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Most of our time there was spent learning about the creation of the game and the cinematics, or discussing the technology used and community features... generally stuff I don't much care about but most people do. Then we had a few hours of hands-on time with the game in multiplayer and were asked to provide our feedback - stuff like "does it feel C&C?" "is it fun?" etc. What they got from us was a full page of UI, gameplay and balance suggestions.
Fast forward one year to December 2007 and I receive an email inviting me to "balance test" the upcoming C&C3 expansion "Kane's Wrath". This time there will be no presentations or mentions of single-player anything - just straight up "play the shit out of this game for 4 straight days against great players and give us your feedback". Now a probably unnecessary confession here: I'm a "fan" of the Command and Conquer series. It was the franchise that made me fall in love with the RTS genre and I'm forever attached. I also happen to enjoy multiplayer RTS at the competitive level. So when asked to stay a week in L.A. in a 5-star hotel, during sub-zero weather at home, to play a new C&C non-stop for 4 days with the world's top players, there really wasn't a choice to be made.
Here was my "office":
We'd play from about 08:00 to 17:00 every day, then have a one-hour discussion amongst ourselves followed by a one-hour discussion with the devs. After being fed for the 12th time that day, we'd retire back to the Hotel du Pimp and play SSBM until exhaustion set in. The next morning we'd arrive to discover a new build of the game incorporating our suggestions. By weeks end, we had done our job and cured the game of many "OMG IMBA!!" strats.
A month later I received another email inviting me back for round 2. So off I was again to L.A. to spend more time in the room of pwnage:
Another 50 hours of Kane's Wrath gameplay (and another 12 hours of SSBM) later, the game was in a shape that put its earlier incarnations to shame. I can't speak for the single player aspect, but as it stands (or stood when we left it) it's definitely an improvement over the original in multiplayer. As someone who's spent a ridiculous amount of time throughout their life dissecting gameplay for nothing but fun, the opportunity to work in that environment and help improve the quality of a new C&C game was just super fucking cool.
left to right: WCG USA champ "ReLaTiViT", embedded QA tester "Jason", embedded QA tester "Nate", "AGMLauncher" of gamereplays.org, WCG USA runner-up "KhuFu", me, the infamous "fox333", and WCG World champ "d.Apollo"
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