Deep in the darkest corners of Bungie Studios is a little room filled with computers... known to myself as the refrigerated sardine can. It's nice, about 10 of us are all crammed in a room with about 60 computers and over 200 X Box 360 game councils. All day today I was doing Black Box testing (testing a released product with no debugging tools) on the X-Box Live server for the Halo 3 Multi-player Beta. It was kinda cool. I must have started and dropped over 80 games today, but it was all in the name of finding a few certain bugs that they have been trying to track down.
I found it entertaining that we were getting out early today and only working an 8 hour day. I guess typically we will be working 60-80 hour weeks for the next few months. including nights and weekends.
It's cool though, the normal work day is Mon - Fri, 10AM - 6:30PM, and everything outside of that is overtime. I get paid vacation time, and certain holidays we get payed for even if we don't work.
but I'm not really supposed to talk about what I do... I'm just supposed to play dumb about everything... including what the beta test (publically available now) is like and stuff like that. But I'm really happy. It really is my dream job! I mean come on... how many people get to play am entire video game beginning to end 4 months before it comes out... get to give a vote on what skins the characters will end up with in the RCs (Release Candidates)... and even get to have to potential to have glitches I find fixed? it's so sweet!
And all for the sacrifice of working a butt load of overtime... It's really not bad at all... it was the quickest 8 hours I ever worked... free snacks... we had a holiday barbecue... free pop and juice... it's just great! I can't wait until I get my badge and bus pass... unfortunately I had to drive to work today, and I will probably drive at least the next couple days, but then I'll be taking the bus so that I can have some much needed reading time.
anyway... that was my first day. I need to go take the dog for a walk or something...
Later,
SteveO
