Does QA sometimes have valuable input that has led to design or modeling changes when they, for instance, notice something that could work better in actual gameplay? Or is their role solely assuring quality?asked by Dexor
TL;DRQA works alongside developers and designers, who call testers over to try new systems; their input is given on the spot and sometimes leads to immediate changes.
Well, actually we have a pretty integrated work environment where we're working alongside the developers and designers as they're coming up with the system. So there's plenty of times when somebody will be working on something new and they'll call us over and say, "Hey, can you check this out? Is this intuitive? Does this seem like it's cool?" And we're able to give our input just right there while they're working on it. And sometimes even see them make changes at the same time: "Okay, well, what if I changed it to this? Can you try it now?" So we're in the trenches with them, which is a great thing for us, particularly coming from... I worked in publisher QA, where there was a big wall between developers and QA and you were pretty much just there to generate bug reports. We're right there with them. And it's kind of rewarding to actually be able to see, "Hey, I did that. I told them to do that" sort of situation.
That's one of the fantastic things about Star Citizen in general: there's this respect for everybody's thoughts. I'll watch Skype and I'll see Toast having suggestions for things, and there's not another game company in the world where your lawyer both cares and has good ideas.