maddens game testers

[jvaccaro]

Next year I believe that EA should release a free, timed, downloadable, full-game 'demo' of Madden's 'final' build.

The download should be timed and expire after a week. It should also be just stripped down 'Play Now' games with only the four set difficulites -- no presentation, commentary, stats, sliders, superstar mode, backtrack, etc...

It should also have a similar saved replay system to '09, but with unlimited slots. Then they would upload directly to a site just for the Madden developers themselves, but with de-bug information, like difficulty settings and plays called, all built in for them. Also, there could be a master list of hundreds of potential improvements and new features that we could rate 1-10 based on our interest in them.

C'mon EA, let us do your work for you for free... we're very willing!

[Ankido]

Quote: Originally Posted by jvaccaro

Next year I believe that EA should release a free, timed, downloadable, full-game 'demo' of Madden's 'final' build. The download should be timed and expire after a week. It should also be just reg games with the four set difficulites -- no sliders, no superstar mode, no backtrack, etc... It should also have a similar saved replay system to '09, but with unlimited slots. Then they would upload directly to a site just for the Madden developers themselves, but with de-bug information, like difficulty settings and plays called, all built in for them. Also, there could be a master list of hundreds of potential improvements and new features that we could rate 1-10 based on our interest in them. C'mon EA, let us do your work for you for free... we're very willing!

defeats the purpose of a new game if everyone in the world is playing it. They should have beta invites with gamertag.

[jvaccaro]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ankido

defeats the purpose of a new game if everyone in the world is playing it.

That's why I said it would have to be a timed download that would expire after a week. Similar to how the movie rentals on PSN expire a set time after download. Also, it wouldn't be the FULL game, just 'Play Now'. Not to mention the lack of sliders, my skill, franchise, roster editing, created teams, etc...

An open beta testing may sound wacky, but it's certainly a better use of EAs time than superstar mode, and I know the users here could find ALL the bugs fast.

[rckabillyRaider]

In my first game I played, I noticed the CPU running out of bounds for no reason and also punting on 3rd down! This is a serious question and not trying to insult, but do the majority of EA testers not watch football and probably did notice the scenarios but thought it was normal just because they really don't follow football?

[stux]

They could send a few copies out to retail stores and the retail stores could have thier employees and a few pre-orders test the game for a few weeks. Might get a few more pre-orders that way as well.

Make the retailer test the game at the store and send the copy back once they are complete. I am sure that would catch a good amount of problems.

[countryboy]

Quote: Originally Posted by stux

Did you guys not bother to test Franchise Mode the last two years or what? I have been able to find crashing issues (and not just one and just playing the game not editing or doing anything crazy) in the last two years of franchise mode. I found found these issues in both games after playing the game for about 4 hours. So, unless you do not bother to test Franchise Mode OR you are testing on a PC and not a PS3 I do not really so how it possible. I will let a lot of stuff slide but the game crashing issues just aren't acceptable. I do not see how that could have made it past, unless that mode wasn't tested. The ingame crashing seems to happen in every mode, so, I am stumped as to how that one got by at all.

To use your post as a piggyback, I have yet to have my game freeze either in game or in any of the franchise menus. I also haven't seen the cpu punt on 3rd down. So those things do not happen all the time. Meaning, imo, regarding the freezes that something is triggering them.

Just my .02

[gtm]

Quote: Originally Posted by Anim8or

I may get crap for answering this, but we do honestly try to eliminate all the bugs. We test with hundreds of testers both here and at other EA studios, the game team also finds many bugs. The testers and game teams work 60-90 hours a week when we are debugging the game in Alpha. There are so many game areas and modes of play to test, and the answer really is that until millions of people are playing the game we honestly don't see the issues that pop up after release. We do take pride in our work, and we hate seeing bugs pop up after ship, because it's our work out there. We also go through 1st party testing at both Sony and Microsoft and if they find bugs we have to fix them. The teams work very hard to track bugs that we hear about, and continue to fix and patch but that's honestly the best we can do. You would be very surprised to see the effort that goes into bug fixing. Our definition of Beta is "0 bugs", we have to go days without finding bugs before we submit to microsoft. 4,000,000 people playing the game is so many more than a few hundred. It's honestly just volume. We cram as many bodies into QA as we can, and try to play the game as much as we can before it's shipped, but this is why so many game companies that do PC games do public beta testing, it's honestly a volume issue (public betas are just not possible on consoles yet).

Develop the game and test in CPU/CPU mode and you'll get the AI to play like it should. Bingo!!! Keep your sliders in and let the consumers use them if necessary. Get the AI to play right, you'll have a great game.

[jvaccaro]

Quote: Originally Posted by gtm

Develop the game and test in CPU/CPU mode and you'll get the AI to play like it should.

The problem with this is that there would be no way predict how the CPU responds/interacts when users do something that the CPU wouldn't.

Shouldn't a OT pickup a blitzing LB? What if the user manually blitzes after a 2 sec delay? The CPU/CPU testing would have zero way to know if this user delayed blitz would confuse the heck out of the AI since the CPU doesn't have any delayed blitzes.

Unfortunately, I could see this very limited testing process allowing even more cheeze and glitch exploits...