Talk:2154: Motivation

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Playtesters procrastinate too? —NT

Hey, work is work is work. If you have to do it, it's work. :) I remember one time a bunch of us skipped our lunch break from game testing to huddle around a guy's computer to watch the workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We were laughing our heads off at the missing special effects. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:41, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Weeellll - that's not really accurate Mr Munroe. I've worked (as a software engineer) in the video game industry for years. One of the biggest myths is that QA testers get paid to play video games. In fact, they don't REALLY get to play the game much at all. For most of the development cycle, there is only one or two working levels - crap graphics and crash-prone software. So they "play" in a way that is deliberately quirky in order to push the code in directions it wasn't meant to be pushed - so they can see if it crashes. They have to pay careful attention. Then they file a bug report (Oooh! Paperwork! Form filling!) and try to do exactly what they did *again* so they can explain how to make it happen. Then they go off and hunt for another bug. Once a bug is marked as "fixed" by the software team - they have to try to make it happen again - to be sure it was fixed - then do other SIMILAR things that might trigger that bug. Once we all agree that the bug is fixed - it goes on the "regression list" - which means you get to repeat the exact actions you did over and over - maybe once a month - but certainly before each Alpha/Beta/Gold release. Multiply this by hundreds of bugs - and that's what you do all day. Sometimes a software guy will pop their head around the door and say "Could someone pick up that weapon and move it through every single doorway in the entire game and see if you get stuck in any of them! K'Thanks!".

What you DON'T do is play the video game all day...and even if you did - over a typical 3 year development cycle, you'd be SO sick of it.

Hence, it's not at all unreasonable that a play tester would have fun actually playing the game.

No idea whether we should put this into the explanation part. 172.69.170.112 23:39, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Let's shorten it: Playtesters would likely procrastinate by playing game which is already finished, unlike the games they work on. ... ... of course, sometimes even games already published feel like not being finished, so ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 04:57, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
In online persistent games, new content may be added more or less continuously, so bugtesting & playtesting is never done.
ProphetZarquon (talk) 21:53, 25 May 2019 (UTC)


As someone who worked as a game tester for several years, for various companies, testing games for various other companies, I can concur with much of what Mr(s). 172.69 said in the second comment... Though I've often been assigned to a whole level, just play it all morning, see what you can find (I got a rep for finding oddball things, like if you pass this tunnel entry then turn around, there's a see-through patch in the ceiling). At least with a whole level you get SOME playing. Though there's another downside: "Okay, today you're testing My Little Pony's Fashion Bonanza all day. Try on all the dresses.". Just because you're playing games doesn't mean it's a game you LIKE. :) But as to why I'm commenting...

The issue I found is the title text. It's highly unlikely that Ponytail would be able to choose to play an unreleased game (since it's in testing) in her off/procrastination time, which actually rules out both halves of the title text scenario, except in the second half the first game MIGHT have been released by then. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:37, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Statistically unlikely perhaps, but there are (a relatively small number of) games that become available to the public well before final commercial release. I suspect that availability of such "open" Betas & Alpha dev-builds is increasingly rare, but they used to be quite common in PC gaming. (Arguably) notable modern games I've played while they were still in early development include Minecraft, Robocraft, & Hawken, among many many others. I usually won't buy a game until I've played someone else's copy, or a demo, or an early build of it. NDAs & private dev builds are one way to go, but they're certainly not the only path to choose when developing a game.

This leads me to a related question:

Isn't there a difference between "bug-testing" a game & "play-testing" a game? I've known people who only evaluated games from a playability & enjoyability perspective, essentially acting as internal reviewers prior to release. Bug-testing was a largely separate activity in those cases. Is the difference usually not so delineated? ProphetZarquon (talk) 21:53, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

From the Portal dev commentary, I would imagine that there is a significant difference; they often mention things like "without some serious prompting, players will rarely look up" and "our original final battle didn't really fit in with what came before" without talking about bug testing, like, at all. Volleo6144 (talk) 17:53, 26 May 2019 (UTC)