Quality assurance tester at vanguard games
In February of 2014 I started as a QA intern at Vanguard Games in Amsterdam. I worked on a couple of different games including: Base Busters, Halo: Spartan Assault and Halo: Spartan Strike. I was responsible for conducting functional and qualitative testing of builds and tools, reporting issues accurately into a bug tracking database (JIRA), ensure issues and risks found were communicated to the relevant parties, provide feedback to aid in development and I learned how to work using SCRUM as a management tool. I tested games on several different platforms including: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and mobile devices. After 5 months, when my internship ended, I was offered a freelance contract to continue working as a QA tester until the end of the year.
A fun fact about Halo: Spartan Assault is that one of the bugs that I found is still in there. When you come out of stealth and shoot an automatic weapon, some of the bullets will go sideways. It is a minor bug and it was set to "Won't Fix" but it is still in there. You can see it in action in the clip below.
Game Design
During my time at Vanguard I was also able to do some design work when one of the designers went on holiday. He entrusted me with designing and implementing the Challenges and Rewards in Base Busters as well as making sure that all buildings and structures had 8 upgrades instead of 4. Upgrades are done on a curve rather than just doubling values, so this took a lot of tweaking and testing. When he returned, we sat down with one of the managers to go over and evaluate the work I had done and the decisions I had made. They were satisfied with the end result.