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The testers also coped with the pressures of being surveilled. A couple of sources told Kotaku that QA workers would have their breaks timed or sometimes even be followed into the restrooms by non-management employees described by one source as “chronic snitches.” According to them, these otherwise normal testers, designated as “coordinators,” did not have a real title or pay bump, but felt that micromanaging their peers would help their career standing at ZeniMax. Another did not recall if people were specifically followed, but knew testers whose bathroom breaks had been timed.
Way back the Penny Arcade guys had an almost-as-lame webcomic about video game QA workers for a while and when I checked it out there was a letter to the editor deal thing for industry horror stories… I was interested, but the first and only one I stomached to read was an petty snitch whining about the time when they got two co-workers fired for allegedly having office sex once the fallout also destroyed their own job, all of that in such a snivelly-yet-smug tone that I truly pray this person never has coworkers ever again, maybe they should live in the woods and eat bark
Holy shit I managed to google it ; note that even next to this worthless piece of shit the corporate bosses are still the bigger evil
Writing in how ohs’m your job is… to an anonymous venting blog about an exploitative industry? Yikes. Instantly losing that job? Restorative justice.
There is probably a point here about senseless sexual mores; and identifying with your abuser(management) once you’re given a shred of power; but I cannot get past how loathsome a being this is
It’s nice to know that people on the inside knew full well what a stinker they had on their hands and that devs that worked on previous games were deeply aware of how much this could damage the company’s reputation. You have an out of touch management team that either doesn’t consider QA a part of the development team or is checked out entirely. There’s this bullheaded insistence that if it worked in the 90s that it’ll work today. I think this article is a bit prophetic for Bethesda releases going forward. Fallout 76 caused a massive wave of burnout. Devs that stuck through sleeping under their desks for Skyrim and Fallout 4 found it as their reason to finally quit. Bethesda saw a decent chunk of brain drain from this project from devs that actually made their best selling titles. I don’t see Starfield having a great chance and the trailers I’ve seen are all cinematic or extremely limited to the point where it feels almost like Mass Effect Andromeda. You should have at least a solidly built zone at this point that you can show off if you’re 1-2 years out from release and you’ve spent like 8 years on development. Games don’t come together in a year from scratch and to try is to just crush your entire workforce to the point where you’re doing what they did with Fallout 76, creating untold human misery and physical harm to the people actually making the game.
To be fair, Bethesda doesn’t usually show gameplay until the games they make are close to release.
Bethesda’s been doing the crunch game for a while now. Devs sleeping at their desks is an indicator that development has not been smooth and has been mismanaged, the fact that the games release playable is a miracle that will one day end as we saw with Mass Effect Andromeda and the breaking of “Bioware magic” and similar with how Fallout 76 saw the breaking of Bethesda pulling out another landmark. Skyrim should have had gameplay to show early on, same with Oblivion and Fallout. Though a solid playable slice isn’t indicative of the final produce as Aliens: Colonial Marines showed with their fake gameplay demos, this stuff should already be made if you have a healthy atmosphere for your workers.
Everyone I knew expected the game to be a disaster when they announced no NPCs. I am so glad to know it also came with palpable human cost
I remember when Bethesda was surprised that there were people in Fallout 76 not engaging in combat. Or in other words, playing Fallout like it’s Fallout.
And above it all, the community is very chuddy and had been since the start, where they saw the monetization practices as a way to show off how much money they had to waste on the damn thing and became “PC Master Race” levels of cringe-arrogant about it.
This is the future of gaming once NFTs take off (and I am positive they will, despite all the naysayers - this is hell world, afterall). People think it’s all monkey jpegs, but the financialization of consumer entertainment products is going to be much, much worse than techbros LARPing as rich guys on Twitter.
This is a total shot in the dark, but I think Pokemon is going to be the first major brand to give NFTs mainstream appeal. Apparently they are working on an NFT version of the card game, and honestly, who better to push NFTs on than trading card collectors? Especially if they’re giving them out as a lootbox sort of promo with every pack of cards. They’ve already got a thousand social media influencers hawking that shit.
Once young people are on board, it’s pretty much game over - the bigger development studios don’t care what us 30+ aged folks who only have time for a couple new games a year want to play, and while we will still have some indies, a lot of smaller devs will hop on board in hopes of making a quick buck. The future for g*mers is bleak.
Nintendo will call its NFTs “aWiibos”, and they will somehow be both far better than every other NFT scheme by unlocking stuff in multiple games, and far worse by enticing hoarders to amass a huge collection.
