Something's Different at Cryptic

[GameBanshee News]

A new update on the Champions Online website shows a (positive, I'd say) change in method at Cryptic.

I was inspired to write this short entry because we just got done with something internally that we'd never, never done before. We finished a zone and were just about to head into working on something new. But we felt that the zone needed some attention. Sure, QA had identified some bugs in it, but the zone did "work." But the one thing we weren't entirely sure about was whether the zone was fun.

So we shut down the Champions team for two weeks. And everyone played the game. Each person was required to play for at least an hour each day, and a goal for the whole team was set for at-home play hours. As a reward, if the team played for 600 total hours for the month of June, the company directors would hold a BBQ for them. As people played, we expected them to use an in-game tool to log bugs, comments, suggestions and criticisms.

We generated several thousand entries. Our lead designer, Randy Mosiondz, and producer, Chris Lena, triaged these bugs every day and assigned them out to individuals on the team. If someone didn't have anything to fix, he or she would then try to tackle someone else's bugs. We wanted the whole team focused on just one thing: making this zone great.