For the first week of testing the new guys were partnered up with a more experienced tester. My partner was Jake. He had worked on several Bullfrog games before and was starting a three month contract. To begin with, Jake showed me round the game we were going to be testing (FA Premier League Football Manager 2000). My first impressions of the game were not very good. I thought it was a poorly done ripoff of Championship Manager but it did grow on me after a while, especially after the 3d match engine was put in. This was something that new at the time and really helped set it apart, not that it helped sales much.

 Jake also taught me how to report a bug to the programmers which came in handy a couple of hours later when I found an issue with the game. This elated me a bit but unfortunately Jake brought me crashing down to earth by informing me that that bug had already been found. This particular version of the game had already been tested for several days previously and most of the bugs had been found. Wanting to impress, I took finding a new bug on as a challenge but was unable to find any until the next version showed up a few days later, upon which I really went to town on it.  

There were some interesting problems associated with working in a mansion in the middle of the surrey countryside. Such as where to get lunch. This dilemma was quickly solved when a delivery of several platters full of sandwiches turned up from the local pub. It was nice of Bullfrog to buy us lunch although they didn’t have a lot of choice seeing as there weren’t shops anywhere near the place. The other problem was what to do during lunch, well we had a bunch of football mad testers and access to some large flat gardens to run around in so the obvious thing to do in that situation, we played football.   

 About a month into the job Darren announced that the offices would be closed for a week as all of the permanent employees where going to for a bonding session. This not only meant not only we would not be getting any free food but we would also not be getting paid. This made for a hairy few weeks finance wise. It is a shame I didn’t get to go as this trip seems to have entered into gaming legend, with almost every EA employee I have spoken to who was there at the time has a story about it.  

 It didn’t take long for me to get used to the routine, every couple of days a new version of the game would show up and we would test it and both try to break it and see what they had fixed. I still disliked the game at that point but I the work itself was really enjoyable. I quickly saw that I had a knack for testing as I was finding loads of bugs (My game playing skills sucked though). My fellow testers were a laugh too, there was one guy who was an amateur footballer playing for Woking FC. He looked up the squad in game and was pretty annoyed when he saw that his stats were very low. He wanted to raise it as a bug but the lead tester nixed the idea.

 We moved back to the main Bullfrog offices about three months after I started as there was space available for us. To begin with we were put into a small room

crammed with machines with no windows, not that they would have helped. The windows were polarised so that no natural light could get through which made the place look dingy. Being in the main office building as opposed to the mansion also meant an end to the lunch time football sessions, although we did try to have a match in the car park one time, it didn’t work out.

 Along with the light levels, the move caused the working atmosphere to become a little darker. The first couple of days we were there were especially stressful as they started to cut guys who weren’t pulling their weight. We had no idea on the criteria they were using so as far as we were concerned everyone was at risk. I was extremely worried even though I was leading the bug found league table (the main yardstick they used). They also introduced a shift system with the first shift starting at seven in the morning while the late shift started at three to eleven. This was an unexpected turn of events but I was cool with it. Although working in the evening did impact my social life, the late shift did get a free pizza delivered so it wasn’t all bad. Getting in at seven was a little surreal as we were the only ones there.  

In July I got my first freebie. Freebies are a common part of the gaming industry and although they are usually meant for the media it is not usual for some stuff to be handed out to the people working on the game. Over the years I have been given a bunch of stuff ranging from the standard t shirts to goo in a plastic jar (don’t ask). This first freebie wasn’t an object but a trip. The powers that be had hiring the local cinema and were taking us to see Star Wars Episode One on release day. We were quite excited by this except for one tester who had flown over to to see it shortly after it was released in the (boy, do I feel sorry for that guy).

On the day we all walked into across into a local bar where we were fed breakfast and the management gave speeches going on about how great our games were and how proud they were of us. After the film I got interviewed by a local radio station about it as I was leaving the cinema, I said something about it it being good which raised a chuckle the next day when we heard it on the radio. The people on the late shift kinda got the short straw though as they then had to go back to work for another eight hours. I was on early shift that week so I was ok.