With regard to the headset, and Microsoft’s console hardware quality. According to the anecdotal evidence available, especially as the CAGCast’s CheapyD said on his podcast something to the effect of: “I can tell when people are using the 360′s wireless headset; it sounds like they’re using an electric razor as they talk”. This piece of junk cost $60 at MSRP, for $20 I bought a palm bluetooth headset for my Treo 650, which will apparently work with my PS3. I realize that the 360 controller itself is actually good, despite the nickle and diming you to death by charging for the battery pack, the battery pack charging cable, and the stand-alone device that actually charges the battery pack in a reasonable amount of time.

Go watch Major Nelson’s first video podcast. It sounds like crap with the wired headsets. Why can they get so many things right and screw up this apparently already easily solvable problem, especially when you have the opportunity to introduce dedicated hardware for the solution.

The answer to all of my problems with the 360, and the quality thereof, is that it isn’t in Microsoft’s financial interest to care. Right now they have consoles in the stores. Something neither Nintendo nor Sony have. People are picking them up with a copy of Gears. They run it, and it patches the first time it is connected to the net.

What is the meaning of Gold Master when the bits aren’t properly tested, or are, but shipped with bugs anyway. Is this going to devolve to the level of bleem; shipping random data on the disc just so the disc is sale-able at retail? Where we’ll download the entire game content just because it wasn’t ready in time to meet N retail season?

What are you paying for with Xbox Live? Excessive downtime, bogus shills who rant about the competition in a bizarre attempt to put a face behind the world’s richest and most pervasive company. Not that I expect much better from Sony, but still.

Just to give one counter-point to the good argument for long-term testers, Nintendo pulls the same crap with their software. They contract out temps from various services who come onto a project only when needed. In fact the worst game-qa interview I’ve ever had was with the big N. Their temp agency literally yelled at the room full of about 10 potential contractors for minutes at a time. Then it turned out that Nintendo had no need for more testers at the current time, and none of the group were brought on. I suspect I would have been just as disappointed with Nintendo’s testing had I gone onto working with them.

However, Nintendo’s games are of very high quality, even third party games. I’ve been playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin just about any time I can, and I’ve run into zero bugs. Perhaps the Japanese understand the necessity of high-quality products. I’d sure like to find out what the deal is behind the high quality games which come out of Japan. Perhaps the worst just don’t reach North America…

Both Guild Wars and all Xbox “card” items (Microsoft Points to buy XBLA games, subscription cards, etc) use this scratch-off method. Guild Wars hides the cdkey with one, and Microsoft hides their long number strings which are essentially cdkeys for a different purpose.

You might have bought Guild Wars, or an Xbox Live 12+ month subscription card.
I bought one of the Xbox 12+ month subscription cards some time ago, and was stuck with it and no refund/exchange when the numbers turned out to be illegible after scratching off the coating hiding the numbers.

I realize there aren’t too many good ways to sell people alphanumeric strings and have something tangible end up in their hands (for the retail market, which is still huge), while still protecting these numbers from malicious thieves who would deny the actual buyer their end product.

I suspect it is something that is fairly easy for corporate entities to understand, too.

However, just because there are thieves, and this method is available, doesn’t make it the best method. It annoys the hell out of me that there are expensive purchases you can make, which are totally worthless if you scratch off the silver crap and two or more of those numbers or letters are illegible.

For my part, when I tried to get Microsoft to help me out, I went through the steps, I faxed them the card and infromation when they asked, to the number they asked, and they eventually did verify that they have a fax machine when I called back asking about the status of my replacement.

In the end though, Microsoft’s support was unable, or unwilling, to replace the card, I gave up in frustration. The five hours I had spent on hold and another hour or two discussing the problem didn’t net anything.

Surely there is a better method for valuables to be transferred while still purchasing them in stores.

For me, it was about a few things leading up to where I am today. First of all, I’ve almost always played them starting with the VCS and so on. Even BBS games like Tradewars. So there is clearly some passion there that drove me towards my inevitable downward spiral into the video game industry.

When I was young I played games, read magazines like Nintendo Power and basically anything else I could get my hands on that was related to them. This is probably where I inferred the idea of testing from, even if it wasn’t directly mentioned so specifically.

Back in 2000 I started getting interested in Linux, through an online avatar based chat system I met some nice people that helped me convert to using it on my computers. Naturally I wanted to play games on Linux, and not just Tux Racer or XBill, commercial quality games. At the 2001 (or 2000, I can’t remember) Linux World Conference and Expo in New York City I ventured over to the Loki booth and much to my wallets sadness bought Quake 3: Arena in the tin box. I met a number of nice people there, including some Slashdot editors, a few fine folks at the Slackware and Mandrake booths, finally at the end of the day I walked over to Penn Street Station and took the train back home to play around with Quake 3.

The fine folks at Loki ran an IRC channel where I got to talk with them and discuss their ports, including their bugs and whatnot. They even invited me to beta test their ports before they were released. This is about the first time I had ever had a game developer talk with me about their game and invite me to QA their work. At one point I noticed that the guy who posted the most on LinuxGames.com was chatting so I talked with him until he let me post over there as well.

LinuxGames.com also lead directly to the first real paying work I’ve ever had, Linux Game Programming published by Prima was indeed Technically Reviewed by myself. It is also arguably the worst editing I’ve ever done in my life. To anyone who purchased the book genuinely expecting the code to work; I apologize. If you expected the CD to be up to date, then I’m also sorry. Literally the day after I uploaded the cd-rom, the kernel source included with it was obsolete; Linus has released a new version. In any case the book is very outdated now. However, it did lead to the idea of Game Industry + Me = Money!

After Loki died a horrible death, full of drama and temporarily ruining the lives of a number of my friends, icculus.org went up.

Founded by Ryan “icculus himself” Gordon, icculus.org quickly became the sourceforge replacement for the discerning nerd with something vaguely interesting that tickles Ryan’s interest. Or if you’re me and know him personally you just get almost whatever crap you want hosted there. I even ran a Linux World Expo booth in 2003 for icculus.org, which was arguably the best Linux World booth ever: I met my girlfriend of the last 3 years there.

Hint: Microsoft’s Program Managers can be extremely persuasive with the selling, though I’m still not convinced.

Some time after that I went to work on a number of jobs, including Microsoft’s Xbox game QA team. I suppose this isn’t actually terribly interesting, but now you know the rest of the story.