Enduring the bug infestation

When it comes to small companies, (even ones you sort of partially own), I'm never sure if I love or hate them. Firstly, there's the complete lack of ignorance you have when it comes to the finances. You know the finances, you know much money is in the coffers, you know when you're the red lights are flashing and it's 'give me sales or give me centrelink' time. I always imagine it must be nice to work for a large company where all you do is work until one day, BAM, you're redundant because there's no money left. Total ignorance. No constant fear for this month's salary, just raw expectation. 

Having worked in three small companies now, I've also noticed one other consistent theme, you get to do everything. Everything. A word than encompasses everything you previously thought of and then even more. Designing new games? Check. Understanding programming? Check. Sales? Check. Social marketing? Check. Making websites, trailers, bug testing? Of course. 

Which brings me to this post. Bug testing. How I loathe thee so. Having worked on basic database projects for school and University, I knew that games would not work as well as expected when they were reviewed, but, I never imagined they could be such abominations. I'll never forget the first demo level I saw with place holders. Pink placeholders. I almost curled up and cried for a day. This was not the spectacularly funny and hilarious images that I imagined. They were pink! And the game crashed! Regularly. In fact, it felt that you only broke it when you played it. Best to just stare and enjoy the loading screen. 

Overtime though, that became the easy part. Bugs were clearly obvious because it was 'X should do Y but does Z and T', gameplay balance became the new thing. How do you know what's fair? 15% faster? 20% faster? Should the save points be closer? Further? Levels longer? Shorter? Is it too difficult or am I just mediocre? Does it need to run in real time? Game time? Relative time? Isn't time and space the same thing?

Plus the infamous programmer's question 'tell me exactly what you were doing'. Exactly? What do you mean exactly? I was sipping a caffeinated beverage and playing the game when it crashed. I was playing it as you, the programmer, intended; with two hands, three toes and a nose! The thing, on the other thing did not show up. 

Yet it doesn't end there, oh no. Once they fix the bug, the send you the game again and ask you to rinse and repeat. To do it over and over again. Until you've seen the same section of a level three hundred times that you notice if they move anything by a pixel. And then you start to hate that pixel movement because the game now feels as if you're playing an entirely different experience. Your brain starts suggesting that they should move it back, except, maybe they did it for the customers? Surely it wasn't a random pixel movement? There must be some logic behind it? Why else would they put you through this pain? Don't they understand how you feel about that pixel?

*Cough* *Cough* 

Anyways, that's one of the good and bad things about working for a small company. I've never play tested before (or used Twitter for that matter) and if I just 'lucked out' and started working for a larger game company, I might never have. I would have no comprehension of what it takes to play test and the frustrations that goes along with the job. So, I gain an enormously diversified set of skills that can be applied almost anywhere, on the downside, I have to be prepared to do anything. One time I had to sell trips to China for a previous company with zero advertising dollars because, y'know, it had become my job. Great for the resume (eventually), possibly hazardous to my short term health. 

Oh, and about that big company thing. I worked for one of those. A year and a half later it went bankrupt. Good times. Good times. 

徒羅藩

P.S: We went to Freeplay last week. My boss, 海奴陸, will have more details later on this week.