Originally published at: Look at this old commercial to teach stoners how to be professional game testers | Boing Boing
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I remember this ad very well, “Tightening up the graphics” was such a meme when these ads where around. I think they had another crappy commercial that also had a line that became a meme.
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Someone think of the parents…
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Wow, weed was around back then? Blows my mind, Dude.
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Technically you COULD get a job playtesting games, you just don’t need a degree for it.
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how does one “tighten” graphics?
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Oh, you 90’s! Not sure if it was intentional or daft but nice extra touch with “Smack My Bitch Up” in the background audio right as the female supervisor appears.
With a graphics wrench.
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“Not intended for residents of Texas or Massachusetts” LOL. you saps gotta get REAL jobs.
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I just can’t imagine these ads actually worked for them. This ad is such wonderfully extreme gibberish it immediately calls into question the reputability of the “college” offering any related courses, even if you know nothing about game development. Every single element is nonsense. Are they game testers - if so, why are they talking about “tightening up” the graphics? (What does that even mean? And why are they doing it level by level?) Why is the boss implying they need to design a game? (And how can she “have” a game if it hasn’t even been designed yet? Also, this is a company of at least medium size but apparently their development process is completely fucked, as these tester/artist/designers are only three levels into one game but are already behind on designing the next one, with a whole dev team doing nothing while waiting for those design docs.) Then the guys talk about how playing games prepared them for this job - which implies it’s a testing position, which has no relevant degree or study program. (Although it’s a common delusion among gamers that being good at playing games prepares you to develop games.)
Right, so what’s the ad even for? They had some sort of “School of Technology,” but they’re not talking about programming jobs. Maybe presenting it as a programming course would have turned off their target stoner demographic who wanted jobs playing games, but it also could have been because they didn’t actually teach programming…
Now I’m just trying to imagine this kind of ad for some other area of study. Apparently Westwood has a “School of Automotive Technology,” too. Did they have ads for that? Did it go something like…
Two stoner dudes sit behind the wheel of a fancy car in a garage, making “vroom vroom” noises.
Serious Boss Lady comes in: Hey guys, finished testing that car yet? I’ve got another one I need designed.
Dude2: We just finished the brakes and need to do some mechanic-ing on it.
Serious Boss Lady: Great.
Dude1: My mom said I would never get anywhere spending all my time sitting in a car!
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Tuco knows.
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Thankfully a lot of the intended audience were so high they thought they’d dreamed the ad up, and so never even called the number.
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The best part to me has always been the dig at his nagging mom at the end - it just feels so juvenile especially when you add in the faceless boss-lady invoking the “muppet babies” nanny archetype.
How old are you, man?
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My Dad was a beta tester-- he worked on Civilization for mac, and Universe II for the Apple II among others.
However, he received minimal compensation (finished copy of the game-- yay), and the games would be buggy and unfinished when he received them. Universe II, for instance, was shipped to testers with stubs for a text adventure component that wasn’t incorporated until later in the testing cycle. And when the game crashed, the developers liked to receive detailed bug reports and debugger output that drew on his experience as a systems engineer.
I think he would have enjoyed open-betas and steam early access.
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Uh, “stoners”, really? Those guys look more like the Winklevoss twins or jocks who would beat up stoners, surely?
I mean, one of them is wearing a salmon-colored sweater 
from 2015. Of course Westwood is mentioned at the very beginning.,
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