Ghostlight Blog

QA and Agarest: Generations of War Zero

Hi everyone,

Another week has just flown by and its Friday again!! Roll on the weekend :)

One of my followers on twitter (hi Belphegor86) mentioned recently that they were interested in hearing about our testing process and in particular about what I do all day. Well the big question I am asked especially when I tell people that I do testing at a video games company is "It must be great sitting there playing games all day?" - I wish. This is so far from the truth I don't know where to begin.

Lets look at Agarest.   I get given a build and the first thing I have to look at is Sony's Wonderfully lengthy TRC document.  The next 12 hours (it feels much longer) are spent ejecting the disc at just the right time, making and deleting saves, switching controllers into the most bizarre configurations I can think of, pulling out network cables, checking that buttons are displayed correctly in the game etc... etc...  and this before I even get to play the game. So I wish I was sitting around playing games all day.  Over the next few days I'll start writing a guide to the life of a QA person starting with part 1 on Friday next week.

In current news Agarest is with SCEE's FQA, all the printed parts have had approval from Idea Factory (thanks Damien :)) and SCEE. We're just waiting on lead times for manufacturing so we can put the pre-order link on the Ghostlight Store.

Enjoy your weekend everyone and if you have got anything you want to ask feel free to mention it on the comments or on my twitter account.

Ross

So the results are in

Thanks everyone for the overwhelming response to our poll about Agarest Generations Of War ZERO.  Life has been fairly manic in the Ghostlight offices and I’ve had lots of excellent new games in to evaluate (it’s a hard life :) ) but we have managed to find the time to keep an eye on the results  It has been very, very close but I can now reveal that the results are as follows:

41% of you preferred the 6 traditional art cards

and

59% of you preferred the 3 3D Lenticular art cards

It’s always great to get your thoughts both on our games and what goodies you would like to see in our collector’s editions so we’d just like to take the opportunity once again to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us - it’s genuinely appreciated.  We’ve certainly taken note of your many requests for an art book, but sadly this time around we won’t be able to provide one. We reviewed all the available resources for the game and unfortunately we just didn’t feel there was enough new and unique art to warrant creating a new book.  However, we’ll definitely remember your responses to this poll when we are thinking up our next collector’s edition and we’ll make sure that an art book is high up on the list :).

Week 20 in the Ghostlight offices

Hi All,

Well in terms of keeping you all up to date on the JRPG front it seems to have gone a little quiet or that's how it probalby looks to all of you. I wish it was like that but there isn't such a thing as down time within these walls. Frantically trying to get items approved by everyone involved, getting the correct artwork to the printers on time so they can meet their specified dates, dealing with difficult questions from the age rating organisations, last minute translation changes and so on...

So where are we; Agarest is being vetted by the all seeing eye of SCEE. The poll asking for your thoughts is still running (thanks to everyone giving us their comments and yes we will be giving an answer on the artbook, discussions are being had). Ross has been evaluating some new deliveries from Japan, lucky man. Also it may suprise you to know that we have been helping out a team on a couple of non JRPG titles. Not sure if I am allowed to make comment about the games, but sometimes it is nice to see what teams are up to :) May be we will put a link up next week. We will certainly be giving you all a closer look at the CE items and giving you some information on how your efforts has helped with the distibution of P3P.

So till next week enjoy the sunshine and have a terrific weekend!!

Daren