Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

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Flight

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Zarcath said:
That"s the type of QA I associate with business projects. It doesn"t hold true for MMO QA.
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Doesn"t that make you stop and think for a second ? Most of us don"t expect the same level of QA in the MMORPG Industry as we do "in business". Even someone like you, who has shown a good degree of insight and knowledge.

The MMORPG industry is going to grow massively in the coming decade, especially with emerging markets in India and China. Its going to be worth billions of dollars a year, in subs alone. Yet we don"t see it as a business ?

The proof of what I am saying is rampant - why should we put up with games launching that are half finished, full of bugs and with only half the promised content. Proper QA gives middle and senior management the foundation, spine and direction they need, allowing the creative talent to put out their best work, instead of it being often wasted. It also controls and puts checks on all levels of management (as an side, that is why self-policing is a no-no; you don"t ask coaches in a sports league to nominate one of their own players to do random drug testing, for example - it has to be a separate body. You can have the best management out there, but without the tools and checks QA provides you are going to fall short of your potential).






As I"ve said, I"ve owned, top to bottom, massive hardware and software development projects, of the scale and complexity of an MMORPG development.

I"m not talking theory. I"m talking my experience.

People don"t associate it with MMORPGs because no-one has done it. The realities of MMORPG development, eg moving targets and complex software interactions and inter-dependability, demand QA even more than in other industries. I"d love to see how change management is handled in most MMORPG development companies, for example.



People don"t see the relevance and potential benefits in the same way Western manufacturing industries didn"t in the 50"s. Like then, it just keeps on delivering uncontrolled, sub-par product, that is only half its potential, that can be fixed later.
 
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Ngruk_foh

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I would argue that I have already met 2 people I would bet this companies existence on from a QA lead stand point. People with proven track records who are absolutely all about being the best in the world at what they do. That and they bring a resume of accomplishments a mile long with them.
They are out there, and we"ll get one or more.

And ya, it"s all very simple when you remember the one overriding unmistakable piece that will never change. The game can"t suck.

P.S. It"s the main reason we got Shwayder in here, to offset Danuser"s suckiness....
 
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Ngruk said:
I would argue that I have already met 2 people I would bet this companies existence on from a QA lead stand point. People with proven track records who are absolutely all about being the best in the world at what they do. That and they bring a resume of accomplishments a mile long with them.
They are out there, and we"ll get one or more.

And ya, it"s all very simple when you remember the one overriding unmistakable piece that will never change. The game can"t suck.

P.S. It"s the main reason we got Shwayder in here, to offset Danuser"s suckiness....
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Good luck to you and to them.
 
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Kharza-kzad_sl

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In most places I ever worked, project plans and scheduling are one of the jobs production does. Usually just one guy, the producer handles that (among other things), though the particulars are handled by the leads who get their estimates from the workers. People are finally beginning to realize that scheduling out tasks in something as research heavy as games just doesn"t work. If you hit your dates you are lucky. Good guess! That"s why agile is taking hold in alot of game shops.

Docs are the responsibility of the leads. Design usually begins and ends with docs. Programming can often get way out of sync with docs, again, job of the lead. Art "docs" are usually concepts, aside from tech stuff, which is the job of the lead.

The on time, on spec, on budget thing can only happen if you have a full team that has done this exact thing before. Or if you are developing some kind of simple app. Like this happens about 1% of the time in games. Basically taking madden 2006 to madden 2007. You add a couple players, maybe move a UI element and your done. If you innovate at all, any time estimates you give are going to be pulled directly from your ass. There"s just way too much that can go wrong.

Basically what I"m trying to say is, project plans and schedules are a huge load of crap. It"s a wild guess if you are doing anything interesting.

Anyhow, I didn"t know other industries put QA in sort of a production role. It"s an interesting idea. If you look at the natural progression, I"ve known alot of QA guys that eventually landed in production.
 
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Kharza-kzad said:
In most places I ever worked, project plans and scheduling are one of the jobs production does. Usually just one guy, the producer handles that (among other things), though the particulars are handled by the leads who get their estimates from the workers.
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QA don"t do the scheduling, as they don"t do the project plans. Their role is to ensure its all in place and being done properly.


Kharza-kzad said:
The on time, on spec, on budget thing.... Like this happens about 1% of the time in games. There"s just way too much that can go wrong.

Basically what I"m trying to say is, project plans and schedules are a huge load of crap. It"s a wild guess if you are doing anything interesting.
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This triple underlines everything I"ve said.


Kharza-kzad said:
The on time, on spec, on budget thing can only happen if you have a full team that has done this exact thing before.
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This is a great point. Why I stated it takes a complete culture change to make it happen and why the system and the skill set does not exist in the industry. Also why I have such belief in 38 Studios - they are recruiting excellence, top to bottom.

I don"t agree you need a full team that has done it before; what you need is buy in from the most senior level and competent people throughout your organization that are open to learning.




I make no apology for repeatedly drawing comparisons with the Western worlds responses to Demings theories in the 50"s :


..it can"t work..

..it has relevance, but not in this industry...

...we are already doing it......

...we"re already the best; theres nothing you can teach us ...



Misguided self-belief was the downfall of the Western Manufacturing Industries for decades. Japanese mentality is different - teach us, how can we do it better, work with us, what can be improved ? They embraced it and it revolutionized their Industries and their Nation.




It hasn"t been done properly yet - of course people are saying it can"t work. They haven"t seen it done properly.

And it is shown time and time again in the standard of games that come out and in the level of customer expectation in the industry.
 
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Maxxius_foh

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Flight said:
. . .
Misguided self-belief was the downfall of the Western Manufacturing Industries for decades. . . .
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I wouldn"t ignore the impact of wage disparity and tariff laws/foreign country subsidizing of their particular industries.
 
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Perramas_foh

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Curt is your shoulder injury really going to keep you out until the All-Star break? I hope its not true and you can regain the velocity on your fastball and stay healthy all year.
 
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Cadrid_foh

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Perramas said:
Curt is your shoulder injury really going to keep you out until the All-Star break? I hope its not true and you can regain the velocity on your fastball and stay healthy all year.
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Screw baseball, will it stop him from gaming? Talk about a nightmare.
 
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mutantmagnet_foh

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Took over two weeks but I finally finished reading the majority of this thread. A lot of good discussions have been engendered here and it will be interesting to see what direction 38 Studios will go.

There are still a lot of topics that can be explored. One thing I didn"t see being touched on that I always found to be odd is related to subscription growth. I haven"t played too many MMOs compared to other genres, but I"m getting more interested in the ideals these type of games seem to aspire to so I"ve been following closely discussions on this genre.

In these topics one complaint that has come up frequently is the emptiness of the areas made at the start of the MMO"s lifespan compared to the areas made later.

I find this wierd because one of the fundamental differences of an MMO compared to any other genre is its capacity for large communities. If an MMO gets older and new players see less and less of the population, that genre defining aspect doesn"t have the impact of drawing in players like the game originally did when it started. New players can"t do content or socialize as easy as if they joined from the start.

That said I want to examine three games I"ve personally played and how I feel they address this issue.

My first MMO was Runescape. I was there about 4 months after it first came out and played for over 2 years then took a long break. I came back and inspite of the world being much larger than before the amount of activity at grinding spots for quests or resources and trading areas was even mildly better than before I left. What made this work from my observations is Jagex"s continued sprinkingling of high tier resources in old tier areas or adding in new spots to gather new types of resources they added years later. Another factor is that Runescape is browser game so it"s very easy for new players to come in. A third factor was the need to go back to trading/refinement hubs because NPCs sell specific items and only at certain locations can you do tasks like blacksmithing and pottery refinement.

If runescape was entirely based on its questing system the populations wouldn"t be at the low level areas.


In Eve Online, proportionally the number of people in important systems has been maintained from the time I played over a year ago compared to now when I came back recently. Eve"s trade zones are basically influenced by the number of quality agents and ratting zones in any given system. There"s a lot of things that take time to learn in Eve but the moment you open up the market window or complete at most 2 high quality chained missions like "World"s Collide" you figure out quickly where players like to congregrate.

In World of Warcraft I joined up two years after release and it became my first experience of empty old content. If the capitol cities didn"t exist I wouldn"t have seen that many people. Personally this didn"t bother me much because I have a high threshold for tolerating these type of problems but I can see why people would complain about old content. I haven"t played for awhile but I found it interesting that Blizzard increased XP gains after level 20. I played 5 races already and I could see why they did that. At the starting zones the questing experience for an Undead is far different from a Human and both are very different from Orc/Troll.

Playing different races while levelling up is hardly boring because the flavor of each environment is very different. This pretty much changes when horde gets funneled into the Barrens while Alliance gets funneled into Redridge. But there"s more to it than just how the levelling post 20 is the same for all races. As everyone here has figured out by now the levelling curve needed to be lesened so new players can catch up with older players. It is a quick easy fix but if most MMOs are like WoW in terms of world design I think it"s pretty dumb the content wasn"t designed in a way so new players can instantly experience one of the main reasons to play an MMO, to interact with the community.

Apologies if anyone considers this to be long winded.
 
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spronk_foh

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Flight said:
Misguided self-belief was the downfall of the Western Manufacturing Industries for decades. Japanese mentality is different - teach us, how can we do it better, work with us, what can be improved ? They embraced it and it revolutionized their Industries and their Nation.

It hasn"t been done properly yet - of course people are saying it can"t work. They haven"t seen it done properly.

And it is shown time and time again in the standard of games that come out and in the level of customer expectation in the industry.
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I"ve worked in dot-coms, ISO 9001 facilities, big bank (Goldman Sachs IT), and now video games (console) for the past few years. IMO you are vastly exaggerating the problem.

Yes, QA in the games industry sucks balls. Mostly because the QA team is the last to know anything and is generally thought of as a bunch of kids who ensure your product doesn"t have glaring bugs, exploits, etc instead of as part of the development process.

There is a lot of improvement, from empowering QA more to better pre-design and post-release processes. Basically more six sigma type stuff.

However using the same methodologies that Merrill Lynch or NASA or healthcare/etc uses is not a great idea. There is a big reason why banks are so meticulous about what they do and how, any mistake could cost billions (see recent French stock trading scandal!) or even kill people. Yes ISO 9001 is awesome but you know what, the price you pay is that stuff is done 10-40x slower than rapid dev, waterfall, etc, etc. I don"t think anyone would play a MMO that takes 20 years to create.

I loved working in the banking industry, as a developer you never were really responsible for deciding anything, everything was spec"d down to the excrutiating detail and QA would take months to vet stuff and you were on 6-12 month dev cycles for stuff that would get done in 1 month elsewhere.

And it makes sense for them, its better to slowly move tech than make a mistake. Games are not in the same ballpark. MMOs and internet sites doubly so, since stuff can be rapidly changed (I worked at amazon for a while and its amazing how many site updates are done per day).

Its hard for people who grew up in big IT to move into dotcom/games world, just as its hard for the latter to move into the structured IT world. Few people are able to transition back and forth, those are the really valuable ones. Even in the video games industry, few are able to transition from console to MMOs - its really hard to properly think about scaling, a platform that can last 5-10 years, networks, how much the systems will change over time, crunch mode in console vs. avoiding crunch mode in MMOs, etc.
 
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Flight

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spronk said:
Great post on QA
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Thats really interesting stuff. I spent a few years working for Kleinwort Benson in Fenchurch St London - I had a few friends working at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs just round the corner from us. I wonder if we have any mutual friends. I was with Jon Larson, Paul Brock and Mike Holmes etc

I"ve experienced some of the things you are saying about QA causing things to move slowly, but nothing as bad as you are describing. But then DKB, was owned by Germans when I was there, therefore ruthlessly efficient

There is obviously a trade off in terms of QA, when you consider how critical it is to not make any mistakes.



I have a strong belief that a QA system is almost a living thing and can be very malleable. Kind of similar to the way development methodologies can often lend different parts of their focus to a system, so you might be based on Waterfall but not wholely or immediately apparently so. Its why I"ve spoken about setting up a system rather than adopting one.

As part of it being malleable, it does not necessarily add time to a project. Indeed, where there is nothing as critical as big banking or healthcare applications, it should significantly reduce it. I would even argue that this will become one of the huge benefits of properly developing a QA system for MMORPG development.

MMORPGs take so long to develop that its hard to integrate them into the development cycle of the various platforms and technologies that can develop. Developers who are going to come out top are going to need whatever edge they can get in terms of time scales for development.



As a matter of fact the Waterfall model you mentioned is a great argument for a solid QA system - a big part of the idea is based around spending extra time getting the foundations right, in terms of requirement and design - and as you say it can be one of the most efficient and fastest. I say Hallelujah ! If the MMORPG industry only learned that one lesson it would turn it upside down.



Another personal experience - I did the Y2K stuff for the aforementioned Royal Liver. A large Head Office building plus many dozen regional offices. None of it was under control. No standard desktop and all sorts of bespoke applications. I was given that project in August 1999 with zero groundwork done !!! (They had a plan which was unworkable and collapsed). I completed it, replaced every machine in the company and rolled out a standard desktop environment and had the Financial Services Authority sign it all off in three and a half months. A QA system isn"t necessarily slow.
 
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Bongk_foh

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Poor Boston forgot to insure curt"s contract?

Being reported on ESPN that curt is likely out for the year and is contemplating retirement and Boston will have to eat his 8 million bucks as they failed to insure it.

Any inside juice for us curt? Shoulder is in that bad of shape?
 
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Maxxius_foh

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Well can be a bitch not getting that "last hurrah" in, but fortunately it isn"t a life shortening or permanently debilitating injury. On a positive note, he can now devote 100 pct of his time to this venture and get a solid product out.
 
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Linbog_foh

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Info on Curts shoulder and interview

Curt Schilling, who said he held off on addressing his situation because he didn"t want to be a distraction but became even more of a story this past week because of his silence, met with a few handpicked reporters in the parking lot this morning after he furtively whispered instructions that they meet him there. The Globe was not among those invited to his private party, but Don Orsillo was, with a NESN camera, and in an interview that will be aired on NESN"s Sportsdesk tonight at 10 and is embedded at the top of this blog entry, Schilling left little doubt that he feels the Red Sox have him embarked on the wrong course of medical treatment.
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Hope you get better Curt, don"t get any "repetetive motion" injuries from too much MMO time. :p
 
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