying attention over the past few weeks would realize that something like this is sorely overdue. Reportedly, BluFocus is already working with a number of studios in order to ensure that BD-J / BD Live functionality is properly implemented and that discs arrive to end-users sans issues. The company (accurately) points out that mastering Blu-ray titles is a much more involved process than mastering a vanilla DVD, and considering just how much interactivity is being mixed in, there's a lot more room for error than in days past. Notably, we're not told exactly which studios BluFocus is currently working with, but here's to hoping we find fewer reasons to plead for replacement discs in the future.[Via Blu-ray, image courtesy of DailyGame]
The purpose of beta testing
Anyway Games has some good thoughts up (I especially like that continuum in the title between "testing" and "fun") about what beta tests are really for these days. It seems you can't publish an MMO without having a beta test-- the world is so big and meant to support so many players that you not only need volunteer help for QA, but you have to have enough people to stress the servers, just in case.But is it OK to invite players into a game that's not actually done yet? Richard Garriott blames TR's slow start on a poor beta reception, and I was one of those players who wasn't impressed with the early beta (although I don't know if the game has actually improved since then). I also have been playing the Pirates beta since a few weeks ago, and after playing it again yesterday afternoon, I was pretty astounded at how far the game has come just within a week or two of development. There is no question that the game I was playing a while ago was definitely unfinished compared to the game as it is now, and even though it's in open beta, there will undoubtedly be improvements before the game goes live.So what's the purpose of a beta? Is it marketing for the game, or a massively multiplayer quality assurance session? Every developer has to decide for themselves, obviously-- there's no golden point at which the game is good enough to be played, but buggy enough to still be tested by the unwashed volunteers. The best you can ask for, at this point, is a development schedule that gives you a game strong enough to give a great experience while buggy, and a beta testing crowd interested enough to stick around and help you fix the bugs that are left.
iPhone owners experiencing display issues, too?
We aren't saying that this is a widespread issue just yet, but a (rightfully) annoyed tipster has informed and shown us that his "refurbished" 8GB iPhone seems to have the same "negative black issue" that some iPod touch owners are currently grumbling about. Granted, he admits that the photo makes things look a little worse than they do in person, but the problem is still apparent. So, dear readers, are any of you experiencing iPod touch-like display issues on your iPhone?[Thanks, Jason G.]
Sony refunding broken PSN games
Eurogamer reports that Sony is refunding gamers who purchased Spyro 2: Gateway of Glimmer and MediEvil following "significant technical issues." In essence, the games were broken. People will have their purchase refunded to them in the next seven days.There's still no word yet on whether Crash Bandicoot 2 will also have a refund following its removal from the PlayStation store. It's not like XBLA has been immune to bug issues, most notable were the Mad Tracks "stuck in demo" bug and Contra's out-of-sync co-op. Just another day in the land of QA. Someone should make a musical about it.
The (not so) stringent world of video game testing
There have been a lot of complaints about publishers rushing buggy games out so they can hit a certain date, knowing they can update them via patches over the increasingly popular online gaming services. So why not try and address things in the testing phase of the game? Karla Starr, a reporter at The Seattle Weekly actually took a job as a tester with a game company, and went inside the the belly of the beast to bring us a real insider's view of game testing. Check out Karla's article in The Seattle Weekly and see how easy it is to pass a game through the QA process. It's not quite the same as the view of game testers that were presented in the Academy Award winning (we keed, we keed) film Grandma's Boy, but it's a great look from inside, and really illustrates the point that game testing is one of the weakest links in the game development chain. In fact, Darci Morales, a producer for game developer Surreal said, "What really sucks is that QA is always the first thing to go. Always."However, if you've been thinking about getting a job as a tester in order to feed your gaming addiction, you'll be happy to know you'd be welcomed with open arms. Dr. Hilarie Cash of the Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond says, "I think the [video game] industry in general, they want addicts. It is to their economic benefit to have people really hooked on their games. That there happens to be a pool of addicts out there who will work for peanuts, like methadone treatment, is to their advantage." Gaming being compared to a methadone treatment .. woot!
