NHL 17

February 2016 - April 2017

Dev Support | Live QA | Assistant Producer

Dev Support

Performed general game testing
Reviewed live content for Hockey Ultimate Team
Went over Feature Briefs with designers and devs, also wrote Test Briefs for the features
Reported on game bugs and escalated live issues

Hockey Ultimate Team

Hockey Ultimate Team is a card collecting game mode in NHL. You can earn cards by collecting coins by playing the game and then opening card packs from the store. Cards could also be obtained by completing sets of cards by trading in specific players or collectibles for an upgraded version or another random card. Build your dream roster of players and challenge others to see whose team comes out on top.

While on Hockey Ultimate Team, I tested basically everything from playing games, completing sets to testing a new feature called Synergy. Synergies were a new stat for players that could be used to boost stats of a card if they had matching Synergies with another card on the team. A lot of effort went into making sure cards with matching Synergies had their stats boosted properly. This consisted of setting up specific teams with specific synergies and then going in game and seeing if there was a notable change. Then also looking at the back end stats for players to verify that the stats were changing properly for every Synergy that was added to the game.

Draft Champions

Draft Champions is a game mode in which the user selects a theme and then drafts various players across 20 rounds according to that theme. The user then competes with their team of 20 players against varying levels of AI difficulty or other players.

Draft Champions was a mode I tested extensively prior to the release of NHL 17. This mode was a new addition to the game so a lot of time was spent playing and verifying different functionalities of how the mode worked. Along with this, I learned how the mode was set up in the backend so that I could more finely test the workings of how players were generated and how themes would be chosen. I worked very closely with the SE's when game breaking bugs or exploits were found with the mode to figure out what could be causing it or how it could be fixed.

Live Support

While I was working on NHL 17, in early 2017 I took over the position of doing the Live QA for Hockey Ultimate Team. This meant verifying daily card releases or events and making sure everything was set up properly for the Live Environment. Day to day it would be playing a game of NHL in the morning for game health, then working with the Assistant Producers to verify any content they would need tested. I'd also verify any art assets to make sure all of the stats of players matched up and anything else on the banners that would need to be checked. All of this would be done before 4pm when we would release the content. Once the content was released, I'd be verifying that everything is appearing in game as well as watching the Auction House in game to see if anyone has listed the cards that released to it to verify they were being obtained. I would also watch Reddit and Discord to see if any users have come across any issues and if so, I'd report it to the Assistant Producers to resolve.

Assistant Producer

After doing the Live QA for the NHL team for a few months, I quickly moved into an Assistant Producer position which was in control of planning/designing/releasing live content in the game.

The transition for Live QA to Assistant Producer was pretty smooth. I quickly picked up all of the day to day tasks since I had a pretty good insight from doing the Live QA for the team. With the hockey season coming closer to an end, the Stanley Cup playoffs were a big portion of what we were focused on before moving onto NHL 18. Each night there were playoff games we would be closely watching each of the games that were actively being played to watch for who the player of the game might be. During this time we would be planning a release plan for whoever the specific person would be and getting art and other things created so that once the game ended, we could release the player. We would do some final checks to make sure everything is running smoothly and wrap up the night. In the mornings, we would scroll through Reddit and Discord and other places to make sure there weren't any issues that we could have missed overnight and then we would start looking at KPIs on how many packs would be bought, how many cards have been pulled, what the price of the card is; all to make sure these matched what we would have estimated prior. There were a few other things we'd be working on for the remainder of the year but our focus would move towards designing and planning content for NHL 18.

Google Sites

Report abuse