Quality Assurance Analyst
David Brannigan
A Speedrunner and Hobbyist Glitch Hunter turned Quality Assurance Analyst.Through long-term participation in the speedrunning community I have gained a deep understanding of how the combination of mechanical synergy and player input can change the impression a game can leave a player with, as well as granting it more (or less) value as a product.I now utilise over a decade's worth of external game-breaking and design-stressing knowledge to bring ambitious and reformed testing philosophies to studios worldwide.Since 2020, I have assisted multiple publishers and development studios across the world in carrying projects through a variety of milestones, from announcement and demo preparation to stakeholder delivery, launch support and post-launch refinement.
Skills
Glitch Hunting & The Loose Thread Method
I utilitise methods that have evolved since 2011 to break design, observe mechanical synergy and explore potential severity of loose threads, informed by long-term personal involvement and contribution to a handful of notorious speedrunning and glitch hunting communities, now adapted for industry use.This experience allows me to efficiently analyse bug priority as well as inherent risk involved in a given fix. I'm then able to identify potential routes for fix failure by globally interacting with the affected issue's position within the project and theorising ways to utilise that bug or fix to pull the thread out further.This ultimately results in cleaner fixes, sharper triage and seemingly innocuous issues being accurately prescribed as flagged for immediate attention, lest the thread grows longer as development continues and the associated tech debt balloons.
Test Cases, Cycles and Architecture
The ability to build comprehensive Full-Scope Test Cycles that not only exist as a compendium of isolated, efficient and thorough sweeps of specific focus points of a product but are also constructed with specifically designed detail so anyone on a team can execute a given Test Case, even those that aren't deeply familiar with the product, thus extracting useful bug and polish data to be actioned at the drop of a hat.These Test Cycles are also constructed in a framework that makes it easy to adapt Cases to new development directions and implementations without needing to throw the Cases out entirely, lowering the time-frame needed for Development-Wide Cycle Creation.
Deep-Dive Reproduction Reports
Decade-deep experience in the documentation of bugs, issues and exploits that concisely explain concepts and reproduction methods with terminology accessible to all.
Communication
An avid enthusiasm and belief in close communication between departments to ensure everyone is as well informed about what matters, when it matters.
Workflow Optimisation
Ability to recognise sub-optimal testing workflows and a desire to improve every test environment to bolster productivity.
Balance Evaluation
A critical eye for User Experience, pitting by-design mechanics against each other to identify oversights and potential issues that may impact user enjoyment or detract from developer intent.
User Report Exploration
Independent user report exploration and archiving with thorough prioritisation, best utilised to alert teams of critical issues when necessary
Software Experience
JIRA, Zephyr Scale, Hansoft, Unity, Steamworks, Discord, Slack, Teams, Miro, Office 365, Google Sheets, LibreOffice, OBS