As of April 20th, God of War has now shipped all around the world for PlayStation 4. Working on this game has been an incredible experience.
For this game, I was able to use JIRA to report and document issues along with testers from here in the studio and also with Sony World Wide Studios. I used Wwise to check the game's mix and for any mix errors/issues. This was also my first traditional QA opportunity where I made sure the game was in tip-top quality from any aspect: gameplay issues, loading issues, animation bugs, combat tweak necessities. I learned how to truly analyze a game and find any possible variable of an issue occurring, and this made my skills in being a detective for bugs become even stronger than ever.
Something I truly appreciate is that the leads constantly strived for us to be as proactive in communication as possible. If we saw design issues we weren't quite sure about? Check in with a tester or lead. Can't find a bug on JIRA? Ask a tester, or a lead. And if anyone isn’t sure, ask other developers in the studio. Everyone created a culture that allowed us to comfortably talk to each other, ask questions, bring up issues, bring up anything we didn't have an answer for and bring up our thoughts with design choices, all with the purpose of making the quality of God of War as absolutely high as possible.
Seeing the attention and acclaim that this game has already received has been quite stunning as well.
The game also would not be in the amazing state it is in now without the entire QA team I was able to work this. These people, seen below, are the behind-the-scenes magicians I was blessed to sit next to during this project.
Thankful to have worked on this project and to have met these amazing devs. Yes, “developers” include the QA testers as well.
Thank you, SMS.
