Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Very interesting. Never thought of it that way. I would argue the "feeling" we have about the clubhouse is more social than physical. Media members treat our clubhouses like "rec rooms" many times.

We view it as a very special location, our home away from home that we spent our entire lives earning the right to be in.

I have always been bothered by people that makes themselves at home, in my home, that I don"t know.

We have a very different situation here in Boston, the volume of media is staggering. There are some that "loiter", and that"s an issue as well. They hang out, read the paper, watch TV, whatever, feeling very comfortable in a place I don"t think they should.

I do know the media looks at it this way, looking around a baseball locker room and seeing guys like Dustin Pedroia, our God given talents are not "out there" for all to see like football players. Add to that the fact that pretty much every male over the age of 4 has played baseball, and many often look at this game and think, "if I"d only stuck with baseball", completely disregarding the fact that ya, you did play baseball, but you were about as far from having major league talent as the 10 handicapper is from the PGA tour. Not in this lifetime.

It"s my house, my families house, respect it.

Ngruk said:

Very interesting. Never thought of it that way. I would argue the "feeling" we have about the clubhouse is more social than physical. Media members treat our clubhouses like "rec rooms" many times.
We view it as a very special location, our home away from home that we spent our entire lives earning the right to be in.
I have always been bothered by people that makes themselves at home, in my home.
We have a very different situation here in Boston, the volume of media is staggering. There are some that "loiter", and that"s an issue as well. They hang out, read the paper, watch TV, whatever, feeling very comfortable in a place I don"t think they should.
It"s my house, my families house, respect it.

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Any word on the engine Curt? How bout that one year deal with the Phils?=p

A few pages late, but entry level positions in QA/CS are usually filled locally.

And I don"t think anyone is deluding themselves into thinking the MMO industry isn"t inherently incestuous. Yeah, there are plenty of qualified QA folks out there in the industry, but how do you intend to lure them away? If they"re experienced, it"s because they"ve been at it for 3-5 years, and now they have the illusion of job security. Why would Veteran Bill want to leave Fat Cat City for a new start-up?

Zarcath said:

And I don"t think anyone is deluding themselves into thinking the MMO industry isn"t inherently incestuous. Yeah, there are plenty of qualified QA folks out there in the industry, but how do you intend to lure them away?

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I don"t think there are many good QA folk out there in the industry. They might have been at it for 3-5 years, but that doesn"t mean they are doing it properly or learning what they need to.

Look at Sony again. A prime example of how not to do it. Since 2001 they"ve used the same QA staff on pretty much every product they"ve churned out.

Sometimes those staff have worked on up to 8 projects at a time/in the same year. They"re responsible for SWG, various EQ2 expansions, Planetside and everything else SoE has turned out. And every time the same feelings of being incomplete, with missing or unfinished content. They"re a prime example of how not to do it and epitomize my example of Manufacturing Industry 50 years ago.

A very basic measure of software is resilience, reliability and scalability. SoE have flat out failed to deliver. MASSIVE amounts of skilled dev work is going to waste due to poor middle and senior management, which adopting QA properly would fix. Why ? Because my earlier point stands - proper QA should make sure middle and senior management are doing their jobs properly, from the earliest inception of the project life cycle. That sets free all of your staff to do their work in the most efficient and productive manner.

That"s what happens when you"re dealing with companies that answer to mega-corporations, especially mega-corps that seem more intent on the bottom-line than customer satisfaction or superior product.

It doesn"t matter how skilled these QA folks are, the can"t fix something thats horrendously broken to begin with. Personally I"d rank QA as one of the top authorities for approval, but in this industry, designers are the princes. QA can"t counter the mindset of pushing broken content and fixing it later.

Inevitably it"s what happens when companies are managed by people who haven"t the slightest idea on the product they"re pushing. And somehow this has been going on long enough for the MMO industry to pick this up as business as usual. To the suits, an MMO is just a game, and a game is just a form of entertainment. In their eyes, why shouldn"t tried and true methods of the entertainment world apply to MMOs? (re: Movies)

Even our own kind have been groomed to accept this type of behavior from companies as par for the course. I"d like to think the folks at FoH are jaded enough to see through the legacy of BS, mostly thanks to the efforts of Brad. I guess that"s one thing we can thank him for. If it wasn"t for his antics, we"d probably never have seen the back-alley deals that make up today"s industry.

Zarcath said:

That"s what happens when you"re dealing with companies that answer to mega-corporations, especially mega-corps that seem more intent on the bottom-line than customer satisfaction or superior product.

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These are the same thing. How can you have a healthy bottomline without satisfied customers? A non satisfied customer is not paying you very long, ask Sigil.

Bongk said:

These are the same thing. How can you have a healthy bottomline without satisfied customers? A non satisfied customer is not paying you very long, ask Sigil.

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Notice I didn"t say anything about success. Sigil took a dump and told us it was diamonds.

In any case, someone got a great deal on VG, a half-finished MMO is still worth something, especially if you"re buying it at chapter 11 prices.

Lets make it simple - the industry leaders can now rake in $200mill a year in subs alone.

In the next decade that market is going to increase 10-20 fold.

For the people who will be competing for a significant slice of that, getting QA right will make the difference between them having the opportunity to produce a Vanguard or a WoW.

If you are a major player, there is no excuse to not get it right. Pay a contractor $200k a year to come in, set up and run your QA and hand it off to permanent staff, over a period of a year or two. Yes it costs, but in return you get as many staff trained up in this as you want, plus an industry first - QA no one else is close to. It will pay for itself a hundred times over.





As an aside, someone really needs to look into a Pokemon MMORPG. Its numbers would blow WoW away. Yes, I"m serious. Pokemon, MMORPG, I choose you. It even comes with its own slogan.

Flight said:

Lets make it simple - the industry leaders can now rake in $200mill a year in subs alone.

In the next decade that market is going to increase 10-20 fold.

For the people who will be competing for a significant slice of that, getting QA right will make the difference between them having the opportunity to produce a Vanguard or a WoW.

If you are a major player, there is no excuse to not get it right. Pay a contractor $200k a year to come in, set up and run your QA and hand it off to permanent staff, over a period of a year or two. Yes it costs, but in return you get as many staff trained up in this as you want, plus an industry first - QA no one else is close to. It will pay for itself a hundred times over.





As an aside, someone really needs to look into a Pokemon MMORPG. Its numbers would blow WoW away. Yes, I"m serious. Pokemon, MMORPG, I choose you. It even comes with its own slogan.

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I"ve been harping on about a Pokemon MMO for years.

A 3rd party QA staff would certainly be interesting, but you"d be hard pressed to convince a group of investors who have no idea what an MMO is, to hire professionals at 10x the cost, when they could just hire joe-schmoe locally for pennies.

Flight said:

As an aside, someone really needs to look into a Pokemon MMORPG. Its numbers would blow WoW away. Yes, I"m serious. Pokemon, MMORPG, I choose you. It even comes with its own slogan.

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I"ve been praying for this for years. Please, sweet baby Jesus, give someone the money, time, and brains to do this right.

Flight said:

Lets make it simple - the industry leaders can now rake in $200mill a year in subs alone.

In the next decade that market is going to increase 10-20 fold.

For the people who will be competing for a significant slice of that, getting QA right will make the difference between them having the opportunity to produce a Vanguard or a WoW.

If you are a major player, there is no excuse to not get it right. Pay a contractor $200k a year to come in, set up and run your QA and hand it off to permanent staff, over a period of a year or two. Yes it costs, but in return you get as many staff trained up in this as you want, plus an industry first - QA no one else is close to. It will pay for itself a hundred times over.





As an aside, someone really needs to look into a Pokemon MMORPG. Its numbers would blow WoW away. Yes, I"m serious. Pokemon, MMORPG, I choose you. It even comes with its own slogan.

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Bottom line is you skimp nowhere when you hire, nowhere. From Execs to HR staff if you don"t build your entire core team of people with the same philosophy you lose at some point, somewhere. 50-60k bad hires now, hell 200k bad hires now, are potential multi-million to billion dollar mistakes down the road.
You should never have to buy people, your company, it"s culture, your approach and vision need to sell you. Sure people are and always will be concerned with how much they make, you have to be, but if that"s the determining factor in taking a job both parties are screwing up.

Ngruk said:

Bottom line is you skimp nowhere when you hire, nowhere. From Execs to HR staff if you don"t build your entire core team of people with the same philosophy you lose at some point, somewhere. 50-60k bad hires now, hell 200k bad hires now, are potential multi-million to billion dollar mistakes down the road.
You should never have to buy people, your company, it"s culture, your approach and vision need to sell you. Sure people are and always will be concerned with how much they make, you have to be, but if that"s the determining factor in taking a job both parties are screwing up.

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Fantastic stuff. Really; fantastic.

Ngruk said:

You should never have to buy people, your company, it"s culture, your approach and vision need to sell you.

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I agree. If I lived in the States I would come and work for you for a crust of bread and a stale loaf a week and happily put in 100 hours a week. Seriously.

The problem here is I am telling you that QA needs doing better than it has been done before in our industry. The skill set simply doesn"t exist. Therefore, you need to introduce it. You do that by employing a highly skilled (and yes, highly paid) contractor for a period of 12-24 months.

Their job description is to work with you to create and run your QA. More importantly, they are there to pass on their skill set to your permanent staff. As long as you are open about that with your permanent staff, they will buy into it and not be threatened. They will learn massive amounts in short spaces of time. You end up with the best QA permanent staff in the business.

Ngruk said:

Bottom line is you skimp nowhere when you hire, nowhere. From Execs to HR staff if you don"t build your entire core team of people with the same philosophy you lose at some point, somewhere. 50-60k bad hires now, hell 200k bad hires now, are potential multi-million to billion dollar mistakes down the road.
You should never have to buy people, your company, it"s culture, your approach and vision need to sell you. Sure people are and always will be concerned with how much they make, you have to be, but if that"s the determining factor in taking a job both parties are screwing up.

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As long as you don"t treat your employees like they"re disposable tools. The one feeling I constantly had working in the industry was that I was a worthless rat who could be replaced the moment I fucked up. Days were spent just making sure I covered my ass from the wrath of 6 different middle-managers ALA Office Space.

Now I read about some companies that have game rooms for employees to relax in, free sodas and snacks, even on-site child care services or weight rooms. I tell you, that"s classy man, I wish I had that kind of environment my first time out. I"ve always believed that a happy worker is a productive worker.

At some points I had to share a desk with another dude, which was alright because we became good friends, but I also had to share my computer with night shift. Let me tell you, coming in and finding pubes on your keyboard is a great way to start your shift. I never felt more encouraged to work with a cheeto-encrusted mouse.

I don"t know if I buy the whole QA skillset not existing. I"ve worked with some awesome QA people over the years. Most places, QA pulls the trigger on promoting new builds. If they say it is not ready it"s not ready.

Kharza-kzad said:

I don"t know if I buy the whole QA skillset not existing. I"ve worked with some awesome QA people over the years. Most places, QA pulls the trigger on promoting new builds. If they say it is not ready it"s not ready.

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Tell that to Ester!

Not to be the Negative Nancy, but it will still come down to whether the actual game sucks or not. Hoping it doesn"t, since competition is good, but the market can be so fickle and unforgiving.

Kharza-kzad said:

I don"t know if I buy the whole QA skillset not existing. I"ve worked with some awesome QA people over the years. Most places, QA pulls the trigger on promoting new builds. If they say it is not ready it"s not ready.

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I agree, good QA is really important. From my experience working on mods, the skills a good QA person have are organization, writing, and an overall feel for gameplay. The organization comes into play regarding how they test, as well as how they report the bugs. On one project, we had a guy who would just keep updating a list of things to be fixed, and he was able to organize them for each individual member and which parts they needed to fix. Writing is essential, especially for an RPG. Typos, or worse when you"re working into the night, do happen and it"s embarrassing and unprofessional. The last thing is your QA has to be cognizant of his own skill level and knowledge of the story, because he"s playing the game nonstop. If an encounter is too difficult, or the story only makes sense with future information he plays an important role in making sure those design mistakes don"t slip through.

Kharza-kzad said:

I don"t know if I buy the whole QA skillset not existing. I"ve worked with some awesome QA people over the years. Most places, QA pulls the trigger on promoting new builds. If they say it is not ready it"s not ready.

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QA done properly is involved in every area of the project. It makes sure that :


i) project plans and time scales are in place, solid and followed from project inception;

ii) it ensures documentation is everything it needs to be, so that for example new employees could come in cold for anyone in the project and pick up where other staff had left off - that includes software (code, testing and plans);

iii) middle and senior managers are on track and on top of everything, allowing the devs, artists and designers to be focused and produce their best work in a co-ordinated manner;

iv) we"ve mentioned resilience, reliability and scalability - I would suggest, in this industry, those are baseline requirements for every part of the company - the code, the staffing and the hardware (future expansions, for example, should be seamless in all three areas);

v) ultimately, ensures projects are delivered on time, to spec and in budget.


It has authority over all of the above. It formally records everything needed to make sure all of the above happens and signs it off regularly throughout the project life cycle.


The people who own QA not only need to have a solid knowledge of all of the above and how to achieve it, they need to be able to communicate as effectively as any of your middle management. They also need to be strong enough to never compromise under coercion from any of your staff, from bottom to top.

That"s the type of QA I associate with business projects. It doesn"t hold true for MMO QA.