Champions Online Introduces Alan Salmassian

The Cryptic team is introducing Alan Salmassian in the latest Champions Online Meet the Team feature. Alan is the quality assurance lead tester for the upcoming superhero MMO. The QA team has the monumental task of making sure everything works the way it should. Alan writes test plans, hunts down bugs, organizes bug reports, checks play balance and makes sure that Champions Online will be a fun experience for players.

Alan started his career at Accolade three years ago and now devotes his talents to Cryptic’s development team. During his bug squashing escapades, he’s run into a few memorable problems, but none as weird as this.

There’s one power we have that sends a ball of energy out to damage your opponents. You don’t need to target them, because the ball will travel to the nearest foe. However, there was an issue with the artificial intelligence where the bad guys would start to run away from the ball, and it would follow them! It made it really easy to clear a room. But that’s not the weird part. The strange thing is that the AI started affecting placed objects, such as signs, barrels and computers, so that when you activated the power, not only would all of the enemies run away, but so would many of the inanimate objects! I asked if we could get the Benny Hill theme, “Yakkity Sax,” to play while it happened, but I think they’re just going to fix it instead.

Alan has some sage advice for aspiring game developers.

First of all, remember that this is a business. As laid-back as it seems compared to the insurance industry, if you want to get ahead, you’ll need to be a professional. That means you’ll have to do what you say you’re going to do and when. Secondly, you’ll have to pay your dues, which means that you’ll probably have to work for less money than at some other, more boring job. You’ll have to be the one who decides what standard of living and quality of life you will accept. Thirdly, while you don’t need a college degree, having any college degree shows to a prospective employer that you can finish a project that will take many years to complete, which is exactly what most games are. Follow your heart, but make sure that you are prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that appear.

You can read more about the life of a game developer on Champions Online.