blimey let me get it finished and looking right first:)

A Lead Tester is responsible for making sure the game goes out without any bugs in the game. The write the test plan and manage the team of testers working on the game. So yes basically you play the game solidly for about 3 months towards the end of development finding all the crashes, lock ups, text bugs, language problems, etc etc.

Also on Darklight Conflict I helped convert some of the scripts over from the PC scripting language to the PlayStation and Saturn scripting language.

Developers missing bugs??? Never….

It happens all the time, when it comes to the crunch things have to be sacrificed, and sometimes that means letting the games go out with bugs in them. unfortunatly there is not an infinite pot of money paying for people to work on games.

And boy could I tell you some good stories about game bugs that are out in the wild. I just hope that PS1 Mag interview wasn’t me in my young wreckless tester days, i am so glad they are behind me and I am not a designer.

Actually yes I did, it was a fun little game in parts just a little let down by the hardware at the time. (The PC version is a whole lot more fun as it has more enemies to shoot down and has multiplayer).

Ok lets start from the top then shall we…

My first jon in the industry was as part of the GOD Squad as it was known. This was EA UK’s internal development test department. I worked in a team of 8 people testing anything that came out of EA Uk’s development studio. The first game I worked on was PGA European Tour for DOS!!!

After a few years working here the GOD Squad was moved over to Bullfrogs offices in Guildford, where eventually we joined up with Bullfrog’s test department and became your standard development QA department. It was here that I gained a foothold in the technical side of QA, and moved on to be a Technical Requirements Auditor, basically the guy that knew all about PC’s and console hardware. Every single game that was released by EA in the European territories came through this department at this time and we were there to make sure the game working on as many PC’s and console revisions as possible, working with video card companies on compatible drivers, testing minimum specs.

It was also at this time that I could recall from memory every single Sony TRC for the PlayStation 1 and 2!!!

After 7 years with EA I decided it was time to move on, and managed to get a job working for a small independant company called Small Rockets (formly known as Fiendish Games). Here I helped set up there QA and configuration mechanics before finally settling into the job as Designer.

My first design job was Pro Wakeboarding featuring Shaun Murray (the wakeboarding version of Tony Hawks) for GBA. After that I designed Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas before the company unfortunatly had to lay off all their staff, me included.

Still it wasn’t long before I managed to bag myself a job and I started work at Team17 as a designer. And this is where I am now. Since joining Teamsters I have worked on Worms Forts, lead the design on Worms 4 Mayhem, done some super top secret prototype work and am currently arguing with the Unreal 3 engine on the latest game we are working on.

So there you have it. My life in ‘the industry’.

double post