Microsoft makes cuts to gaming: ACES studio closed, 30% of testers laid off

(random Thought)

I worked as a tester at EA Tiburon and it was like a seasonal gig. I tested for two consecutive years and each game being a Madden title. We worked throughout the entire development process constantly testing each build.

I know people think Madden is the same game every year with new rosters but they really put allot of work into the game each year in trying to make the gameplay experience realistic. Suddle changes that the majority of Madden gamers will never notice in addition to the added feature set each year.

Perhaps the biggest part of testing a Madden game was the player attributes algorythm. They use an equation for each position to come up with the player ratings. You would have to constantly try to find exploits or bugs that made one player unstopable. On many occassions they would make changes to players on an individual basis instead of tweaking the equation.

It was fun but being a game tester isn't all it's cracked up to be. By the time the game releases I would be so sick of it I couldn't fathom playing it at all.

Most places have both in-house testers and hire contracted testers (or release a public beta)
It's a very common method of testing any form of software.

To answer your question at EA we were pretty much contract workers and not full time employees with benefits.

What is wrong with Microsoft?

First Vista,then they shut down Ensemble and now this?

Did Steve Jobs created a mind controlling device and is using it on MS executives or something.

Then again it makes sense Flight Simulator never was very popular but it was one heck of a game.

Microsoft is being haunted by pirate ghosts! Mecha Shiva!

Its funny this blog is.

Sony announces LESS revenue w/o job losses and we here OMG Sony is doomed, haha Sony and a shit-ton of negativity and sarcasm.

Microsoft announces LAYOFFS in the gaming division and we get a serious discussion and not one peep of a ha ha and OMG MS is doomed.

Yet again the MS/Sony double standard rears its ugly head. It just PROVES yet again that this site has DEvolved into a baseless mostly MS fanboy Sony hater blog.

Oh well, I won't care anymore about this BS come Feb. 5th and 27th.

How did I miss that verbal hemorrage? In the words of Hedberg, "Awwww fuck."

There's no way to make FS work on an XBox. Flying using a pad it's almost impossible unless you took away all the realims. To fully exploit a flight simulator, you'd need a stick or a yoke, throttle controls, pedals. You have to learn to fly - and it takes time, dedication, and patience. Otherwise you just get an FPS with a plane instead of a warrior - but that's not FS.