question about pre release testing?

[gigemaggs99]

I'm not trying to get anyone worked up. I'd just like to know...

When ya'll get to go to those pre-production game testing events...do ya'll play each other, like more user vs user games? I guess what I'm asking is, do ya'll have enough time with the game to actually play multiple games in a dynasty?

I'm just wondering how much exposure you get to the actual game.

It seems like if all you get to play is user vs user games with 1 or 2 teams how can you really have time to find or show the bugs?

I'd just like to know more what happens as far as testing this game.

It seems like there are handful of people here that play the daylights out of the game, they play enough to see more of the content, missing or not.

I get to play a fair amount, I'd love to play and test the game, not to get a free copy but to help work out some of the bugs so EVERYONE including myself could get a better product.

Like in the past I asked about being able to celebrate with your mascot this year. Someone came in and said they removed that since it would be deemed a penalty in real life this year, well while playing and the game is loading it will tell you CAN do things like this, it suggests you do it. So, either they just copied that over from last years skeleton or they did add it at some point. Either way, I'd like to play the game with a notepad next to me and write things like that down, then if for instance that load screen needs to be removed it would. It doesn't come up all the time though, so it's like other little things it's something that would only be weeded out by lots of testing.

It would be cool to be able to help produce a better polished product.

[gschwendt]

We're usually there for 8 hour days or so with 10 or so stations. Depending on whether it's a large group (up to 16) or a smaller group (6-10) will determine whether we're sharing stations. When we're with the game, we're free to do whatever we want. If we want to play user games, we can do so; if we want to sim years ahead in a dynasty (and assuming we have our own station), we can do so. We have the full game at our disposal so it's not limited to 1-2 teams or anything like that. It's really up to us to determine where our expertise would be best served.

For the most part, there are things that I don't focus on, smaller things like your menu loading screen, I personally gloss over because it doesn't effect anything in the grand scheme of things. Bugs, etc. we'll point out to the devs and put them in our notes that we ultimately turn into them at the end of the trip. Additionally, our goal there is less to find bugs (that's what QA is supposed to do) and more to find flaws, design issues, gameplay related issues, etc. Obviously we don't find everything... as has been mentioned in the past, within 24 hours of the official release, the amount of total hours that gamers have spent is considerably larger than that of the total hours that QA spent with the game for the entire year.

I hope that answers your questions.