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sabato 24 novembre 2012

Testing fun... or not?

Finally something interesting to do at work! Or that's what i thought.

I have been asked if i was interested in testing a game, why even bother asking? OF COURSE i'm interested in testing a new game, so i agreed and a few minutes later i was given the setup.

Took me quite a bit to install the thing as it was in korean and i needed to install the language support for it, the patching took several hours with a super fast connection as the launcher would occasionally decide to stop from downloading for whatever reason (and needed a reboot every time).

After the hassle of installing i tried to log in, only to find out that the game was under maintenance, hence no testing could be done.

The day after i managed to get the game to start (8 hours of maintenance? Heck, that's a lot!) and i found, to my great displeasure i might add, that my PC at work isn't good enough to run this game, i mean, the game can be started and all, but it's laggy as hell due to the heavy graphics, and even when on minimum settings, i won't get any higher than 20~23 FPS in open wide areas with no people, and as low as to 10~15 FPS in towns, so it's hardly playable.

At that point i thought i'd test it at home since my machine is more powerful than the one at work, and even though i get better performance (25~30 FPS in town with MINIMUM settings) you can understand that it's not exactly playable. It would be good if it was a PvE game, but this is a PvP Based MMORPG and that kind of lag means certain death in battle.

I'll keep testing it for a while longer but, well, i wouldn't play it.

lunedì 12 novembre 2012

Organization...

Not sure if i said this already or not, but work organization sucks quite badly in this company.
I have yet to understand to who i have to listen to, it happens often to recieve orders from various people above me, and it's quite difficult to manage everything at once, not to mention that everybody claimst that their orders must have the top priority... This is just driving me insane.

As i said in the past, my job here is supposed to involve customer service, you've heard me complain about these so called tickets quite a few times already, afterall most of them consist in complaints and ridiculous requests. Other than that i'm supposed to provide the paid services to our paying players, check that the game rules are being followed and organize events, i should also give support to the sales team when requested.

Point is, i'm not helping, i'm doing half of the work they're supposed to do, sure, i'm not the one planning the stuff, but if i'm the one who always has to do the physical work...
And then i recieve complaints that things aren't being done in time... Maybe they should be start asking themselves WHY.

martedì 18 settembre 2012

From the frying pan into the fire...

The title says it all...

First update in a long time i know, forgive be but i've been incredibly busy with the transfer to the other game, lots of stuff to learn, lots of work to do.

Long story short, i got from an FPS to a MMORPG PvP centered, so i wasn't expecting much difference from the two player-mentality wise... couldn't be any more wrong than that.

There is an abyss of difference, i knew for a fact that FPS players are "rough" to each other... but MMORPGs player are by a tenfold!

People were bickering for stupid things, now they bicker for even more stupid things, when i read their tickets i feel like a teacher in a kindergarten "that guy called me stupid! i want him banned!".
Now, if only i could i would reply to them like this "Dear user, if you're filling in a report because someone called you stupid, i have bad news for you, for you really are STUPID".

Unfortunately i can't.

Of course there's much more, enough to write a book out of it, and who knows, maybe i will write one.

sabato 28 luglio 2012

Big Changes Incoming!

Right, things are going to change starting the next month! In fact, i'll be going on holidays (was so waiting for some good rest!).
And when i'll be back from holidays... different game!
That's right, i'm being moved to a different game, before you ask no, it's not a promotion, just a change in roles, but a well accepted change.

Just like before i can't tell wich game i'll be moving on, but i can tell you that it's a MMORPG, a genere i prefer to FPS, even though its a PvP centered game...

Competition... why does it always have to be competition? I certainly prefer to see people cooperate than to fight each other but oh well, generally mmorpg communities are less "angry" if you know what i mean,and that's all that matters to me.

martedì 10 luglio 2012

The first (real) issues with the game

It was bound to happen sooner or later, the game isn't working properly, or rather, the servers are acting up.
A few days ago the server started booting people out of the game, not just one or two, but tenths of them at the same time. This thing seemed to happen on a regular basis every hour and half or so, but as of today the random disconnects have become more frequent.

We asked the techs to perform tests to see what was wrong but they couldn't find anything, so now we're waiting for the software house wich made the game to check if there are any issues.

My job however is only affected in the way that i have to explain the above to the players that complain... wich means more work on top of what i already do.

I'm not giving up though!
Even when players ask stupid questions i will answer in an appropriate way, even when players keep asking the same question two or three times, i will give them regular answers!

venerdì 18 maggio 2012

The work behind the scenes.

Today i'll talk a bit about what is the role of a GM (at least here where i'm working).
I already talked about this in some of my previous posts, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

First of all we GMs are not players with powers. I'm saying this because often people thinks that we have been chosen among regular players for our skills. While that may be true for some unofficial servers of some games, it is not so when you work for a company.

Being a Game Master is an actual job, with work shifts, rules to follow, duties and so on.

That being said, i'll briefly explain what the job is about.

A Game Master is the game police officer, he makes the rules of the game (inregards to the company policies) and makes sure that people respects them. But this is not all, the Game Master also has the role to entertain the community, organizing events (and believe me, while some are extremely simple and fast to set up, others can be a real pain, like the tournaments) and such.

This is what the people actually gets to see, of course all of this is only a tiny part of the job, there's alot more to be done behind the scenes, and people doesn't get to see it.

A Game Master is in charge of performing game tests, whenever there is a maintenance, he/she's the one who performs all the checks on the game, testing all of the game functions and the various tools used to run the game one by one. A Game Master also tests the patches to the game before they're released, in an attempt to find and signal major bugs to the developers.

Another one of our duties is to publish all the releavant news about the game (at least in this company). They are all written by us, everything from maintenance news to promotions, from patch notes to event announcements. This means that also the pictures and screenshots you see there are taken and edited by us.

The company i work for gets income by selling in game content, like weapons, armors, consummables, costumes and so on. Guess what? No, we don't plan the sales, there's people who stuided for that. But we are the ones who set the descriptions for those items (screenshots and icons are all taken and made by us). Every tiny bit of advertisement about the stuff we sell for the game is made by us, text and images, and you can imagine that's a freaking lot of work.

All of that while also taking care of the customers' support! That's right! Whenever you have an issue and ask for help on the website, who do you think answers to your questions? Right, that's us. Of course we only take care of questions related to the game and it's rules, but it's still quite a bit of stuff.

Now, usually all of this work is handled by a team of people, meaning that the workload is shared among several people, and well, if the workload is shared there isn't much stress at all.

Sadly my team is made up of only myself...

domenica 6 maggio 2012

Wow i'm tired!

Yup, as of late i have been unable to get enough sleep.
It probably has nothing to do with the job, but it surely doesn't help in the concentration zone.
I'm waking up awfully early, and no matter what i do i'm just unable to sleep as much as i'd like to.
Going to sleep earlier doesn't help, i only end up waking up even earlier.
Anyway, don't suppose you people are interested in this kind of stuff.
The game is going decently, it seems like the population has stabilized more or less, these graphs i can see don't really make much sense to me, in fact, according to them, we should have something like 40 thousand users and they're increasing daily, though the average daily connected users hasn't changed by one bit... do we lose as many as we gain?

lunedì 30 aprile 2012

Tounraments! What a joy...

Some time ago, i decided to organize a small tournament, you know, to get people more motivated to play.
I thought it would be a nice idea, i made it with little to no requirements, and everybody was free to sign up to it.
But i soon understood that it wouldn't have been a popular event...
In fact, since there aren't that many players in this game, i set it up for no more than 40 people. Needles to say, we barely hit the number of necessary people.
So i managed to make the teams and make them even (skill-wise by checking the stats of every player who registered).
And the day of the first match came... but only 5 people (out of 10) showed up.
Pretty much the same happened for every other match till the end of the tournament...
Now i'm going to make a new one, slightly different than the first one, i hope this works otherwise no more tournaments.

sabato 21 aprile 2012

What the... ?

I was expecting to find some hostilities towards me from the players, i mean, i've played many online games, and i know that it may happen to not agree with some decisions taken by the companies. I've heard people complain, heck, i did complain myself, but i never, ever offended or insulted anybody, afterall people is just doing their job.
Here i've been insulted and offended more than once, of course it doesn't bother me... huh? You're asking why am i saying all of this then?
Just to ask one question, does people find this practice "normal" or am i just dealing with ineducated people?
I wonder...

lunedì 2 aprile 2012

The things i do!

Apparently the job as a Game Master isn't quite as i thought it would be.
I was expecting to be doing things like customer support, checking for rule breakers and punish them, create events for the people to enjoy, have fun and make them stick to the game.
Lately though, i've become a designer and an advertisement maker.
In the past month, i've been so overflooded with chores that i didn't even get the time to make a new post here.
Short notice for those of you who care: I'm still alive, just dead tired (pun intended).
I really lost count of how many animated gifs, posters, screenshots, artworks i had to create/modify.
Honestly, i don't believe these are chores a Game Master should be doing, i'm sure the designers we have could do a far better job on that than i could ever do, and i'm no good in marketing either, so asking me to promote sales through news isn't exactly the best idea...
The things i do to live on...

lunedì 27 febbraio 2012

One month for one hour...

Ok, i'm officially angry... there has been an in-game event that wouldn't work.
Bug reports have been sent, tests have been made for a whole month.
Yesterday i've been told by the developers that the issue has been fixed, i go on and try it, asking the players to help... again...
Same result as always.
I sent yet another bug report explaining that the event still doesn't work and i receive this reply:
"Ah! The event has to be set up one hour before the beginning for it to work"
And you tell me that one month later?
No comment...

domenica 26 febbraio 2012

Games and Me

This time the focus of the post is not on my job (even though i'll get to it at some point).
I wanted to talk a bit about my relationship with videogames.
I always liked videogames since i was a child, they weren't just fun, they were fascinating, small worlds born from the human intellect. When i was a child i always wondered how it could be possible to see those pictures moving on the screen, following my commands. I loved the stories behind the various videogames, they made me laugh, they made me sad, all kind of emotions came out from playing those games.
And so i decided that i want to be part of that world, i wanted to be able to create my own videogames, i wanted to write those fascinating stories, make people dream and have fun. Growing up though, i learned that making a videogame isn't as easy as it looks like, if you wanted to make one on your own you'd have to know a lot of things, even if you're not starting from the beginning.
I still wanted to be part of the gaming industries though, so i took the chance to become a Game Master. I may not be making any videogame, but with my effort, i can make an existing one more enjoyable for the players.

mercoledì 22 febbraio 2012

Not always things go the right way

Especially when it comes to Corean games.
Yes, the game i'm working with is developed by a Corean software house, i don't mean to say that they're all bad, but most of them are, and only a very small number of them is capable of developing high quality games.
This one sadly is not one of those.
Yesterday morning, a patch has been released wich was supposed to introduce a new feature. This feature should have worked as an indicator of the latency to the gaming server, allowing people to choose the server wich best suits their connection.
Sadly, it looks like this function overloads the server with data packs and it results in massive lagging for everybody.
Needless to say, i had to overwork, waiting for a pacth fixing this issue, wich came only several hours later.

giovedì 2 febbraio 2012

Is pointing out ignorance bad?

I am by no way a Nobel  nor a Pulitzer prize, i am no genius and i'm nowhere near to perfection.
But i'm one who puts pride in everything i do.
I try my best to become better and better at whatever i do, because i think there's always a chance that someday i'll become an even better person.
I consider knowing my own language as an honour, it may sound odd, it may sound cliché, but there is power in words.
The power to convey feelings, the power to convey a message, the power to let others understand what you mean.

Long intro i know, and if you stopped reading i don't blame you, but for the others who are still reading, let's get back to the question.
Is pointing out ignorance bad?
I'm recieving tickets about people having issues, tickets that sound like this:
"I have a problem, help me!" (notice i actually wrote that in an understandable form, they aren't always this clear)

Here is when i actually begin thinking if i'm talking to a moron or not. How am i supposed to help with your problem without knowing what said problem is?
Of course i go asking for more details, something like this:
"could you please explain in more detail what your problem is? The game doesn't work? Are you unable to log in? Does the game give you any kind of error message?"

One would expect an answer to at least one of those questions right?
Wrong!

"I need help! I Can't play the game!" (once again written in an understandable way)

There you get the confirmation of your previous thoughts, you're talking to a moron...

domenica 22 gennaio 2012

Everything's good!

Incredibly enough, the game is working without any major bugs.
The Master tools have been fixed and upgraded.
There haven't been any complaints in a while...
Everything is as good as it can be.

Ok... where's the catch?

lunedì 16 gennaio 2012

Forum Events!

As i said in my previous post, the Master Tools are not working properly, so, in order to issue gifts and rewards to players i have to make forum events (it's the only way i can get their IDs for now...).
Point is, in a game lacking fantasy (read creativity), what kind of forum events am i supposed to do?
Not to mention that the forums are kind of dead, it's a FPS we're talking about, there isn't stuff like fair play or friendship, just shoot at whatever is moving...
Anyway, i've tried with creative events (not much success... figures...), screenshots and video events, but people doesn't seem very cooperative... and to think that it's for their own good.

mercoledì 11 gennaio 2012

THIS is bad...

What is a Game Master without Game Master tools?
Something happened during a maintenance and the GM tools ended up not working anymore.
A Bug report was sent to the developers but they said it'll take at least a week to fix it...
I'm screwed...

lunedì 9 gennaio 2012

Foreign People...

I knew there would be foreign people playing this game.
I also knew some would ask for support.
I wasn't expecting the same idiot to ask the same question over and over again in a language nobody here is able to understand. Even after telling them that we can only provide support to people who speaks our same language (and i must say that often not even italian people can speak italian...), this one person keeps sending support tickets in his/her language.

I swear, if they send one more i'm going to ban them. There is a server for almost every language there is, go to yours or at least one you can understand!

domenica 8 gennaio 2012

The Game is Live!

Wow! I must say that i never thought we'd make it in time.
There have been so many issues prior to the launch of the game i thought it would get delayed (even more).
The game has been live and kicking for a few days now, and on the first day i already had to ban people for hacking and swearing...
Really, if you got a temper, do not play PvP games, it ruins your health too.
And Come on! Hacking? during a Beta period? Are you guys nuts? You're not going to gain anything from it, it's not even fun!
Anyway, back to handling support tickets, i foresee a lot of banning! *grins*

lunedì 2 gennaio 2012

When you don't have full powers over the game...

Yeah, it's like that, GMs aren't almighty, there are things we just can't do.
I believe it to be even more true when your company does not make the game you have to work for.
As i said in a previous post, as a GM i'm also supposed to test the game and it's patches before they get released, whenever a bug is found i have to make a report wich goes to the company wich developed the game.
Long story short: for as much as i want the game to be fixed of all of it's terrible bugs, there's nothing i can do to actually fix them, and not because i lack the knowledge to do so, but because my company (and with them me too) is not allowed to touch the game...