Quentin Andrews Q&A Report: Day 5

By
Lewis Dunn
– July 13, 2012Posted in: Blogs

My name is Quentin Andrews and I work as a Q&A tester for EA Kredix. We’re officially known as the “smaller projects team” which a good 85% of the time means “we’re going to cancel this game”. You’d think that would make me find my work quite depressing, but sometimes it feels more like I’m a custodian of quality, making sure that these games never see the light of day. Still, if a game makes it this far then that means someone up top approved of it at some point and that thought alone is usually more depressing. I work with 2 other colleagues; Chris Plus and James Valent and all of us hate our job. I’m 25. I used to have ambitions. Here’s what we’ve been up to this week.

We had one final crack at finishing testing MOlf to 100%, if nothing else so they wouldn’t give us anything new to do. I’m kinda impressed anybody would bother putting in this much detail into anything, I’m sure even the most dedicated surgeon doesn’t have this close attention to his work. I’m also certain the cancellation of this game will result in the suicide of the lead designer, no man can be this dedicated to leather golf gloves and not become depressed when they’re told what I can only assume is a decade’s work has been for nothing. In somewhat lighter news the Playstation Eye broke, so we had to stop after only managing to cover 7% of all of the content in a week’s worth of solid testing.

All reports are finished and shipped, hopefully none of these games will ever see the light of day. We got our on-time bonuses; £50. Mine will cover one session with a chiropractor, Chris’ will cover the medical bill for his arm and James’… well I think he earned his. We also got a memo through about downsizing, but we won’t know what that entails until next week. I’m fairly certain our jobs are safe, but lay offs mean a whole slew of unfinished games will be coming our way too rush out for launch, and that won’t be fun. When I got home my girlfriend said she’d got me a treat, and ushered me into the front room. It turns out her friend doesn’t want her Wii anymore. I haven’t the heart to throw it out. Yet.

About Lewis Dunn

Lewis got into gaming as a child, when he was handed the portable version of crack cocaine, known colloquially as Tetris. He would spend hours trying to make blocks form lines so they would disappear never to return. At the age of 8 he had his first existential crisis as to what happens to blocks that disappear. Lewis has a deep love of humour in games, with some of his favourites being No More Heroes, Brutal Legend & Portal. Lewis enjoys writing bios in the third person.