Quality Assurance

Having finally gotten a taste of the video game industry from the inside, I have to say; I love it. I was lucky enough to have gotten that taste from a company known to employ some of the coolest, most interesting people in the industry. I was also lucky to have been working on one of the bigger releases of the year. The company? Harmonix. The game? Rock Band.

For the 2 months I worked at Harmonix on Rock Band, even though we were in 70+ hour a week crunches, life was a dream. I had finally put my foot in the door and gotten a chance to work on a game many people were waiting on.

I was in the QA department.

Ok, how many people did I lose there? People think QA and go, "Oh, well you didn't really work on the game, you just played it all day." To which I reply, "If it were only that easy my friend." As most people know by now, we were partnered with EA and MTV. EA is not really known for their exceptional QA abilities (just look at the quality of their releases for the past few years). While there were a few good ones, the majority of them submitted the most unintelligible bugs ever. Internal QA really had to restrain ourselves from going off on them (though it did still happen from time to time).

There were a few things we had to do that I didn't agree with to make the dead line, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Also remember that Rock Band was built from the ground up in only a year. Did we live up to everyone's expectations? I'll let you decide. While it may not have trumped number one, I'd like to think it's up there with fans of the music/rhythm genre of games. And yes, I am aware that Zelda took the spot back.

As for the people I worked with, they were all awesome. I also finally found some great guitar competition for Rock Band and GH of old. Overall, everyone there was just awesome, and the company treated us like they actually cared (mmm late night dinners and Friday lunches).

As for what I think of GH3, I owned it for about two weeks before getting bored with it and trading it in. I played GH1 and 2 for the entire year while waiting for the new ones to come out. I just feel like Neversoft didn't understand what made GH special. Sure, the solos on the later songs were bitchin', and the inclusion of Dragonforce was pretty sweet, but the visuals made me want to go cry in a corner.

I haven't mentioned this about myself yet, but I am a Graphic Artist/3D modeler. And what I saw in GH3 horrified me. The drummer was extremely clunky, Judy Nails turned into Super Slut™, and the singer... Why did he have his balls surgically attached to his chin? Yeah, it's about the music, that comes first, but damn guys, when your dummer looks like a robot something ain't right. Now the 2D animated sections, those character designs looked beautiful. Why couldn't Neversoft have used them?

In closing, I would like to take a quote from Brian Clevinger of 8-bit theater fame, "Point is, about 80% of GH3 consists of songs I'd never listen to. They're still mostly fun to play, but differently. GH2 made me appreciate songs and artists that I previously didn't care about because it showcased the talent behind the music. By comparison, GH3 seems like some dudes happened to enjoy some random songs and, hey wouldn't you know it, these guys are working on this guitar game. The songs on GH3 just don't have anything to "say" about music. Rock Band's playlist kind of emphasizes that distinction. Most of those songs don't really interest me as songs, but I find them downright compelling as pieces of music to "play". The way GH2 did."