— STUDIO
Glowmade
— EMPLOYMENT DATES
August 2024 – Present
(Whilst the title is under development, any specific details shared on this page will only be those that are publicly available)
King of Meat is a 1–4 player hacking, slashing, co-op combat game with Dungeon Create Mode. It is centred around the most watched, and only, TV-show in the mystical world of Loregok.
Players step into the roles of Contenders battling through devious Dungeons and compete to be crowned champions.
My Role
As a QA Technician at Glowmade, it is my job to work with every team to attain the highest possible levels of polish, stability, and player experience. A large part of my role focuses on helping developers quickly and accurately diagnose and fix issues through building a deep understanding of the game’s systems and then analysing reproduction processes, call stacks and debug logs. When issues are fixed or tasks are pushed, I will assist in the hardening process and use technical knowledge to build a local client & deployable server to confirm the new code / asset(s) is functional and robust across single player and multiplayer environments. Additionally, I work with the wider QA team to run vigorous testing of daily builds in order to monitor the health of the product.
It is also my responsibility to carry out exhaustive test suites and then document and report the findings – logging issues into Jira, communicating with the relevant teams, and ensuring any critical issues or blockers are escalated. I will then ensure to keep tabs on these issues to ensure that they are advocated for. My previous roles in production have given me valuable experience in this area, and it has also helped me optimise processes at times when the team has felt overwhelmed with certain workloads.
As the game is set to release on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and Switch, I have built my knowledge of platform-specific features, limitations, and cert requirements. I work closely with internal and external teams to ensure these platform-specific requirements are met. Finally, the day-to-day of this role is never guaranteed, and I am always ready to support developers and stakeholders in any Technical QA processes that are required throughout development.
Key Teams
Level Design
Although all QA Technicians at Glowmade work with every team, we each have a specific team(s) that we are embedded into. With the Level Design team, I am responsible for signing off on all level iterations from a QA standpoint, including not only verification that the level functions correctly and players cannot softlock themselves or cheat the level, but also that the level is enjoyable to play (difficulty of puzzles, pacing of combat, etc.). Additionally, I will work with level designers from a technical angle to resolve bugs and crashes.
User-Generated Content
Like with Level Design, I am embedded into the UGC team. Work with this team takes on a more technical focus, ensuring the level creation systems are correctly functioning for players and developers alike. This involves intricate sweeps to ensure all possible combinations of systems and assets are functional, stable, and intuitive.
I also work with the team developing the UGC versioning systems to ensure that, when levels are updated and/or featured, data and linked actions for that level are conforming to the rules of different versioning scenarios.
Gameplay
All QA Technicians work daily with the Gameplay teams in order to push a focus on the best possible player experience. At Glowmade, we use Testrail to carry out test sweeps, using the tool to systematically work through the various gameplay systems and ensure that even edge-case combinations of different features are tested. I collaborate closely with all gameplay teams, learning from them to understand underlying systems so that I can more efficiently track down elusive bugs and ensure that observed behaviour is intended, even if it does not appear broken.
Analytics & Backend
With a history in file and data management, my familiarity with Databases and SQL have enabled me to provide specialised QA support to the Analytics team, reproducing scenarios and interpreting data to confirm that these systems are accurately providing the expected data. Additionally, I spend significant time working with the Backend team to ensure correct functionality across telemetry, networking, authentication, privileges, and more.
Engine & Tools
I have worked extensively with the Engine team to push major updates to the stability and performance of both clients and servers. This frequently involves using specialised software or one-off investigative logging in the build to narrow down causes of relevant issues. Similarly, I work with the tools team whenever a developer either finds a stability issue with the Engine or requires new functionality in order to effectively carry out their work. This has sometimes involved a direct focus on the QA team, where we have been able to work with the Engine and Tools teams in parallel in order to provide QA with new functionality to better monitor the health and performance of certain game areas and systems.
Product & Release Management
Glowmade QA works closely with Production and Release Management to verify builds and advocate areas where greater focus is needed regarding quality standards and risks. We use Perforce, Jenkins, Gamelift, and other tools to help manage the product and deploy builds and servers. We are heavily involved in delivery candidate processes, either working closely with developers to validate change lists and confirm bug fixes or to support developers in pushing critical updates and changes.
