Videogame Testing / Critical Practice

background and context:

For three months in the summer of 2003 I worked as a tester for Electronic Arts (EA) developer, marketer and publisher of videogames. I was based at their studios in Chertsey, Surrey. It was a vast complex; part of the site was shared with Zanussi, manufactures of various home appliances. The main EA building is reminiscent of a corporate tower from Blade Runner or Gattaca. The interior décor enjoyed a sense of its own late 20th sci-fi inspired futurism, see-through elevators, entire sides of the building constructed from inclining panes of glass, large open interior spaces, perfectly sculpted landscapes, a neat lawn: grass meticulously and regularly cut, artificial lakes and real swans, a hi-tech gym, while in the canteen multiple screens played multiple channels. Near the main entrance was a videogame library… staff could borrow any game published by EA. Anything natural was controlled or pre-fabricated so that the entire complex felt like a simulation, or in Star-Trek parlance as though roaming through a ‘holodeck’ (an immersive hologram computer program used a holiday destination in substitution of the real thing by the spaceship’s crew). There were standing games posts where you could play EA’s latest products in the lobby area (with endless free lives, so no need for coins), the space felt clean to the point of sterilization. All staff had electronic swipe cards allowing different access to different parts of the building depending on your position. On Fridays refrigerated drink cabinets were unlocked and there was an unlimited supply of drinks. Throughout the week there was a ‘take-away’ allowance if you had an evening shift (EA had accounts with for fast-food pizza, Chinese, Indian and. fried chicken). At one level the company saw itself as a Disneyish pleasure village.

While I was there I tested a number of games on a number of platforms (the platform being the console, e.g. Playstation 2, X-box etc). These included a Harry Potter Quiditch game, a rugby game capitalizing on the Rugby World cup that year, a Japanese adapted import of the ‘beat-em up’ Soul Caliber 2, but the majority of my time there was spent testing Freedom Fighters:

testing

The EA motto is ‘Challenge Everything’. When an EA game loads up - before the game’s title screen - this phrase is whispered with the appearance of the EA logo, the gender and tone of the voice is ambiguous it is enticing, challenging, malevolent and provocative. This corporate motto was the defining mode of operation as a tester.

When playing a videogame you might pull the controller out the socket in frustration. You might press a particular button really fast. You might put the game on pause and make some food or have a conversation. These actions might lead the game to ‘crash’: that is to freeze, start from its beginning, or that level, jam not allowing you to play further. Equally, while playing a game your ‘avatar’ (the character/ object/ craft/ protagonist - you the player are controlling on screen) or the world in which your avatar moves may not behave within the logic of the system, or not follow its own rules. This is often a ‘cartoon-logic’, e.g. if you eat a yellow star you can fly for 10 seconds, for the game to be satisfactory you shouldn’t be able to fly if you haven’t eaten a yellow star.
There is also the physics of the game to be testes, is the length of time you hold a button proportional to how high you jump? Can you shoot yourself? Can you run beyond the borders of the game, can you stand outside the play space? Do the buildings have the integrity they should? Can you run through a wall that operates as the boundaries of the game, or does your avatar half-merge with something that should be solid? Do bullets pass through an enemy that is supposed to be susceptible? When the game is set on its most difficult setting is it too easy to complete, is the beginner setting to difficult for an average player. Do the multi-language formats work? Does the sniper rifle make a sound programmed for the machine gun? These are ‘bugs’, it is the aim of the testers to find them, be able to recreate them and communicate to a third party where and how the bug occurred.

We would work in teams of five or six with a group leader guiding our testing. The structure of the process was to comb through the game identifying bugs in the programming, let the programmers (unseen on the floor above) know where the bugs are, and how they reveal themselves, the programmer would then fix the bug, when he or she felt this had been done, we would be sent an updated version of the game, we would try re-locate the bug or re-create the circumstances which led to its appearance. If we couldn’t do this it was taken to be solved. If we succeeded the programming team was alerted, they would try another fix and send a new version for us to test again and so on. Sometimes we’d be given the cartridge/ disc and allowed to roam through the game as we pleased like a ‘vandal-flaneur’: disrupting the world as much as we could muster. Other times there would be much more specific testing. We’d be given an A4 sheet with instructions to test a given situation on given level. If it was an early stage of the game there would be a ‘test menu’ inserted into an options page on the game; this allowed you to go directly to a particular level, this saved the time of having to play all the way through a game to get to a particular point. As later versions of the game were provided, you got closer to its final form, the test menu would be removed.

Clearly there are different bugs, those of the mechanical sort concerning the interface of the control pad with game itself, a basic test would be to press a single button as fast as you could for a three minutes. Then there are errors of logic, the game breaking its own rules, mentioned earlier. There are errors of content or miscommunication a soldier who should be wearing red, incorrectly wearing blue, titling miscredits etc. Then there are omissions of special effects like explosions when hitting an oil tanker. Then there is checking for audience play settings, that menus lead to the right submenus and so on. The aim was to ‘eradicate’ them all.

the culture of videogame testing

I was being paid to test videogames: to find bugs, to find holes, to find failures of programming, to break the game, to the crash the game. To crash a game – to have the screen jitter, petrify, re-boot was the pinnacle of videogame testing and the act that generated the most attention and respect among your co-workers and seniors. Within this sphere of work there was culture of destruction, the more destructive you were (and able to recreate and communicate) your destructive act the better you did your job. This culture was intensified by the separation of the testers (the destroyers, the Dionysian force, from the programmers (the Apollonians) kept apart architecturally and socially. In the Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) Popper argues science proceeds by the deductive demonstration of the falsity of scientific theory…that scientific rationality consists of the falsification of theories. For this process to be effective the creators of the theories, the scientists, need to be whole-heartedly engaged with proving themselves wrong, and this is largely alien to our natures. If the programmers, who create the games, were also the testers, how motivated would they be to find holes in their own work? By separating the creative process from the act of its testing its - the product (in this case the videogame) is most thouroughly examined for the mutual benefit of the customer and Electronic Arts, who are better able (or more confident) to guarantee a flawless product and raise the status of their brand. An internal conflict in the process of manufacture is removed by creating ‘work-cells’ without conflict for the eventual benefit of that product and its distributor. Is there potential for this model to be applied to non-profit based systems of manufacture?

the testing is executed by the same means the game would normally be played

Importantly the testing is executed by the same means the game would normally be played. We use the same control pads often the same button combinations. In fact the game could only be usefully tested this way if it is to successfully recreate situations in ‘real-life game play’. The process of playing the game and testing it are the same. However playing and testing are not the same. There is a difference in intention on the part of the operator which alters the definition and labeling of the activity from the point of view of the operator but not universally. An outside eye looking over the shoulder of the operator would not necessarily be able to define the activity. The outside eye might label what the operator considers to be testing as irrational or bad playing.

If one thinks of a videogame as a system designed for an expected function, in this case playing, the misuse/ misapplication/ deconstruction/ destruction/ critique of the system is an activity that deviates from the expected function (defined by the designer). Perversely, testing is an activity that we communally recognize as operating by (the inclusion of) deviation from expected function and normative use/application. Testing is an activity in of itself – it does not become another activity.

Many activites, like videogame playing, allow the same process to mask different intentions operating within the same system. The variation of intention may result in an unusual application or deviation from the expected function, but the definition of the activity does not and sometimes cannot be the same for both operator and outside observer.

Art, like videogame testing, is recognized by some as an activity that fulfills its function by deviating from its expected function and normative application (and this being the case means its expected function and normative application is forever shifting). The greater the awareness and collective agreement of a system’s function in relation to the activities that happen within it, the more likely there will be agreement between operator and outside observer of the definition of the activity within that system.

afterword

The mindset I developed in this culture of destruction and testing remains with me. After leaving EA it was difficult not to see oneself as the avatar within a game. I was often surprised and disappointed by the continuous and unyielding solidarity of objects I wanted to (and see others) occasionally fall through floors and pass through walls; and I remain mistrustful of the world’s materiality…I am often seized by the compulsion to run into barricades, jump repeatedly on pavements, jump off things, to catch the videogame off guard so to speak, to see if it would jam, hoping it would jam, that I might disappear through a previously invisible fissure, that I might wreck time and its passing, that I might hover suspended, frozen in the air, that the world might crash and be re-booted.

some related texts

The Logic of Scientific Discovery/ Popper
The Birth of Tragedy/ Nietzsche
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions/ Kuhn


Harun Morrison

Stilted/ Catherine Walpole/ BAC/ Spring 2007

Catherine dances for 13 hours on stilts. The building - BAC - is open for 13 hours. So that while the building is open Catherine is dancing. In fact Catherine started dancing before the building was open and continued to dance after the building closed, so that all those who came and went over the course of the day (no matter how long they were there)had a sense of Catherine dancing forever. A laptop connected to a video projector was counting the seconds, minutes and hours and blowing up the figures on the on the walls of the cafe – made this explicit. It was important the hours were projected in the cafe - a social space, separate and away from where Catherine was. In the cafe was a collection of CDs, some belonging to her, some belonging to her friends, some donated by members of staff - hundreds of them. There was a CD player in the café - it was connected to speakers in the foyer space where Catherine danced. You were invited to select a song for Catherine to dance to. When you had chosen a song you received a sticker. All those who had chosen songs over the course of the day wore a sticker - this generated conversation along the lines of "What song did you choose?", "Who’s that song by?"... Word of the mouth about the piece spread, conversation about the work was initiated. The music from the speakers in the foyer spilled over into the cafe so that although Catherine was separate, away from the social space that - we all became part of the same aural landscape. Her friend manned the CD player, you couldn’t state which song you wanted and then go. You couldn’t write down the song you wanted, or leave a note and come back later - you had to make the request in person - the song being requested had to be the next song played. Songs could be repeated.

Catherine wore a beautiful pale pink vintage dress. She herself is very slight and delicate, petit. Catherine tried to dance in the style of the music being played. She would waltz to waltzes, twist to 50s jive songs, stomp to 70s rock and roll and so on. She tries to disappear stylistically into the song. Being on stilts made her much taller than everyone (and the attempt to disappear doomed to fail). Even if you wanted to dance with Catherine it would have been awkward - although we tried. She had made herself difficult to interact with - or made explicit the difficulty she personally confessed to having in social situations. She was literally stilted. You could talk to Catherine. There wasn’t a rope around her, she didn’t want there to be, you could ask her what kind of music she felt like dancing to - a slow song? a fast song? She would converse with you, if you stretched your hand toward her, she would reciprocate. She would smile back, joke, laugh - share her thoughts. She danced on a mosaic of bees in a corner of the foyer beneath an arch next to the central staircase that greets you on entering the building. To be eye level with Catherine you needed to walk halfway up the steps. Behind her was a shelf - it had all that she might need for that day, bottles of water, snacks, glucose energy sweets, sandwiches, fruit, chocolate, painkillers, Tampons, cans of coke - as things were consumed the packaging was left on the shelf - the rubbish grew as these things were used or eaten.

Also changing is Catherine's body, the muscles getting increasingly tired, the wear and tear that the physical effort demands… And Catherine's mood: depending on the song, the time of day, who's come by to watch her to cheer her and who hasn’t. Also changing are the stilts themselves, at one point the rubber on the stilts wears away completely, so she needs to sit on the shelf - the same she has lined her fruit upon, so Greg (BAC's production manager) can replace the rubber, so she has less chance of slipping. It seems like a gentle act, like a vet with a sickly animal, being treated, stitched, plastered or patched up.The longer you watch Catherine the more likely you are to experience that drift away from the spectacle of the act to the symbolism behind it and at this point that you might begin to cry as so many others did. Recalling being too shy to dance with someone, too awkward, too different, too strange to commune with the crowd. To balance on the stilts is to be in constant motion, and therefore unsettled - the stilts become a physical device to demonstrate a psychological and emotional state... [You can easily topple on stilts can be read 'I can easily be toppled' 'I am vulnerable'.]

To watch a woman dancing in a public space to a tune you might have chosen alludes to a lapdance. You are the punter. By choosing the song to which she dances like a bear in a cage, do you become her keeper, her tormentor? All the while your role shifts, now what is happening to make you feel protective of her?Towards the end of the 13hrs those still left in the building gathered round Catherine to cheer her on, to egg her on to give support. Someone selected ‘Lady Marmalade’(!), a chorus of women danced with her and for her, her name was shouted someone gave her flowers. You could tell she was in pain, great pain. Slowly becoming incoherent, dropping words, getting tearful, the stress of the situation catching up with her. Eventually her boyfriend turned up – you could see her relief- he became a fixed point to which she could return her gaze and anchor herself. Eventually it was time to close the building – first everyone had to be cleared out except staff, when the doors were finally closed Catherine came down from her stilts – she couldn’t do this on her own. She staggered towards a sofa in the café, three of us lay her down. Her legs, feet and back were sore and tender. She was weary of anyone touching her as she ached all over. Time had made itself present on her body. Catherine was disorientated, incoherent, not speaking in sentences, when we unstrapped her from her stilts she half stood to walk but couldn’t. She was half-speaking, half crying. When she was eventually whisked away in a cab, and I returned to the archway where she has spent the last 13 hours - there remained the things she had hurriedly left behind: the crumpled cartons of the things she had drunk, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, some unopened packs of glucose energy sweets and the bananas - yellow at the start of the day now turned browny-black.

The Amazing Talking Skull/ BAC/ Winter 2007

The Amazing Talking Skull/ BAC/ Winter 2007

You and three others enter a room, dressed to appear like a Victorian library or 19th century gentleman’s study. Books are shelved from floor to ceiling. There are four seats. You sit down. Above you there is a single domestic bulb, in front of you a human skull attached to a metal pole standing on a wooden box. The light bulb flickers, stammers, then goes off. You are in the dark. A book slips from the shelf and falls to the ground behind you. It causes you to jump, scream or laugh nervously. And then there is a strange mechanical whirring. The skull now looks up so that it is seemingly eyeballing you. Red lights in the socket replacing eyes flicker to life… reminding you of the Terminator after his synthetic flesh has been burnt away. The jaw begins to move, the skull begins to speak in a rich, sonorous voice. ‘The Amazing Talking Skull’ speaks of the fleeting nature of life, how quickly it passes, the dangers of us being distracted from this fact. It concludes, stating with authority, ‘One day you will die.’, the head pivots so that it looks at someone else and repeats, ‘One day you will die.’, it pivots again to a third person, ‘One day you will die.’, and finally to the fourth, ‘One day you will die.’ As though a battery has died, the head lowers, the eyes dim, the bulb goes on, the door is opened. And you and three others leave the room, laughing uneasily or delighted, spooked but charmed.

‘The Amazing Talking Skull’ is the work of Paul Granjon. The work itself was commissioned to occupy a room within a larger building-wide and site-sensitive project called ‘Masque of the Red Death’ by a company called ‘Punchdrunk’. The commission is therefore parasitical in its relationship to another piece of work: not authored by Punchdrunk but contributive to their work - both parasite and host drawing inspiration from the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The space ‘The Amazing Talking Skull’ occupies was not purpose built or dressed for it and has been the site of a number of other commissions mainly solo (human!) performers. In this immersive fiction a plague is rife; the library acts as a temporary haven of sorts. There is bleak comedy to being addressed by an automaton… we are reminded it is the non-biological which will survive. Granjon states on his website “I am interested in the co-evolution of humans and machines.” But in the context of the story, there is no ‘co-evolution‘, and the singularity is not in our favour.

Within the world of Punchdrunk, The Amazing Talking Skull avoids being jarringly anachronistic because its aesthetic fuses with our own sense of the fantasies of the Victorian imagination… because you can imagine the skull fittings so snugly in the works of the 19th century founders of modern science fiction, Jules Verne, H.G. Welles and Poe himself, it doesn’t break the illusion of the world in the way that a television would, although it is more advanced and contemporary in it’s use of technology. (We know there is a gleaming white Mac running Mac OS X whirring beneath the box). For the comic specialist, perhaps such suspensions of disbelief, or fusions of knowledge, are unnecessary because The Amazing Talking Skull compliments the subgenre of fantasy and sci-fi known as Steampunk (fantasy works set in an era of steam power, usually Victorian era England, often incorporating contemporary devices technologically achieved with 19th century means). I.e. we accept this because if Victorians had invented robots this satisfies how we imagine how they would look and talk. Any robot aping organic life instils a sense of the uncanny (although this is perhaps decreasing with our continuous and ever increasing exposure to robots both in toy shops, daily life and film).

Nonetheless this sense of the uncanny is magnified by various conflicts at play in this situation. The Webster dictionary defines a robot as ‘An automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed to humans or a machine in the form of a human ‘.The robot’s function hovers between that of storytelling and reminder of death, the content of the speech and the robot’s form compliment each other by different means. There is nothing new in the image of skull as ‘memento mori’. The robot as object can be seen as a descendant of the skull held by the monk in Zurbaran’s ‘Saint Francis in Meditation’ in the National Gallery, a 3D cousin, that has evolved into a piece of sound emitting kinetic sculpture. We also have robot as imitator of life, the inanimate programmed to appear alive, but it is a skull - classically representative of death, death is alive, talking about the nature of life, the robot is also a substitute for a human performer, specifically commissioned for the Christmas period when people are most likely to be with their families less willing to work! Perhaps it is this ricochet of conflicts accounting for captivating nature of this piece and the uneasy laughter it induces.