Company: Supermassive Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment
Project Overview
Hidden Agenda was a cinematic crime thriller and a key title in Sony’s “PlayLink” initiative, which allowed players to control the game using their iOS or Android devices instead of a standard controller. The project’s goal was to create a shared, social experience where up to six players could vote on critical decisions to shape the branching narrative, blurring the lines between film and video games.
My Role & Responsibilities
While concurrently testing two other titles, I was an integral member of the core QA team for Hidden Agenda. My responsibilities included:
- Mastering a new testing ecosystem, becoming proficient in testing on mobile devices and understanding the unique challenges of using them as game controllers.
- Testing both the cooperative Story Mode and the competitive mode, which involved complex multiplayer sessions with hidden objectives for certain players.
- Conducting deep narrative testing, ensuring all branching story paths, character permutations, and choice based scene alterations functioned as intended.
- Providing thorough testing for the crucial E3 demo, which was the game’s first public showing to the press and players.
The Challenge
The main challenge was the immense number of variables. The game’s signature branching narrative meant that every scene had multiple permutations based on player choices and which characters were still alive. Testing all these paths across two different game modes with up to six players was a significant logistical and technical challenge. The E3 demo presented a particularly high stakes challenge, as any major bug could negatively impact the game’s public debut.
Gameplay Highlights
Here is a highlight from the E3 Demo that I was responsible for testing.
My Approach & Actions
- Systematically charted and tested the game’s complex narrative branches to ensure story consistency and logical progression, regardless of player choices.
- Specialised in finding niche, hard to reproduce bugs by leveraging my deep knowledge of the story paths and unique gameplay situations.
- Authored detailed and reproducible bug reports in DevTrack, particularly for issues related to multiplayer connectivity and the mobile app interface.
- During the E3 demo testing, I used intuition and methodical problem solving to investigate a stubborn bug where a character would permanently disappear from all scenes if the game was restarted on the same save file.
- Isolated the root cause of the E3 bug by discovering it was tied to corrupted save data. I proposed a simple fix: deleting the save data between playthroughs, which allowed the developers to quickly resolve a critical issue before the public demo.
Impact & Results
- My thorough testing of the E3 demo and discovery of the “disappearing character” bug prevented a major issue from impacting the game’s crucial first impression with the press and public.
- I received praise from the development team for my ability to track down the root cause of the E3 bug when others were stuck, saving valuable time and resources.
- My deep knowledge of the game’s branching paths made me a highly effective tester for finding unique, edge case bugs that were otherwise difficult to trigger.
- Contributed to the successful launch of a technically innovative title that pushed the boundaries of interactive storytelling.
Technologies & Tools Used
- DevTrack (for bug reporting and tracking)
- Confluence (for test plans and QA knowledge base)
- Unreal Engine 4
- iOS & Android mobile devices
- Proprietary Supermassive Games debug tools