Top Secret File 37: There Will Be BUGS!

[Ben Judd]

In the next Top Secret: The Bionic Commando Podcast we will be talking with Shutaro Kobayashi, the head of our QA testing unit.

Post your questions here and let's give some props to the team that no one realizes is responsible for making great games even better.

[stove_]

1. Could you describe any kind of training or knowledge a Japanese game tester would need to know in order to do the job right?

2. One major annoyance of modern gaming is the need to issue patches to newly released games. It used to be strictly a PC problem, but now even console gamers have to deal with bugs. Why does this happen and is it a problem in Japan as well?

3. What kind of say does a bug tester have in the development of a game?

4. Could you share with us a crazy story from the world of game testing?

[Carnivol]

Oh yes! QA! The job that is "just playing video games" in the eyes of others, but in reality countless hours of stress, overtime and typical awesome office insanity. It may also be responsible for the creation of colorful expressions and where many great stories take place!

The best of all? It's all worth it! (Unless you're on a project that for some reason gets canned...!)

I've probably clocked an equal amount of hours in some games as the QA team themselves have before me. I can at least spot Shutaro Kobayashi in the credits for some games I've played a lot, so a big thanks to him and the rest of the QA team, from me, at least




Now, during my own time doing various forms for Quality Assurance (mostly localization related), I've seen a lot of funny bugs and I've often found myself browsing the archives looking at bug reports (of all sorts of kinds) submitted by colleagues... which leads me to my question:

-During your time with QA, what is your "favorite bug" and/or the funniest bug you've seen? (Could be a specific bug that was just "funny/good", or made you proud to discover, or a type of bug that keeps persistently coming back multiple times and just makes you all warm and fuzzy inside when you finally run into it.)

[L7xLoTek]

In case you've been squashing 'em BC bugs (you have, right?), what is the craziest reproduction you had to come up with? What about in any game you've tested? (Somewhat in line with Carnivol's question, but I want to know too )

Have you (or anyone under you) come up with "cutesy" nick names for some of the bugs you've encountered?

Thanks for your hard work!

----

Unrelated to the quest: More BC info!!!

[dvincent]

As a fellow person who does QA work as part of his job, I've got something to pose to you. It's a situation I wind up in often when testing features and finding bugs. What is the biggest battle you've lost with engineering in terms of a feature not working as the way you would like? Or perhaps a bug that was not really a bug due to the programmers twisted logic, but you and users didn't like? Points if you both got into a round of fisticuffs!

Basically, "any regrets?"

[slinky]

Yes i am considered the bug maker i go out of my way apparently to make bugs happen. Do you get this? Then the coder comes up with what i call an excuse, because most of the time it gets fixed. The funniest response ever is that the programming doesn't like 0's, binary must suck then eh.(joke) I have a hard time explaining things so people understand them which is a big problem anything similar? Countless hours of doing weird things to produce bugs is how i do it.

[SleepyInsomniac]

Have you ever slept overnight at the office because of a frustrating bug? If not, have you made any other drastic sacrifices in your personal life just to squash a bug? Please describe it as horrendously as you can, so that other podcast listeners and myself can better appreciate the work you do for all of us.

Thanks for your dedication!

[alizerothree]

Do you find it annoying when other testers simply write up duplicates and or straight C bugs just to get their bug total up? Quantity over quality. Personally, i hate when people do that. How much competition is there between testers for writing up bugs?

[Hyakitaki]

Here's my question....

1. Have you ever encountered an intentional bug in a game that makes a man's genitals pop up on screen over and over?

2. How close to reality is the movie Grandma's boy?

3. Do you now own, or have you ever almost purchased a Fleshlight?

[Johanz]

Here is my question, I have always wondered how QA stays alive during bugtesting day after day, and thus, my question is..

.. How do you keep your spirits up? Sure, we all love games, but playing the same area in a game hunting for bugs must be tedious sometimes and stressfull, how do you manage it? How did you aquire your iron will required for this kind of job?