Originally written/conceptualized/drawn by Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, and Scott Kurtz (not necessarily in that order,) "The Trenches" was a webcomic about fictional people working in the video game industry and all the fictional hijinks they got up to. With each new comic, a new ostensibly true story from an ostensibly real live game developer was also posted. After a time, the comic and its accompanying posts fell to the wayside, the reasons for which I won't get into here but you can look up if you want, I'm not gonna stop you.
Anyway, the other day/week/month I read something that reminded me of this webcomic, or more accurately, this series of behind-the-scenes stories. But when I went to look for it, it wasn't there. Well, it was, on the Internet Wayback Machine, but no one has time for that. So I decided to make a separate archive of the stories, so maybe someone will more easily be able to stumble on and enjoy them in the future. I wish I knew how to SEO so that would be more likely. OH WELL!
So... enjoy! I will be updating this page with "new" posts every now and then until the archive is complete.
(Oh, P.S. The Trenches is probably trademarked/copywritten by PvP/Penny Arcade and I am not trying to represent this content as my own or make any money off it. Please don't sue me. thx)
Man of the Match
08/09/2011 - Anonymous
I remember very clearly the first game I ever tested. Ken Griffey, Jr’s Winning Run for the SNES. America’s pastime being developed by a UK developer (they couldn’t figure out why the MVP of the game wasn’t called the “Man of the Match”).
But what I remember the most is learning how different testing was compared to playing a game. I don’t normally sit down to a baseball game and play a tie game to 99 innings to see if the game will freak out when it hits 100. I don’t normally sit down at a video game with a scorer’s book and chart the pitches of the CPU pitchers to make sure they are throwing the correct ones.
This was not “getting paid to play games” – this was “getting paid to perform monotonous, time consuming, mind numbing activities.” This was sit at your desk and try to hit a home run that barely crosses the top of the fence just a little right of the footage marker in center field of the Kingdome because three builds ago the sprite of the center fielder that jumped up to catch the ball warped through the wall and disappeared off screen… oh, and this only happens in the bottom of the fifth inning. Does it take you two hours to recreate? Four hours? Three days? It doesn’t matter – doing it is your task.
You learn to hate every game you test (with some small exceptions). You go to sleep thinking about them, wake up thinking about them and even dream about them. Hours spent in a small windowless room with little ventilation.
Trapped.
But in the end, it’s all worth it. Actually, no wait – it wasn’t. That bug you spent the last week trying to track down just got waived as a feature.
[NEXT >]
Anything Goes
08/11/2011 - Anonymous
I worked on a AAA title a few years ago, and our schedule started as 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday. Then they told us the game was going to need a “little” bit of crunch, and those of us who “stuck it out” and “stepped up” and “paid our dues” would be sure to end up as test leads on future projects, maybe even on the production fast track.
So we went to working 9 AM to 9 PM, Monday through Thursday and 9 AM to 5 PM on Fridays and Saturday. We did this 64 hour workweek for two months.
Then they upped our schedule to 9 AM to midnight Monday through Friday and 9 AM to 9 PM on Saturday. 87 hours a week for four straight months.
With crunch hitting, they added to our schedule AGAIN to 9 AM to midnight Monday through Saturday, with an “anything goes” warning. I ended up working 19 hour days, 7 AM to 2 AM, six days a week for the last six weeks of the project.
After the game shipped they laid me off.