Zipper Profile: Jay Embry

[shane]

Our Developer Profile series introduces you to the many faces of Zipper Interactive. From designers to artists to programmers to audio engineers to producers, you’ll meet the creative minds that make Zipper what it is (and maybe learn a few surprises along the way).

This week we meet up with Jay Embry, Test Lead here at Zipper Interactive. It's his job to help make sure that our games are as polished as can be with nary a bug in sight. This means that Jay and the rest of the QA department have seen practically every single way you can break a game, both figuratively and literally. He's sure to have some great stories on this week's Zipline podcast.

 

Job Title: Test Lead

Years at Zipper: 5

Years in the Industry: 10

Favorite Zipper Game: MAG

Favorite Non-Zipper Game: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Motto: “Anything worth doing is worth doing right”

What is it that you do specifically, and can you walk us through your typical day?

I am the lead for the group of testers we have on MAG. At this point, we make sure we are aware of the issues that are currently present in the Live game, as well as any issues that need to be addressed for patches that we are working to deploy to the public.

In a typical day, we have new builds of the game that have bug fixes as well as newer functionality that we are working on putting out. I make sure to get these new builds hosted up on our local servers for the team to run through and verify the fixes. We also check the build for overall stability so that it could potentially be sent to Sony for further testing, which will then eventually get deployed to the Live servers.

We also participate in playtests that we hold internally to verify new functionality and new tunings to the weapons, vehicles, etc.

How did you get into the industry?

I was actually working in the warehouse at Nintendo and heard that they had a “Game Testing” department. Since I had always been into videogames I thought, “This would be AWESOME!” since I was still under the impression that testers just “played games all day”. I learned a LOT in the first year I was testing, and even though it was a lot more work than I had originally thought it would be, I really got into it.

What are some other games or projects that you’ve worked on in the past?

I worked on a lot of titles at Nintendo. The contract testers at Nintendo typically didn’t get their names in the credits, but I had worked on a couple of Pokemon titles, Starcraft 64, as well as other GBA and GameCube games. After that, I got jobs at other studios/publishers as a contract tester. I worked on MechAssault on the Xbox, and I also worked on Dungeon Siege 2 for PC. So I have worked on a wide variety of titles.

What’s your proudest moment?

Other than my son being born, it was when I started to see my name in the credits of the games I worked on.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans?

You guys kick ass, and we appreciate everything that you do to help us identify the issues. And everything you do to keep our community strong and fun!

Don't forget to click here and submit your questions to Jay for this week's Zipline podcast!

 

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