Life (?) in the Software Industry By Richard Hewison How on earth do you explain to someone else that you play computer games for a living? Of course, it's not as simple as that but when you're talking to someone who has no real interest in computers, no matter what you call the job, it always equates to the same thing in their minds. These days I do it on a self-employed freelance basis, but for one and a half years I was what you might call a product assistant, assistant software producer, or plain games tester. For the other two and a bit years I graduated to a fully fledged Product Manager but that is, as they say, another story. I don't just play games though. What you really do when you are employed by a software publisher is evaluate and test software. Playing games has the suggestion that you are doing it because you want to and because you enjoy it. Testing software is the same thing but on a professional level. Whether you like the game or not, it has to be thoroughly bug tested and evaluated. End of story. The most recent example I can bring to mind is the recently released role playing epic 'Legend', which was eventually published by Mindscape International after Mirrorsoft's demise last year. Having been the Project Manager for 'Legend' at Mirrorsoft, I was given the task of testing the Amiga and PC versions of the game from start to finish for Mindscape and in record time too. Seeing that I had already written three quarters of the manual it seemed a shame to let that hard work go to waste, so Mindscape took the manual on as well and I finished it off relatively quickly. Testing large adventure games can be a nightmare. Arcade games are a cinch in comparison. The very size and number of possible actions to be performed in an adventure game is enormous, and the task that lay ahead for me in Legend was colossal. However, being a veteran adventure player (and columnist. Anyone remember the Adventure SOS pages on BBC 2's CEEFAX a few years back?) I was prepared with my pencil, graph paper and notebook. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite ready in the psychological department. Being locked in the same room, ten to twelve hours a day for six weeks playing 'Legend' just about did me in. I initially didn't want the project when I was with Mirrorsoft, as I was looking forward to playing the finished game as a game. The unfortunate aspect about working in the leisure software industry is that you tend to never want to see the game again after you've been sweating over it for months on end. However, a few days after finishing all of the required testing I actually missed playing it. If that wasn't the sign of a good game then I didn't know what was. On testing the game, I also had to build up a complete solution which could be used by their own in-house testers as well as form the basis of a hint book which would be published a few months after the game's release. By the end this comprised thirty one pages of maps and a fifty four page solution! I've had to revise it a few time since then but it's nearly finished now. It's definitely worth getting hold of if (who am I kidding? 'when' more like) you get stuck, (end of plug). The professional games tester has to know the product inside out and back to front. He has to be ready to write down any suspect bugs or features and report them back to the publisher or developer as soon as possible. The long hours can sometimes be incredibly long, and at the end it might involve a dash up to a duplicator who could be at the other end of the country. Sometimes the amount of hard work that people put into getting a game out on time just isn't realised or appreciated by the games buying public, but despite all of this, it is still possible for a few bugs to creep through. My own personal motto was that as long as the adventure could be completed in the manner in which it is supposed to be then it could be released. However, in the past a few games that I was responsible for testing got released with mini buggets that could cause a problem, (e.g the original Rainbird release of the ST version of Magnetic Scrolls 'Corruption' had a bug involving the jacket and the hospital which I somehow managed to miss which made the game crash). Fortunately, you could easily avoid this bug and the game was fixed twenty four hours after it was found. There was another bug which I spotted which they never did fix and I never saw it happen again. In the latter stages of the game you have to present evidence to a police detective to prove that you are innocent. At one point during the interview, the detective asked me to produce a corridor as evidence! If anyone who has the game ever saw this one, please drop a line to SynTax or Red Herring and let them know. To this day, nobody else believed me! If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask about the industry in general or how games like Bloodwych, Legend, Blade Warrior, Corruption etc. get commissioned and written then write to me care of SynTax or Red Herring magazine and I'll try my best to dispel any myths.