badman, I understand the ‘just apply for the job’ routine, but what’s the chances of anyone without all the requirements getting the job? I’m sure this job is being advertised elsewhere (outside of your company), us small programmers here have no chance?
I think you guys need to focus on releasing early versions for the actual public to find bugs, glitches & exploits. This is where most games fail and as such have to release patch after patch. Of course not all bugs can be found within a test stage, but it’s worth the note that you can say to your clients that the game has been tested for x amount of weeks and you put a lot of effort into giving your clients the best experience possible.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours hunting for glitches, bugs & exploits (mainly in the Halo series) and we as a community are the ones who found them. People spend many years looking for new glitches, and in fact some games only survive purely because of the glitches & fun stuff that can come out of problems.
Testing is a key stage and I think your current market here would be the first to grab.
Some bugs, exploits & glitches still exist in the Call of Duty series from Quake 3.
Releasing test revisions will also give you an insight into how people feel about your game, this is also VERY important. Most games release a game with loads of advertisement and the end product is poor as by the time of release, the features have been done in another game.
I think you should take into account the ETQW state, I was an idiot back in 2006, all I wanted was ET, but I see you did a good job on ETQW, but at the current time it was not good. Considering ET is still alive, and being release in 2003 with a competitive & public market still there (cups still supporting it), I think you should take note.
I understand your new games are following the aspects of team play, class based play etc… but public ALPHA or BETA testing is required in any new game. Even BF3 did it, and sure as hell Call of Duty series did it to a very private group of people.
I would certainly be available to test games & gather feedback. It’s a tough market out there, your users are what give you the money for your products, listen to them, they’re right ;).
Do not see this as me telling your pro’s what to do, it’s not that. I would sure love to have a game I can actually really enjoy to the max. I think public testing is the key here.
Splash Damage is the only company that can keep my happy in many ways.
Enough chitchat, glad to see something insight :).
vbulletin eats any links/markup in blog posts at the moment, which is something that needs fixing.