Thread by @MallowyGoodness

Since it's GDQ time again reminder that comments like "did they even QA this?" are incredibly childish and reveal that you dont really know or care about how game development works

It's also extra goofy when that phrase comes up in the context of glitches that took years to find

Also, never blame QA

QA testers dont get nearly enough respect and if there's bugs or problems in a game it's probably because of someone much higher up on the ladder deciding to save money somehow

there's lots of bugs that make it to launch that are known about but not fixed

Whether or not this is good or bad is incredibly contextual too

sometimes things are rushed as hell and you get an Ubisoft-tier mess because they dont care if it releases broken

other times the glitches are minor and theyre just accepting they dont have infinite time and money

There's also the fact that afaik a lot of QA jobs pay /per-bug/

so when I hear speedrunners talk about grinding out several hrs trying to figure out how to do one thing it's like

ya a lot of QA cant do that! you dont get payed if you do that!

also no normal human would do that

Comparing speedrunning and QA is a really bizarre thing because in the case of speedruns youre looking for very specific things that no normal person would typically find nor would it easily cause negative affects, which are the things QA looks for

Also speedrunners have years to build up a repertoire of tech of obscure things QA either missed or didnt care about

QA typically has like a few months? So you should be more impressed that things run as stable as they do most of the time

But like def give companies shit for not taking their QA departments seriously enough when there is problems

Bethesda's problems are either not giving its testers enough time or just not fixing the shit they find. Grill Bethesda for sure (but not their QA teams, not their fault)

The fact of the matter is it's a miracle video games work at all with how easy they are to just absolutely break before QA is finished, so respect QA more

like Ive had multiple early-dev games just cease to work because I had a controller plugged in it didnt like

thats games

One time I did QA for an indie game and I couldnt get past the first puzzle because a block wouldnt fall right

if it wasnt for QA you probably wouldnt be able to finish most games

(this can also be considered me telling indies to frickin get QA for your games, tiny or not)

I also QA'd a VN where all the characters had grey tongues because the artist is colorblind and got the color values wrong

somehow no one else on the team realized this and pointed it out before I got to it (I actually never saw if it was fixed)

This is a good point too

anything with procedural/random level generation can be really difficult to get working so whenever you play a roguelike and can actually finish a level be thankful

(also good problem proofing, eniko!)

https://twitter.com/Enichan/status/1082821049870442496

One game I QA'd has an item that the game is based around and that you can do a lot of gimmicks with

there was a somber cemetery scene early on where you still had that item with you and I pointed out "maybe we shouldnt have this and be able to do sick tricks off of headstones"

And these are just the things I found as someone who's done only a little QA for indies

can you imagine how much shit the average QA tester for an industry release have to tell stories about?

Also all of these things I mentioned finding except the "I literally cannot get past the first puzzle" are way on the lower end of importance, theyre just goofy to think about, but could totally have been left in if they were pressed for time because they dont actually matter

I also found and reported a glitch in Guacamelee Gold that got fixed for STCE where if you threw an enemy up into a door you'd break your coords massively

no one new about this because it was only possible in a few places, and therefor wouldnt be very dangerous to casual play

I took a video of it years ago

I think this is the only place you can do it & it's such an obscure thing that only someone like me going "I wonder what happens if I..." would find it

more important it doesnt lock up the game, reloading is fast & fixes it

Exactly this. When glitches are talked about in speedrunning sometimes they'll mention softlocks or other bad effects that can happen if they mess up, but the fact that they dont say that about every glitch means the game was probably actually QA'd pretty well

https://twitter.com/AdelleTiamat/status/1082823953469583360

It's like, sure, youve managed to completely fuck the intended progression

but hey you bought the game, do what you want

we just dont want it to crash on you or for you to just trip and have something be wrong

you have to glitch it on purpose is what QA usually wants

theoretically a game that would be impossible to glitch unintentionally, regardless of how many glitches you can do on purpose, would be a perfect QA job, because the idea is Quality Assurance - You enjoying your game is more or less the trait of Quality

Idk if this is at all common with industry devs but yknow sometimes you leave in broken things because theyre fun as heck and that's good and shouldnt be dunked on about

why bother fixing things if it removes potential fun

https://twitter.com/MadameBerry/status/1082824251110051841

anyway I'm totally in rambling territory because that always happens with me

dont make fun of QA it's hard work and it's cool how much work goes into it and also how the guts of games work