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.
Monday
So it turns out that despite constant reassurance from the press, the community and the sales figures that we’ve had our fill of them, motion controlled games are still being made, and I’m not talking about high budget nightmares like Star Wars Kinect. I mean that special brand of sports minigame nobody in their right fucking mind actually buys these unless they genuinely have 3 minutes in a game shop and some 8 year old to appease before sundown. No less than 4 turned up in the in tray this week, and the four of us drew straws as to who had to test 2 of them. Guess who lost?
So because I got the short straw I got to pick first. I decided to do my absolute best to avoid back pains and selected the Wii title Tennis is for Everyone! Despite its slightly totalitarian title I figured it looked kid friendly, meaning easy. Plus Wii games in general require less movement than other titles, so I figured I could save myself the repetitive strain injury. James took the Playstation Move title MOlf! which I can only assume is some sort of typo combined with an advertising budget to secure it’s irrevocability from the box. He’s going to have all sorts of fun revolving every golf club in augmented reality mode to check for faults. And by fun I mean miserable hours of tedium. Chris opted to try and work his body into a coma by playing FUNK IN DA TRUNK for Kinect, a game not only a clearly terrible rip off of Dane Central but also a seemingly quite racist. The set list consists of “FUNKIFIED” classics, such as Can’t get yo’ out of mah Head!, Baby got Black, and my personal favourite, Nigs in America. I can only hope Chris has enough big black marker pens, cause his shit is about to real fo’ sho’.
As for my bonus game it’s a curiosity, a downloadable only title for Kinect called Cold Sweat. The documentation didn’t fax through correctly so all I know is that I’m supposed to play for “no longer than half an hour, and to avoid caffeinated drinks”. Seems a bit dodgy but I drew the straw, I deal with the consequences. This week is going to be all kinds of painful.
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