game development

i'm gonna use this space to put down a few things i've learned from my time in games. From the test point of view, which is where i am now. I've been on the development side as well, so i have an idea of what goes on there. i have an idea of what's blame-worthy or not. because sometimes, you'll just have an honest bug. Look- all games have bugs, before they go out- that's the facts of life in software development. I'm saying that you can judge a developer- you can tell if the developer is any good or not by the quality of their bugs.

And whether they get fixed or not.
And in what order.
And does fixing them cause more bugs?
And do they stay fixed, or reappear later?

(oh my god i have stories for each of these) I'd probably violate my NDA if i told these, and probably get fired, so i'll have to generalize.


Notice that all of these factors have nothing to do with whether the game is fun or not.That's a whole nother can of worms, but that tells you a lot about the developer as well. Ask yourself questions like this:
Does the game make things that you would think would be fun into tedious chores?
or
Does the game make things you might not think of normally as fun into fun experiences?
Is it fun just to move around in the game?


more to come on this subject for sure...