After getting my feet wet as a Tester, heading into the second half of my first year at Interplay was a whirlwind experience, to put it lightly. I had only been working there for about 5 months, testing games like VR Soccer ’96, Cyberia, and Casper, when in early 1996 I was selected for a Lead Tester position. Prior to this, the only leadership experience I had was working briefly as a Floor Supervisor at the pub down the street at UC Irvine. I was definitely more comfortable fixing a good meatball sandwich that I was managing a team.

I felt so incredibly ill-prepared, even though I had displayed some rather ugly arrogance earlier regarding my readiness to be a Lead (more on that in a future post). I even emailed the Director of Quality Assurance about how I was having second thoughts and that they should pick someone else. Both he and the Assistant Director came by, calmed me down, and said they had every confidence that I would do well.

Even though there wasn’t any formal training, I was completely supported. That pep talk gave me enough of a boost to sign the dotted line on the promotion. I often referred back to that moment throughout my career, since I would see those exact same expressions of hesitation and fear on the faces of future employees making that difficult transition from individual contributor to management.

The first game that I was Lead on was Quicksilver Software’s Conquest of the New World for the PC. I was already a fan of theirs since my friends and I had played lots of Castles back in high school, so I was excited to dive in. However, stepping into the project as it was nearing its crescendo was overwhelming.

The bug list — which was tracked and maintained entirely in Microsoft Word and not a database — was massive. It was practically a second job keeping it updated, which is a big reason why I rarely left work. Lead positions were still hourly back then; not something you see much of these days. That helped ease the sting of the long hours we collectively put in, but I was young, and it didn’t really bother me. You always knew which teams were doing lots of overtime, too: they would have the newest and nicest cars in the parking lot.

In terms of my health, I was decently fit when I was 21, but it didn’t take long to develop what was affectionately known as the “tester gut” around the office. I still carry it with me! Fast food was the norm and poor sleeping habits certainly didn’t help. Overtime meals — provided by our Producers — would include pizza, Chili’s, Claim Jumper, and all manner of other take-out options. I still loved playing videogames and hanging out with my friends in my spare time too, so that meant staying up even later. I honestly don’t remember many nights where I was asleep before 2 a.m. Nowadays? 9 p.m. hits and I’m ready for bed.

Overtime took its toll in other personal ways as well, triggering a rather bad break-up with my girlfriend at the time. Although it was never that solid of a relationship to begin with, my work was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And wouldn’t you know it? It happened over the phone one night while I was still at the office trying to get Conquest out the door. Perfect.

Overall, though, the whole Conquest project was a great thing, and I have to somewhat selfishly admit that being credited as the Lead for the first time felt really good! I don’t think the game sold well, receiving middling reviews, but I didn’t care. I was still extremely proud of the work we did. My testing team and I spent a number of weeks onsite at Quicksilver’s office prior to it going gold, working directly with the developers. I learned so much about game design and development, and the small office culture affected me in a very positive way. It’s those “in the trenches” experiences that really stand out for me as I reflect on my career. They’re unbelievably stressful on the body and mind, but they have the potential to bring teams together like nothing else can.

After a short break to recover — and a patch or two — QA started receiving a number of prototype video cards. I was used to playing most PC games in chunky 320×200 resolution, and with 3D-intensive games like Descent, sometimes in an even smaller window than that. These new cards sported built-in 3D acceleration and bilinear filtering, and allowed those same games to look and run smoothly in 640×480 or higher. Even though those early cards were buggy, I immediately knew this was going to be a big deal for games. My enthusiasm for the technology (and probably some begging) got me put in charge of a specialized team that focused on testing our games with these cards, which was pretty cool.

There were many emerging players and names on the 3D hardware front — S3 ViRGE, Matrox Mystique, ATI Rage, 3Dfx Voodoo, etc. — and they were all chomping at the bit to show off their capabilities. Interplay had a new building a few miles away from their main location that housed several production teams and the OEM division. The latter was responsible for working out deals with the various hardware vendors to customize and bundle our games with their gear, and OEM was where all those 3D cards were coming from.

Because the business was growing so fast, they soon needed their own QA team. Although it was tough to leave the group of people that I had gotten to know so well, it was a great opportunity, so I, along with a few others, packed up our things and moved over in the middle of 1996.

It would turn out to be a rough patch in my career, but a very valuable one as well.