So I've been on "The Old Republic" now for 3 months (almost 4) and we're still at a blindingly fast rate of change occurring - the server I'm doing most of my work on has polished, sparkly content for me to rub against on a daily basis and each day I'm more impressed with what I'm finding to look at.
I just spent the last 3 months, however, not rubbing against sparkly content, but rather - staring at words on a page, inundated with "My Lord" "Master" and "Dark Side". Part of my job as a Story Analyst is to go through all of the dialog to check for flow and consistency, but to also check for quality. At BioWare we use a system called paraphrasing for our dialog heavy games - what this means is you'll get a small list of dialog snipits to choose from, and when you choose that snipit it should lead into a longer, more verbose expansion of that dialog - for example:
1) You Better.
2) No Thanks.
3) Tell me more.
These could lead into:
1) When I'm done with this there had better be something valuable waiting, with my name on it.
2) This really isn't my kind of affair, sorry - not interested.
3) What else can you tell me about paraphrasing?
Now imagine doing that for hundreds of hours of dialog. Don't get me wrong, I love my job and I love the company - but next time you find yourself thinking, "Man making video games would be so cool" just remember not _all_ the jobs are making things go PewPewPew! ;-)
I just spent the last 3 months, however, not rubbing against sparkly content, but rather - staring at words on a page, inundated with "My Lord" "Master" and "Dark Side". Part of my job as a Story Analyst is to go through all of the dialog to check for flow and consistency, but to also check for quality. At BioWare we use a system called paraphrasing for our dialog heavy games - what this means is you'll get a small list of dialog snipits to choose from, and when you choose that snipit it should lead into a longer, more verbose expansion of that dialog - for example:
1) You Better.
2) No Thanks.
3) Tell me more.
These could lead into:
1) When I'm done with this there had better be something valuable waiting, with my name on it.
2) This really isn't my kind of affair, sorry - not interested.
3) What else can you tell me about paraphrasing?
Now imagine doing that for hundreds of hours of dialog. Don't get me wrong, I love my job and I love the company - but next time you find yourself thinking, "Man making video games would be so cool" just remember not _all_ the jobs are making things go PewPewPew! ;-)