I am suggesting that. The last few times I went to a game store there was 1 child a few teenagers and a few adults. This has always lead me to think the largest demographic of console gamers are young men (16-30). Here is another tid bit 60% of console gamers are over 18. http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php
I tell you what I cited a source, why don't you?
If nintendo allowed an AO game on their system is may lead to some bad press thats true. Even though the wii is supposed to be a console for everyone it has been holding on to it's console for kids image. This might go to sway that image. But what is sony's and microsoft's excuse?
Let me inform you on something that everyone should know at this point. Games are not just for children.
"I bet most of the time parents do not know what games their children are playing."
Eighty-seven percent of game players under the age of 18 report that they get their parents' permission when renting or buying games, and 89 percent say their parents are present when they buy games. http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
"This is why both Nintendo and Sony do not allow AO games and that gives a peace of mind to millions of parents who do not want to go through their children possessions to look for 'adult' games."
Well parents really shouldn't have to go though their child's possessions to look for them. Where was the parent when the kid was buying the game? How did the kid get money to buy the game? Where is the kid playing the game? Now if you are worried about your child earning enough money themselves to buy the game, getting to the stores without relying on you, only play the game when you are not around, well then perhaps you could talk to them.
well like I said in a different sub thread. I have not played this game yet(just like everyone else) but I know with manhunt 1 is actually a commentary the devaluing human life to allow for personal gain, the depravity of using violence as an entertainment form (kind of ironic for this title) and the corruption that allows it. Here is the wikipedia synopsis of the plot:
"The story revolves around a man on Death Row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a grievous crime, the nature of which is never explained. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather, who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead. The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal "Cerberus" guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer's local gangs on camera to make violent, visceral, underground snuff films."
So what are they trying to express with manhunt 2? Well I guess people in the UK won't get to find out because that expression has just been banned.
Do you think Mattel and their investors don't take selling toys as a serious business endeavor as well?
Video games have been taken seriously as a business but not as a form of expression. The content of games is still not being taken seriously at all by the general public. Loosing the image of being nothing more then toys is still something that the industry is struggling with.
Tell me when was the last time you played a game that had a serious message to convey? If you are one of the rare ones that have played one of them recently, how do you think the mass public responded to that game? Did they consider it at all or was it dismissed as being just another game? How do you think someone who doesn't play games would respond if you said "I think you should play , it had some real compelling ideas"?
The right of expression is not on the consumers here it is the developers. The developers wanted to show this game for one reason or another. I have not played this game yet(just like everyone else) but I know with manhunt 1 is actually a commentary the devaluing human life to allow for personal gain, the depravity of using violence as an entertainment form (kind of ironic for this title) and the corruption that allows it. Here is the wikipedia synopsis of the plot:
"The story revolves around a man on Death Row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a grievous crime, the nature of which is never explained. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather, who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead. The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal "Cerberus" guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer's local gangs on camera to make violent, visceral, underground snuff films."
So what are they trying to express with manhunt 2? Well I guess people in the UK won't get to find out because that expression has just been banned.
Yeah. The game is pretty much a slasher flick where you are the one doing the slashing. The content of this game isn't necessary to make it a good game.
Though personally, I support this type of game. I am not a fan and have no interest in playing them but just making these types of game ads to changing the public perception of what video games are. It is nearly impossible to get your game taken seriously in a meaningful way by someone who doesn't play games. You're not going to accept political commentary from something that you see as nothing more then a child's toy. With enough of these games perhaps the public opinion on games will change enough that people who don't play games will be able to see them as something other then a child's toys. Once that is done, then games could potentially be used as mediums for more meaningful content. How do you think a short with a message like "the inconvenient truth" would have been received if it was put out along side Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
So actually from that stand point I think games like this are very necessary. They are necessary to the point of getting the publics attention and showing that games are not toys for just adolescents because nothing meaningful in a large scale can sprout out from them until they are.
I think you have EA's goal mixed up. You don't want to create a non subscription based game that people will play forever. The longer you have players playing your game the longer they won't be buying your new product. Generally the perfect lifespan for a game would be to last just short of the time it takes you to put out your next game.
So from your example Battlefield 2142 would be the more successful title. They were able to get big launch sales and then the games popularity died out shortly after. The failure would have been with battlefield 2. The game was still popular when the subsequent title came out limiting the scope of their target demographic.
Other then in internal upper management command chains does this really change anything? EA has pretty much already had these separations in place with few exceptions.
EA Games: EA Redwood Shores and EA LA EA Sports: EA Canada, EA Tiburon, EA Chicago and EA UK EA Casual Entertainment: Pogo and EA Mobil The Sims: Maxis
Really what is the difference between what is going no now and what has been going on for years?
Software engineers "They provide instructions to the computer on how to do things. It is simply a necessary component of the use of the hardware." Composers "They provide instructions to the musician on how to do things. It is simply a necessary component of the use of the hardware."
So composers are artists but software engineers aren't, interesting. Granted many things that software engineers do is very mundane, but i have always seen software engineers akin to architects. They both can create art and can create pure functionality depending on what they are assigned.
Oh I completely agree for typing and programming this keyboard would only slow you down. However for just about everything else you use the key board for it would be pretty nifty.
I don't know the exact functionality of the keyboard but I do know enough about it that it supports colors and animations on every key. There are just so many things you could do with this.
It could be used to help you learn hot keys in programs. You wouldn't have to study the manual for your programs to learn what the hot keys are if you have them displayed right in front of you. Eventually you will memorizes the positions of the hot keys and no longer need to look at the visuals but I con only imagine that you would learn the locations of them much faster with the visual reminders constantly reminding you of them.
Then gaming is a whole slew of interesting ideas. In an fps it could display the control keys and even better only display the control keys that are currently applicable. It could be used for game play mechanics as well where the keys would change depending on the current position in the game and what knowledge s available to you. So if you don't have the bgf yet the key would be off or if you just don't have any BFG amo the hot key to switch to it could be grayed out. Or if the keyboard isn't used in the game all the key could be used as a secondary display device removing the hud from the screen putting it on the keyboard. It's another place to connect interactively with the player and could be put to great use. The options for gaming are just staggering.
I have been looking forward to this keyboard for a long time. But for $1500 there is no chance I'm willing to buy it off the first production line. However if the price comes down and they prove to have a good lifespan then absolutely. though I would still have a normal key board on my desk for whenever i have to code or write for lengthy amounts of time.
Well considering that you can change the display on the keys dynamically you could actually make a program that will change the text on every key on the keyboard to say "any" whenever you are asked to press any key.
And the clerks at the store should look at it and see that the seals that prevent the case from being opened have been broken and respond to you "well it probably would if you didn't open in up and break it" and then send you on your way with your broken console.
When the primary use (not only, but the vast majority) of moded equipment is to break copyrights and play game you have not obtained in a legal fashion, it is hard to say that it's unethical to stop you from continuing to use that hardware for services provided by the people that you are breaking the copyrights of and "obtaining" there software. I don't see this that different then those exploding ink capsules that banks use to protect their money. Sure they destroy the property of the people who set them off, but to set them off your first have to steal the money.
We don't have 15 different WWII FPS games a year because there aren't fresh ideas. We have 15 different WWII FPS games a year because it is a safe investment and the publishers don't want to take the gigantic financial risk on making the fresh ideas. Accepting more experienced people won't change that.
Well yeah, it defiantly depends on the company. I have heard some decent stories before but at least from my personal experience it has been pretty bad. Where I got my experience in QA, testers are quite literally not allowed in the same building that the dev team works in; we worked in the small smelly building across the street.
From my personal experience in the game industry I can say that you can get your start in the game industry from QA if you are trying to move into producer roles. I have seen probably around 5-6 people move into producer roles from management positions in QA. However if you want to move into programming or art roles being in QA will actually hurt your chances more then help them(I haven't seen work that once).
QA can give you some bonuses to your career path.
You can get your name on a lot of titles quickly in QA. You have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the inner workings on the industry. You even can, though entirely rare, make contacts in other departments while in QA.
QA is generally just a bad place to be.
Have you ever wondered why the turn over rate in most QA departments is so terrible? They are working just as many hours as you are and have to display just as much dedication to the projects as the rest of the dev team. Then on top of that all the benefits that development takes for granted (company library, well supplied break rooms, having diner provided while working crunch, stock options, bonuses, time off after completing a project, health, dental and vision) is not offered to the majority of QA employees. It is a thankless job and the horrible way they are treated by the rest of the company doesn't make it any better.
Testers work on a project from early to mid alpha until completion however they do this on multiple projects a year. If a project completes (weather it fails or not) they either lose there jobs or get moved onto another projects crunch. Even though hourly workers are paid overtime that still doesn't even bring there yearly income up above 30k.
Being in QA has a lot of career risks assigned to it.
You can loose you job at the drop of a hat. If a project ends, enough new employees are coming in, you're starting to look a little tired from the continuous crunching, you miss your bug quota for a week or so, miss something while going though a preplanned testing checklist, or you just got on the bad side of a dev/artist/producer/ manager, and you are out of a job.
People can be denied from getting jobs in development because QA would not allow them to transfer departments. The job could be in the bag and you could have a starting date in the other department, but QA can come in and tell the other department they don't want to let him go and the job will go to someone else (seen happen first hand)
It is hard to move out of QA
The time you have to dedicate to working in QA (crunch most of the year) is time that you are not working on keeping your programming/art skills up to snuff and just like most skills if you don't loose it you loose it. Though, this is why it can work for producer positions. Take a good tester's skill set and add a bit of management experience and a bit more communications skills and you have the skill set of an entry level producer.
QA is not respected at all by the development staff. Most people in other departments don't see testers as coworkers; they see them as peons, juvenile annoyances that you have to put up with regardless of weather they are good testers or not. To move out you must continuously prove that the QA stigma that testers are juvenile idiotic button mashers that walked in off the street does not apply to you, you must have a management position in QA(I have never seen anyone below sr. tester get transferred to other departments) and you must have contacts in other departments that will vouch for you.
The titles that you have on your resume are just about worthless until you also have at least one title under your belt outside of QA.
So. My advice for anyone thinking about QA. Don't.
*FYI: I have credits on more then 20 titles working in QA at Electronic Arts over the course of 2 and a half years (low level management in a 3rd parts specialist role most of the time) and am now an independent game developer and educator.*
Yes but at least for the QA department I worked for. The guy that puts in 20 trivial typos will have a job at the end of the project the guy that puts in bugs, that will cause the game to crash, relatively constantly but does not up in the 20 typos will be fired for not meeting his quota.
"1.) Do your QA job well. It may not be the one you wanted, but if you don't do it well, the only place you're going is the unemployment office. The company's perception of your competence will be important if you want to get into another department."
While this one is partially true it can also lead to backfiring. When transferring people from one department to another both the receiving department and the releasing department must agree. If you are regarded as important by QA then QA may not allow you to transfer out.
"2.) Network, network, network. Get to know the people in the department you want to be in. Make friends. You might even find a mentor."
QA is separated from the other departments and there is a horrible stigma against them so in the off chance that you do actually get to talk to someone from another department they are immediately looking at you as just a tester and not as, well, human really.
"3.) Work on your skills in your chosen field in your free time. If you want to be an artist, beef up your portfolio. If you want to be a programmer, work on a demo. If you're a designer, work on some design docs, make a board game, or find a wannabe programmer to team up with for a demo."
QA works just as much crunch as other departments. So your free time is very limited.
Really if you want a Castlevania movie and like symphony of the night I would say pick up Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. D and Alucard are so ridiculously close to each other in actions and mannerisms I really felt like bloodlust was just Castlevania with a different name.
So you are saying that we should base our opinions on the museum people and their religion by the actions of the terrorists that act "in its name" even though their actions don't follow the same belief structure that they clam to act for? Granted that is an extreme example but it is a valid on for what you are implying.
You seem to be very confused between the religion and the church (I use this term because I am most familiar with Christian religions). Religion is a series of beliefs and values that in the vast majority of examples are put together to inspire good will, courtesy, and ethical treatment to themselves, others, and many times the world around them. Whatever way that started be it a direct act of a supreme being, divine inspiration, generations of learned practices, or just some old coot just making up stories, they are defiantly a positive influence on the people who take the lessons to heart.
The church on the other hand is an organized group that organizes the religion and enforces its beliefs with its followers. The church is made up of people. Just like all things when someone is given too much power over those around them they may be corrupted by that power and use their position for their own benefit though pushing their own personal grudges and prejudices on the followers, using their position of power for political/social gain, taking financial benefits from the church, or many other things.
Your clam that religion is "a great evil and a blight on society" shows your complete ineptitude in being able to perceive what religion is over the errors of fallible people and what people do "in its name." Religion in its self is not a bad thing, sure it can be used to do bad things but so can just about anything else. Religion and its teaching should never be taken just at face value, you should always know the why and not just because "the religion tells me so", that is why many religions promote religious study and discussion. Don't blame religion for the faults of its troubled "followers".
Oh but if you are too humble you can not be an good example for your community and it will suffer for it, and if you are trying to be humble on purpose you are thinking of yourself and being vain
So unless you die for it no honor is involved? The only way to get honor is by dying? honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions has nothing to do with it? I don't think Dying has ever been a prerequisite to having honor.
Slashdot Mirror
because yah know, the average end user for music own their own concert hall system.
I am suggesting that. The last few times I went to a game store there was 1 child a few teenagers and a few adults. This has always lead me to think the largest demographic of console gamers are young men (16-30). Here is another tid bit 60% of console gamers are over 18. http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php
I tell you what I cited a source, why don't you?
If nintendo allowed an AO game on their system is may lead to some bad press thats true. Even though the wii is supposed to be a console for everyone it has been holding on to it's console for kids image. This might go to sway that image. But what is sony's and microsoft's excuse?
"Gaming consoles are used mostly by children"
That is an outright lie. The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years. http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
Let me inform you on something that everyone should know at this point. Games are not just for children.
"I bet most of the time parents do not know what games their children are playing."
Eighty-seven percent of game players under the age of 18 report that they get their parents' permission when renting or buying games, and 89 percent say their parents are present when they buy games. http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
"This is why both Nintendo and Sony do not allow AO games and that gives a peace of mind to millions of parents who do not want to go through their children possessions to look for 'adult' games."
Well parents really shouldn't have to go though their child's possessions to look for them. Where was the parent when the kid was buying the game? How did the kid get money to buy the game? Where is the kid playing the game? Now if you are worried about your child earning enough money themselves to buy the game, getting to the stores without relying on you, only play the game when you are not around, well then perhaps you could talk to them.
well like I said in a different sub thread. I have not played this game yet(just like everyone else) but I know with manhunt 1 is actually a commentary the devaluing human life to allow for personal gain, the depravity of using violence as an entertainment form (kind of ironic for this title) and the corruption that allows it. Here is the wikipedia synopsis of the plot:
"The story revolves around a man on Death Row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a grievous crime, the nature of which is never explained. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather, who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead.
The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal "Cerberus" guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer's local gangs on camera to make violent, visceral, underground snuff films."
So what are they trying to express with manhunt 2? Well I guess people in the UK won't get to find out because that expression has just been banned.
Do you think Mattel and their investors don't take selling toys as a serious business endeavor as well?
Video games have been taken seriously as a business but not as a form of expression. The content of games is still not being taken seriously at all by the general public. Loosing the image of being nothing more then toys is still something that the industry is struggling with.
Tell me when was the last time you played a game that had a serious message to convey? If you are one of the rare ones that have played one of them recently, how do you think the mass public responded to that game? Did they consider it at all or was it dismissed as being just another game? How do you think someone who doesn't play games would respond if you said "I think you should play , it had some real compelling ideas"?
The right of expression is not on the consumers here it is the developers. The developers wanted to show this game for one reason or another. I have not played this game yet(just like everyone else) but I know with manhunt 1 is actually a commentary the devaluing human life to allow for personal gain, the depravity of using violence as an entertainment form (kind of ironic for this title) and the corruption that allows it. Here is the wikipedia synopsis of the plot:
"The story revolves around a man on Death Row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a grievous crime, the nature of which is never explained. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather, who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead.
The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal "Cerberus" guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer's local gangs on camera to make violent, visceral, underground snuff films."
So what are they trying to express with manhunt 2? Well I guess people in the UK won't get to find out because that expression has just been banned.
Yeah. The game is pretty much a slasher flick where you are the one doing the slashing. The content of this game isn't necessary to make it a good game.
Though personally, I support this type of game. I am not a fan and have no interest in playing them but just making these types of game ads to changing the public perception of what video games are. It is nearly impossible to get your game taken seriously in a meaningful way by someone who doesn't play games. You're not going to accept political commentary from something that you see as nothing more then a child's toy. With enough of these games perhaps the public opinion on games will change enough that people who don't play games will be able to see them as something other then a child's toys. Once that is done, then games could potentially be used as mediums for more meaningful content. How do you think a short with a message like "the inconvenient truth" would have been received if it was put out along side Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
So actually from that stand point I think games like this are very necessary. They are necessary to the point of getting the publics attention and showing that games are not toys for just adolescents because nothing meaningful in a large scale can sprout out from them until they are.
I think you have EA's goal mixed up. You don't want to create a non subscription based game that people will play forever. The longer you have players playing your game the longer they won't be buying your new product. Generally the perfect lifespan for a game would be to last just short of the time it takes you to put out your next game.
So from your example Battlefield 2142 would be the more successful title. They were able to get big launch sales and then the games popularity died out shortly after. The failure would have been with battlefield 2. The game was still popular when the subsequent title came out limiting the scope of their target demographic.
Other then in internal upper management command chains does this really change anything? EA has pretty much already had these separations in place with few exceptions.
EA Games: EA Redwood Shores and EA LA
EA Sports: EA Canada, EA Tiburon, EA Chicago and EA UK
EA Casual Entertainment: Pogo and EA Mobil
The Sims: Maxis
Really what is the difference between what is going no now and what has been going on for years?
Software engineers "They provide instructions to the computer on how to do things. It is simply a necessary component of the use of the hardware."
Composers "They provide instructions to the musician on how to do things. It is simply a necessary component of the use of the hardware."
So composers are artists but software engineers aren't, interesting. Granted many things that software engineers do is very mundane, but i have always seen software engineers akin to architects. They both can create art and can create pure functionality depending on what they are assigned.
Oh I completely agree for typing and programming this keyboard would only slow you down. However for just about everything else you use the key board for it would be pretty nifty.
I don't know the exact functionality of the keyboard but I do know enough about it that it supports colors and animations on every key. There are just so many things you could do with this.
It could be used to help you learn hot keys in programs. You wouldn't have to study the manual for your programs to learn what the hot keys are if you have them displayed right in front of you. Eventually you will memorizes the positions of the hot keys and no longer need to look at the visuals but I con only imagine that you would learn the locations of them much faster with the visual reminders constantly reminding you of them.
Then gaming is a whole slew of interesting ideas. In an fps it could display the control keys and even better only display the control keys that are currently applicable. It could be used for game play mechanics as well where the keys would change depending on the current position in the game and what knowledge s available to you. So if you don't have the bgf yet the key would be off or if you just don't have any BFG amo the hot key to switch to it could be grayed out. Or if the keyboard isn't used in the game all the key could be used as a secondary display device removing the hud from the screen putting it on the keyboard. It's another place to connect interactively with the player and could be put to great use. The options for gaming are just staggering.
I have been looking forward to this keyboard for a long time. But for $1500 there is no chance I'm willing to buy it off the first production line. However if the price comes down and they prove to have a good lifespan then absolutely. though I would still have a normal key board on my desk for whenever i have to code or write for lengthy amounts of time.
Well considering that you can change the display on the keys dynamically you could actually make a program that will change the text on every key on the keyboard to say "any" whenever you are asked to press any key.
And the clerks at the store should look at it and see that the seals that prevent the case from being opened have been broken and respond to you "well it probably would if you didn't open in up and break it" and then send you on your way with your broken console.
When the primary use (not only, but the vast majority) of moded equipment is to break copyrights and play game you have not obtained in a legal fashion, it is hard to say that it's unethical to stop you from continuing to use that hardware for services provided by the people that you are breaking the copyrights of and "obtaining" there software. I don't see this that different then those exploding ink capsules that banks use to protect their money. Sure they destroy the property of the people who set them off, but to set them off your first have to steal the money.
We don't have 15 different WWII FPS games a year because there aren't fresh ideas. We have 15 different WWII FPS games a year because it is a safe investment and the publishers don't want to take the gigantic financial risk on making the fresh ideas. Accepting more experienced people won't change that.
That was the stupidest self centered developers look at QA I have read for a long time.
I want my 5 minutes back.
Well yeah, it defiantly depends on the company. I have heard some decent stories before but at least from my personal experience it has been pretty bad. Where I got my experience in QA, testers are quite literally not allowed in the same building that the dev team works in; we worked in the small smelly building across the street.
From my personal experience in the game industry I can say that you can get your start in the game industry from QA if you are trying to move into producer roles. I have seen probably around 5-6 people move into producer roles from management positions in QA. However if you want to move into programming or art roles being in QA will actually hurt your chances more then help them(I haven't seen work that once).
QA can give you some bonuses to your career path.
You can get your name on a lot of titles quickly in QA. You have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the inner workings on the industry. You even can, though entirely rare, make contacts in other departments while in QA.
QA is generally just a bad place to be.
Have you ever wondered why the turn over rate in most QA departments is so terrible? They are working just as many hours as you are and have to display just as much dedication to the projects as the rest of the dev team. Then on top of that all the benefits that development takes for granted (company library, well supplied break rooms, having diner provided while working crunch, stock options, bonuses, time off after completing a project, health, dental and vision) is not offered to the majority of QA employees. It is a thankless job and the horrible way they are treated by the rest of the company doesn't make it any better.
Testers work on a project from early to mid alpha until completion however they do this on multiple projects a year. If a project completes (weather it fails or not) they either lose there jobs or get moved onto another projects crunch. Even though hourly workers are paid overtime that still doesn't even bring there yearly income up above 30k.
Being in QA has a lot of career risks assigned to it.
You can loose you job at the drop of a hat. If a project ends, enough new employees are coming in, you're starting to look a little tired from the continuous crunching, you miss your bug quota for a week or so, miss something while going though a preplanned testing checklist, or you just got on the bad side of a dev/artist/producer/ manager, and you are out of a job.
People can be denied from getting jobs in development because QA would not allow them to transfer departments. The job could be in the bag and you could have a starting date in the other department, but QA can come in and tell the other department they don't want to let him go and the job will go to someone else (seen happen first hand)
It is hard to move out of QA
The time you have to dedicate to working in QA (crunch most of the year) is time that you are not working on keeping your programming/art skills up to snuff and just like most skills if you don't loose it you loose it. Though, this is why it can work for producer positions. Take a good tester's skill set and add a bit of management experience and a bit more communications skills and you have the skill set of an entry level producer.
QA is not respected at all by the development staff. Most people in other departments don't see testers as coworkers; they see them as peons, juvenile annoyances that you have to put up with regardless of weather they are good testers or not. To move out you must continuously prove that the QA stigma that testers are juvenile idiotic button mashers that walked in off the street does not apply to you, you must have a management position in QA(I have never seen anyone below sr. tester get transferred to other departments) and you must have contacts in other departments that will vouch for you.
The titles that you have on your resume are just about worthless until you also have at least one title under your belt outside of QA.
So. My advice for anyone thinking about QA. Don't.
*FYI: I have credits on more then 20 titles working in QA at Electronic Arts over the course of 2 and a half years (low level management in a 3rd parts specialist role most of the time) and am now an independent game developer and educator.*
Yes but at least for the QA department I worked for. The guy that puts in 20 trivial typos will have a job at the end of the project the guy that puts in bugs, that will cause the game to crash, relatively constantly but does not up in the 20 typos will be fired for not meeting his quota.
There are problems with that though.
"1.) Do your QA job well. It may not be the one you wanted, but if you don't do it well, the only place you're going is the unemployment office. The company's perception of your competence will be important if you want to get into another department."
While this one is partially true it can also lead to backfiring. When transferring people from one department to another both the receiving department and the releasing department must agree. If you are regarded as important by QA then QA may not allow you to transfer out.
"2.) Network, network, network. Get to know the people in the department you want to be in. Make friends. You might even find a mentor."
QA is separated from the other departments and there is a horrible stigma against them so in the off chance that you do actually get to talk to someone from another department they are immediately looking at you as just a tester and not as, well, human really.
"3.) Work on your skills in your chosen field in your free time. If you want to be an artist, beef up your portfolio. If you want to be a programmer, work on a demo. If you're a designer, work on some design docs, make a board game, or find a wannabe programmer to team up with for a demo."
QA works just as much crunch as other departments. So your free time is very limited.
Really if you want a Castlevania movie and like symphony of the night I would say pick up Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. D and Alucard are so ridiculously close to each other in actions and mannerisms I really felt like bloodlust was just Castlevania with a different name.
So you are saying that we should base our opinions on the museum people and their religion by the actions of the terrorists that act "in its name" even though their actions don't follow the same belief structure that they clam to act for? Granted that is an extreme example but it is a valid on for what you are implying.
You seem to be very confused between the religion and the church (I use this term because I am most familiar with Christian religions). Religion is a series of beliefs and values that in the vast majority of examples are put together to inspire good will, courtesy, and ethical treatment to themselves, others, and many times the world around them. Whatever way that started be it a direct act of a supreme being, divine inspiration, generations of learned practices, or just some old coot just making up stories, they are defiantly a positive influence on the people who take the lessons to heart.
The church on the other hand is an organized group that organizes the religion and enforces its beliefs with its followers. The church is made up of people. Just like all things when someone is given too much power over those around them they may be corrupted by that power and use their position for their own benefit though pushing their own personal grudges and prejudices on the followers, using their position of power for political/social gain, taking financial benefits from the church, or many other things.
Your clam that religion is "a great evil and a blight on society" shows your complete ineptitude in being able to perceive what religion is over the errors of fallible people and what people do "in its name." Religion in its self is not a bad thing, sure it can be used to do bad things but so can just about anything else. Religion and its teaching should never be taken just at face value, you should always know the why and not just because "the religion tells me so", that is why many religions promote religious study and discussion. Don't blame religion for the faults of its troubled "followers".
You shouldn't base the values of a religion by the actions of the people who exploit, twist, and reinterpret it for their own benefit.
Oh but if you are too humble you can not be an good example for your community and it will suffer for it, and if you are trying to be humble on purpose you are thinking of yourself and being vain
Anything can be contrived into being called a sin if you try hard enough. Absolutely everything.
So unless you die for it no honor is involved? The only way to get honor is by dying? honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions has nothing to do with it? I don't think Dying has ever been a prerequisite to having honor.