Down in the trenches – a tale of commitment and greatness
Hi, my name is CCP Lemur. I am the liaison for the Equipment Certification and Anomaly Investigations Division (ECAID), aka the Bug Hunters, and want to tell you how great they are.
Who are these Bug Hunters you are speaking of?
They are the oldest division of ISD to be created and have been a very valuable partner for the QA department and EVE as a whole ever since. They are lead by fearless veterans and staffed with committed, enthusiastic and hard-working hunters.
The most important part of their work is to go through the famous bug report list. Whenever you, one of our beloved customers, submits a bug report about an encountered issue, it gets added to this list. From there a bug hunter will start to investigate the issue. If there are things missing or not clear enough, the report will be sent back to you with the plea for more details. Once the issue has been confirmed by the hunter it will be made into a defect and the QA department takes it from there. The defect will then make its way through the system and get fixed soonTM.
Since you guys are really busy reporting bugs (every single one is appreciated) the list can grow considerably at times. To illustrate this we have fancy graphs!
These show the incredible amount of work the ECAID team is doing for EVE.
The first graph shows the amount of reports on the list. ECAID tries to keep the total amount very low, but before and after a major release the list grows considerably since all of you jump on the public test server Singularity and go on a reporting frenzy.
This second graph is showing the amount of reports that got filtered.
· Defects closed: Defects made by the hunters that got fixed by CCP.
· Defects manually: Defects made directly by Bug Hunter team.
· Defects created: Defects made from bug reports.
· Reports attached: Bug reports that got attached to an already existing defect.
· Reports trashed: Bug reports trashed mostly due to missing information or people mistaking the reporting system for the petitions. Trashed means the report goes back to the issuer with an explanation on what is missing and can then be updated.
As you can see it takes quite an effort to bring the list down after each release and this is achieved by less than 50 people for the most part.
Do you want to know more?
Of course you do. The Bug Hunters also help us out with all the fleet testing on Singularity, narrowing down some elusive bugs and helping players with testing.
Members who are fluent in the supported localized languages of the EVE client (currently German and Russian) are giving feedback on new versions and will be given small translations tasks from time to time themselves.
They also get to experience all sorts and styles of game play during their testing which they might never encounter as player on Tranquility and thus widen their understanding of the game as a whole.
Another intriguing bonus is being among the very first persons who see new features outside of CCP. Their feedback on early design is very much valued and they can toy around with all of it on our internal servers.
For some of them being a good member of ECAID is the first step on getting into the games industry for a living (it makes for a nice addition on any resume when applying somewhere) or leads even to an internship or employment by CCP. There are currently about half dozen former Bug Hunters employed by CCP and three interns that came from the team. And not to mention all the employees that emerged from other ISD divisions.
I want to apply!
If you want to dive into the depths of EVE, are a quality minded person with attention to detail and a team player then start by filling out this form and submit your application. Keep in mind that you have to be 18 years or older to be applicable for legal reasons.
With the ever increasing number of Mac users the team is also looking for new members to help testing issues on the supported Macs.
If accepted you will become part of an interesting group of people who are all motivated by the same shared goal to improve EVE for everyone and make for a fun but committed work environment! You will be trained by a senior member and we all have an open ear for questions and problems you might encounter.
Already Applied?
Unfortunately it can sometimes take the leads anything from a week to a month to process the applicants they get depending on the volume. If you have not heard from them within a month you can email the leads.
As you can clearly see, these guys are doing a great job and you can become a part of this too!
Remember, the only good bug is a dead bug.
- CCP Lemur
