Is Bug Bash a game or something else entirely?

by Alexander Sliwinski { Apr 4th 2007 at 5:00AM }

Gamingtalkhq stumbled across a person playing Bug Bash while floating around Xbox Live. They were curious to know what game this was and if it is the name of a secret project. The player's gamertag had a Windows symbol in the bottom right corner and informed them he was part of the "G4W Live Beta." So, bug bash, was exactly that -- an attempt to find and bash bugs in the Games for Windows Live Beta.

Wikipedia defines bug bash as a time "where all the developers, testers, program managers, usability researchers, designers, documentation folks, and even sometimes marketing people, put aside their regular day-to-day duties and pound on the product to get as many eyes on the product as possible." The term is credited to a Microsoft blog post from 2004. So if you ever run across someone playing "bug bash" they may be Microsoft employees just testing the system. Then again, if you run across someone playing Bug Bash Beta 1337 -- that might be a game.

[Thanks Alex]

Tags: bug bash, BugBash, bugs, debug, game, microsoft, system test

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Cheeseface @ Apr 4th 2007 9:34AM

So the big news is... microsoft has beta testers?

hvnlysoldr @ Apr 4th 2007 10:07AM

That MS is using every single slave to be beta testers.

Morgon @ Apr 4th 2007 10:27AM

I was gonna ask if you forgot your G4W Beta news, but realized Joystiq didn't seem to pick this up when it was announced last month...

http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2007/03/02/541982.aspx

This post on the Xbox PR blog specifically talks about the Bug Bash application and its place in the G4W beta.

willie @ Apr 4th 2007 12:03PM

Ha that picture reminds me of that AWESOME PC game Bad Mojo!

Tom @ Apr 4th 2007 1:54PM

http://www.flysquish.com ?

MS Beta Tester @ Apr 5th 2007 7:03PM

I was just accepted yesterday as an offical beta tester for the new Windows Live service that allows you to connect with Xbox Live users on your Windows Computer. The Bug Bash game included some very nice Xbox 360 like guide functionality and I was able to create a private chat with someone on my friends list using my pc headset (VERY COOL).