…You guys havent seen to many girls have you?
The number of girls one has seen does not necessarily impact one’s ability to appreciate them 
…or NOT appreciating.
Oh we have. It’s just they tend to run away when we look at them.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]Sorry, I misconstrued your words to think you actually knew the answer to your own question. That’s a nasty habit of mine.
I’m afraid her identity is only known to the Knower of Names. :)[/quote]
Ah great. Now I gotta dig her outta’ the ice again.
Usually i wouldnt run away unless they gave me a reason or threat to do so >_>
[quote=“Arcie”]
[quote=“lordcraymen”]Naka-san is not the only problem, it seems like nobody in the team can program!
I wonder what games slip through QA these days.
That’s also a problem, the last crisis of the industry was triggered by a load of terrible buggy cheap games. That’s why there is supposed to be Quality Assurance now. Wich is a joke, when marketing decides it’s time to launch a title, than it’s pushed, look at stuff like “Enter the Matrix”…[/quote]
Sonic Team didn’t do Enter The Matrix…
Actually though, you do have a point. One of my greatest niggles is what sort of crap passes through “Quality Control”. While they’re looking for bugs, you’d think they’d be able to say “hang on, Boss, this is a piece of shit. I wouldn’t pay ?5 for this let alone ?40”. But no…[/quote]
Yikes, lotsa quoting. Okay, I need to speak up on this, since I was one of these game QA people up until just recently. More specifically, I worked in SCEA Format QA. I also did a stint in 1st party QA, so I know both sides of the game QA coin. First off, you all need to know and understand that game ship dates are mandated by marketing, not product development. From a consumer stand point, yes this is a stupid thing. However from a business standpoint it is a necessary one. You need to make sure that when your game ships there won’t be a dozen alike games that ship the same week. You need to make sure your advertising push coincides with the games launch in a time when consumers won’t be hit by adds for 10 other RPGS (for example). There is also a little talked about part of the games business where publishers will guarantee retail outlets (EB, Gamestop etc…) a certian number of copies of the product on their shelves on a certian date. There’s money involved in this, so if the game is delayed the publisher loses money.
Next, as for the complaining about a game being a POS. I’ll tell you honestly, nobody cares. Testers say stuff like that ALL THE TIME. The thing of it is, publishers don’t care. You don’t think they dont know their game is crap? That’s what marketing is for, they make you buy or rent their crap, that’s what they do. PC games are even worse, publishers force them out the door well ahead of the game being finished because they know they can patch the game.
I know several people who worked in Sega QA, until about a year and a half ago anyway. You see around that time, Sega decided that it could be cheaper and more efficient to outsource their QA for their english language games… to India. You want to know why Sega’s games have sucked so hard in the last year, that’s why. Sonic Heroes made them realize what a bad idea that was, and they’ve started to cold call their old QA guys and ask them back.
Don’t bash the testers, it’s honestly NOT THEIR FAULT. I’ve seen bug reports with a hundred critical bugs, where everything is waived by the publisher. That is common.
If you have any questions about the process of anything like that, feel free to email me soliptic@mac.com or IM me in AIM <soliptic 7th>. I’ll answer what I can.
Sol
I’m not saying it’s their fault. I’m saying the fact they don’t have the power to point out bugs that can be fixed is pathetic.
Let’s take a game I play. Worms Armageddon. Originally released in 1999.
Since then, we have had this.
Version 1.0
Version 3.0 (big patch)
Version 3.1
Version 3.2 <—at this point, T17 recruited an actual gamer to assist
Version 3.2.9
Version 3.2.11
Version 3.2.14 (released yesterday)
It’s all the testers fault!!! (/sarcasm)
Oh, how I wish I could comment on this The man speaks some truths, and has some misguided opinions, but overall, his points are valid (not just about Sega, but about the game industry, as well as the music industry and the movie industry… hell, about business in general).
Forgot one more thing… This is also not true. They do have the power to point out bugs that need to be fixed. But, they can also be over-ridden by the producer, marketing manager, and a number of other people.
I wasn’t bashing the tester, by meaning QA was a joke. I meant that it has utterly no influence over the release process (as you stated very well).
Oh, and btw, here in Germany publishers couldn’t care less about release dates… long and sad story…
Go mock someone else.The european release date of LoK:Defiance was February 6 and we Portuguese guys stiil don’t have it.
I’ve spoken with some german dudes who have it tho.
Life couldn’t be worse :’(
I want Defiance!!! :'C
And my momy! :'C
We also had games that were shipped unfinished by german studios intended for the german market. Like the second game in the Anno series, which is incredibly popular over here. I think they patched the multiplayer mode in more than a year later, and never changed the text on the box of the game that promised multiplayer. There was was also this soccer manager, the version in the boxes had more bugs than the version the reviewers got.
Same story, we just do not have as many franchises that get this kind of attention from marketing.
remember Teut’s rant about the german game industry? how publishers put games on the shelves the very week a similar international title comes in the stores?
In general he was right, but with big titles everyone seems to make the same mistakes.