Quality Assurance Analyst

 Overview

Ghost of Tsushima is Sucker Punch Productions latest open world RPG, set in feudal Japan during the Mongol invasion of 1274. You play as the last surviving samurai of Tsushima, Jin Sakai, who must abandon their honor in order to free Japan. Ghost of Tsushima was the first game I worked on in the game industry after my graduation from SCAD.

My Role

I was brought on as a quality assurance analyst around the last quarter of Ghost’s development. Much of the game was complete… much was not. I tracked and reported bugs, provided gameplay feedback to leads, and worked alongside mission designers to help create the best possible gaming experiences. However, my time working on the main campaign for Ghost was relatively breif as I transitioned into working on their multiplayer mode, Ghost of Tsushima: Legends.

Ghost of Tsushima: Legends

Ghost of Tsushima: Legends is a co-op multiplayer mode for Ghost of Tsushima set in the haunting universe of Japanese myth and folklore. It operates on a class system: Samurai, Hunter, Ronin, or Assassin, and features an array of missions and an endgame raid. Legends is separate from the single-player campaign of Ghost of Tsushima, but included as part of the full game.

For Legends Mode, I had to run tons of networking tests and constantly evaluate the integrity of the mode’s co-op features. Eventually, I became a QA point of contact for the Legends Mode environment art team. I would attend their daily meetings, keep track of issues, and make sure their needs were taken care of by the QA team. I was essentially the interpreter between the QA leads and the environment art team.

Near the end of my contract, Covid hit, and we were forced to begin work from home. Pushing through the final phases of bug polish during this time was rough, but in the end we released a game the entire team was very, very proud of.