The Trenches

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Isaac: The amount of work they're expecting to wring out of us is herculean. Honestly, I think Hercules would find this difficult. Cora: At least we'll never get any recognition. And we'll probably be fired.

The Trenches is a webcomic by Scott Kurtz, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins. Each strip is released with a true story "from an actual tester about their experiences in the industry".

Former game developer Isaac Cox has been brought low... somehow... and is forced to find a new job in a tough economy. He ends up as a tester for an MMO based on a 80's cartoon Show Within a Show called Lawstar and has to deal with being on the bottom rung on the development ladder.

Updates Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Tropes used in The Trenches include:

• Brutal Honesty: Cora's nice, but she's blunt.

Issac: I feel like I should thank you for being so nice to me today. Cora: You really should. Everyone hates you. [[[Beat Panel]]] Issac: Thanks. Cora: Anytime.

• Comically Missing the Point:

Q: Here is the complete series (of Lawstar). I want you to absorb it. Isaac: Really? Blu-ray? Q: I know. Technically, only the laserdiscs are canon. But those never leave the humidor.

• Confusing Multiple Negatives: See Telegraph Gag STOP.
• Cool Car: Sadly, also Isaac's current living space.
• Decision Darts: Mr. Credenza needs to fire someone, but who?

Credenza: Normally I just throw a dart. Isaac: You know what? Let's do that. John: (gets hit by dart) Oooh! Ow! What! Whyyyy? Credenza: Who is that screaming? John? You're fired, John.

• Deep-Immersion Gaming: "Ramifications".
• Fee Fi Faux Pas:
  • Q happens to be a really big fan of Lawstar. Isaac learns this a few minutes late.

Isaac: This is that shitty space cartoon from the eighties. He rode around on that fucking rocket horse. Q: (pissed) Justice. His name was Justice.

• • Upon being told to Google a Jewish tradition;

Isaac: More like Jewgle it. (raises hand for high-five) Hooooo! Cora: (blank look) Isaac: You're Jewish, huh? Cora: Half. So I'm only half offended.

• • Isaac, what is wrong with you?

Q: The developer has asked one of us to come over to their side, and work on their side of things. So I'm... Isaac: Oh, thank god. I'm free. It's been real educational down here in the trench. It's been grim and real. I'll use all this when I get back to developing games. [some unrelated dialogue] Q: So anyway I'm going to take the job. Isaac: Good on you man, you earned it. Now, does anyone have a gun or a belt?

• George Jetson Job Security: Played with. One can get fired on perfectly reasonable (or unreasonable as the case may be) grounds, but thanks to Credenza's little management quirks, getting re-hired is as easy as applying under a different name.
• Good Bad Bugs: Looks to be the plot focus of the second season, as Isaac discovers one in the Lawstar game. He decides not to report it to take wild advantage of it ("Server first."), but then word gets out...
• Head-in-The-Sand Management: Mr. Credenza:

Mr. Credenza: What you're telling me is incredibly frustrating and I don't like hearing it. Isaac: That's why I brought it to your attention, sir. Mr. Credenza: No, this is what's frustrating. That you are bringing it to my attention.

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Q, the Test Lead.

Isaac: Probably better with spreadsheets than than he is with people. Cora: He's super nice. He made soup! His grandma's recipe, I guess. He put it on the wiki. Search for "delicious".

• Klatchian Coffee: The "Punch".

Q: No, no. Use a glass. It eats through the plastic ones.

• Man in a Kilt: Q is never seen without his Utilikilt, even while cosplaying as Lawstar.
• Mathematician's Answer:

Credenza: Ever been arrested? Isaac: Once. Credenza: What for? Isaac: Breaking the law.

• Mushroom Samba: Marley gets some help from the Snuffler while on a combination of "The Punch" and Dayquil.

Marley: On a related note, do not combine Q-juice and Dayquil. Unless you need help from the Snuffler.

• My Friends and Zoidberg:

Isaac: GUYS! Guys! Guysguys. Guysguysguysguysguys. And Cora.

• Nice Girl: Cora puts up with Isaac no matter how much of a Jerkass he is, and continues to try and show him the ropes. She is also absolutely adament about ensuring that the player base not get screwed over.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Everywhere Isaac tries to get a job, the interviewer tells him he's "overqualified", and turns him away, so he resorts to this.

Isaac: Use small words, Isaac. Use small words.

• Pointy-Haired Boss: Mr. Credenza
• Precision F-Strike: Cora doesn't swear often, but she lets a Cluster F-Bomb loose here after a massive Game Breaker is discovered.

Cora: I save all my F-Words for bullshit like this. This scenario? It's Fuckworthy.

• Series Hiatus: The comic will be taking sitcom-style "season breaks".
• Shout-Out/Take That: Lawstar is a send-up of Bravestarr.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Isaac reveals this side of him during The Reveal at the end of Season 1.

Isaac: Oh yeah. Steel Coffin? Me. Starfire Saga V: Laserion? Also me. ME! Cora: Didn't all those games bomb? Isaac: "Bomb" is relative. Marley: Is your name not Isaac? Isaac: (smugly) Does Icey ring a bell? Marley: Yeah, a jerk bell because Icey was a stupid jerk.

• Stealth Mentor: After being made to test hundreds of doors by Q, Isaac learns that the feature he's testing was Dummied Out sometime before he even started. He confronts Q, but while demanding to know why he didn't just use shortcuts like making a bot test the doors instead of making him do it, he realizes the entire point of making him do it was to get him to realize these shortcuts are there.

Q: I just Miyagi'd you. It's a verb now.

• Stylistic Suck: Lawstar.

Lawstar Narration: Captain Sheriff Law Star holds the Law Star... whose points represent Law, Justice, Order, Fairness and Lawfullness. Lord Hate Star weilds the Hate Star, which stand for... Revenge, Evil, Lying, Meanness and Not Law. Isaac: Oh my Jesus!

• Team Pet: Mr. Toots, a game-testing rabbit.
• Telegraph Gag STOP:

[Red Robin] has bottomless fries STOP But when I say "stop" I mean that's the end of the line not that the fries stop because the fries don't stop STOP

• The Tetris Effect: Isaac begins to experience this after staying up all night testing Portallis, the City of a Million Doors.

Isaac: I did like, five-hundred, then I couldn't tell what I was looking at anymore. All I see is doors. Are you a door? You have to tell me. That's Portallis law.

• Unfortunate Name: Isaac Cox. Say it aloud.
  • Lampshaded in Youth:

Credenza: Err... uhh... Mister Cox. Isaac: Present. (Beat Panel) Credenza: Wow. Isaac: Yeah. Junior High was very difficult.

Tropes found in the true stories:

• Accidental Innuendo Visual Innuendo: One game had an issue where, during certain frames of animation, the player could see up the female characters' skirts. Sometimes, the model would get a "crease" between the legs. And then, specifically if the character was wearing pink, a pink vertex would also be visible. They ended up changing the models as an easy solution.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Many stories involve game companies abusing the testers, but sometimes it turns barely legal at best.
• Crapsack World: Some of these stories are truly heartbreaking.
  • Apparently, in this industry, it's considered appropriate to make a business call to someone while they're at a funeral.
  • Embedded testers have it even worse; not even being allowed to eat part of the buffet "for the developers" even though they were working 80 hours a week and were told to go back to their desks.
• The Determinator: Some people work really, really hard to get you your several hours of entertainment.
• Did Not Do the Research: One game retailer's marketing department vastly underestimated ^{[dead link]} the demand for the Play Station 3 on release, not even having checked online trends.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: First to 100 hours unpaid work gets a round of applause. Yay.
• Game Breaking Bug: Also, the guy who found it got fired. That's some bug.
  • Given that the stories tend to be about testing staff, this is common theme. Most often, the reply is to yell at the testing staff, and then cut the content completely or release as is.
• Kick the Dog: A lot of stories have developers being dickish to testers for a variety of poorly explained reasons.
• Memetic Mutation: In-Universe in one development lab, after an arrogant developer sent a bug report back with a note saying "testers are glorified monkeys banging on controllers". For the next four days, whenever a developer came by, they would act like a monkey and fling controllers.
• Misblamed: Said explicitly here and backed up by other stories: Don't automatically blame the quality department for not catching a bug. They likely did find it, but other people are responsible for addressing it, and there may be other factors (admittedly not necessarily good ones) as to why it doesn't ultimately get fixed.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Testing "kiddy" games is not nearly as bad as people tend to assume. They are short, simple, the testers rarely have to get emotionally invested in them, bugs get hilarious names and descriptions in the database, and testers get to indulge all the Video Game Perversity Potential they can think up because that is exactly the kind of thing the license holder is trying to screen for.
• My Friends and Zoidberg: When the company gets free swag to give away to employees, they send out two emails. One email to everyone saying "Come get your free stuff!" and another email just to the people in QA saying "not you."
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: One coder worked 80+ hour weeks on a single major problem with their E3 presentation. Eventually, a single minor part of the bigger problem was solved. He/she then attempted to merge the new code with the code base.... only to fall victim to lousy software version control. Everything he/she had accomplished was wiped out. They then went and cried in a bush for half an hour, before going back to work and getting the project finished.
• The Tetris Effect: One story involves a tester being tasked with shooting everything. Including rockets at background textures. To this day he imagines shooting rockets at distant landscapes.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Sometimes the testers score a victory. The "Memetic Mutation" example above got the offending developer in trouble and all full-time employees had to attend a two-hour meeting on reading bug reports and common courtesy. Another one had testers complain about difficulty due to poor design, to which the response was "MAYBE YOU NEED BETTER GAMERS IN YOUR TEST DEPARTMENT" - in the words of the tester, "In a rare fit of justice for QA everywhere, the game was scrapped, the designer shown the door, and the game never saw a release."
• Walking Techbane/Walking Techfix: One developer sometimes helped out as a tester. But he had this superpower. Whenever he even looked at someone else's workstation, their game would crash. He later discovered that the superpower inherent in all programmers - everything works fine when you show it to them - cancelled out his own power.
• Worth It: Actually, no wait - it wasn't. That bug you spent the last week trying to track down just got waived as a feature.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: There's more than a few stories with this theme; usually where a tester discovers a major problem despite the developers treating them like shit, earning them a begrudging respect, only to be let go anyways.
• You! Get Me Coffee!: A CS graduate is hired as a temp for a game developer only to end up walking dogs and picking up their crap. He took it in stride, looking at it as paying his dues. He got laid off.