Attending the Games Industry Conference (GIC) in Poznań, Wielkopolska last year was an eye-opening experience. The talks about game development were enlightening, but one particular conversation with Petr Nohejl, a devops programmer from Warhorse Studios, offered a unique insight into the whimsical side of video game testing. Nohejl detailed how testers go to great lengths to ensure smooth gameplay, sharing an amusing anecdote that highlighted the quirky nature of quality assurance in gaming.
Nohejl discussed the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, focusing on the technical challenges faced by programmers. He illustrated his point with an example of a simple yet repetitive quality assurance test involving player rotations, which is often employed to debug and fine-tune the game. As a non-developer, I found this both hilarious and fascinating.
There are some test rotations, so you just spawn the player, you wait, you as I mentioned…and then the player rotates a few times. So it just loads up all the stuff, the streams. And we have these random rotations all around the maps. So the rotation test just like teleports and performs the rotation on thousands and thousands of places on the map. And then we have actually a heat map of the whole rotation test.
This seemingly mundane test, where a player spins in place, is quite common in quality assurance circles, though it might appear dull to seasoned testers. To someone unfamiliar with the intricacies of game development, it’s a hilarious glimpse into the testing process.
Inspired by this, I reached out on social media and to industry contacts to gather more whimsical game testing stories. The response was overwhelming, with tales spanning from AAA titles to indie projects, bringing to light over a decade of game development antics. I’m excited to share these amusing anecdotes, hoping you’ll enjoy the lighter side of QA testing.
Shootin’ the Breeze
“While testing Unreal II for Xbox, if we angled our gun upwards by 45 degrees and shot the assault rifle at the bridge strut as we walked across it, the game would consistently crash. We tested that stupid bridge for weeks.” -Ben Kosmina
“When I was on Overwatch, I had to ensure that the materials on various surfaces were correctly set up for hit effects. For instance, shooting wood should sound like wood being hit, not metal. There are countless materials in the game, so I created a testing hero with enhanced abilities to facilitate the process. It was essentially a modified Widowmaker, and after I moved on, my friend continued using it for testing.” -Andrew Buczacki
“On Anno 2070, I conducted tests for the USK rating board and spent days dropping nukes to show they weren’t graphic, even capturing videos of a mother with a baby buggy surviving direct hits.” -Ruairí Rodinson
Inventing a Guy
“In The Outer Worlds 2, I discovered a funny situation involving an NPC. Initially, I assumed the invisible collision was intentional during a urinating animation. After further investigation, I realized my assumption was incorrect and reported the excessive collision.” -Aleksander Gozdzicki
“I was a programmer, not QA, but while testing a Kinect code, I had to get creative. I configured it for air guitar detection by stuffing my hoodie up my T-shirt to simulate a pregnant figure. For the new user login sequence, we wore carnival masks to avoid recognition.” -Tim Aidley
“In Saints Row, we used a debug NPC named Skinballs, composed of spheres with different skin textures, to test lighting across skin tones. Teams should plan testing with intentionality, but often they don’t.” -Elizabeth Zelle
“One memorable example was from Mortal Kombat, where a T-posed character moved through particle emitters causing various damages to test damage models.” -Daanish Syed
“During Sunderfolk’s development, we used a placeholder character from Adobe’s Mixamo called ‘Brute’ to fill the board and test animations. Affectionately named Oily Man, he lives on in our encounter designer.” -Ali Tirmizi
WoW!
Andrew Buczacki shared numerous stories from his time on World of Warcraft, compiled here for enthusiasts:
“While testing the final boss of the Icecrown raid in Wrath of the Lich King, a bug meant Frostmourne didn’t appear in a cinematic on specific hardware. We tested every graphics setting combination, memorizing monologues and fight scenes in the process.”
“For a hotfix, we needed to verify an AoE’s expansion rate. My friend and I devised a testing contraption using smoke flares, a hunter pet, and cheats, achieving a degree of precision probably unnecessary.”
“Old WoW players might recall shrinking shoulder pads. We tested a gallery of character models across versions to ensure they stayed the same size.”
“While verifying the ‘Win a loot roll with a 100’ achievement, I spawned 100 raid bosses with god mode and used powerful cheat spells, verifying the achievement worked.”
CAN you pet the dog?
“The seemingly simple ‘Can you Pet the dog?’ feature in games requires extensive testing. In Demonschool, petting the dog involved intricate dialogue and location variables. We spent countless hours testing every possible variable to ensure the game didn’t softlock.” -AJ McGucken, lead QA at Ysbryd Games
“Once, while working on audio for God of War, we noticed an excessive number of frogs on an island, requiring a JIRA ticket to remove them.” -Shayna Moon
“I found a bug in New Super Mario for Wii at the start screen, which caused the game to hard lock if Start was pressed at an exact moment. Daily, we attempted to replicate this, like the world’s worst rhythm game, till it was resolved.” -Anonymous
Additionally, I interviewed Camden Stoddard, audio director at Double Fine, who shared his process in perfecting Twig’s sounds in Keeper. He experimented extensively to make the bird’s sounds emotional and authentic.
Stoddard said, “The connection between Twig and the Lighthouse was crucial to Keeper, so I tested various methods to capture the emotion in their communication. After much trial, inhaling while imitating a bird proved effective.”
Below is a recording showing Stoddard’s voice transformation, giving life to Twig. It was recorded with a dynamic microphone and edited using various software.
Climb Every Mountain, Drop Every Weapon
“During the development of Mr. X Nightmare DLC for Streets of Rage 4, we encountered a bug where a dropped weapon occasionally fell through the floor. After extensive testing, we discovered the issue was specific to a single weapon: the swordfish!” -Laura Peitavi
“In NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound, testing Kenji’s wall climbing animation revealed occasional unnatural poses on small surfaces. The QA team had to identify problematic walls to adjust their properties.” -James Petit
A Castle Made of WHAT
“In 2022, long before the announcement of Wildgate, we used a project called ‘Banana Castle’ to help external vendors identify performance bottlenecks without revealing our actual project. Stock Unreal assets were used to test in-game physics.” -Grant Mark
“I created a test level in The Outer Worlds 2 with rooms made entirely of different physical materials to verify their sound and visual effects, a useful shortcut for testing material-specific features.” -Josh Ledford