The QA team... Under New Management!
The QA system began about four years ago. Before then, Unas would happen to play your trial and feature it if he enjoyed it. In 2009, he changed the Trial Manager to allow him to set forum members other than himself to be able to feature trials. After that, I took on the role of managing featured trials in the English section of AAO. To make featuring more open to everyone, I created the QA system, allowing anyone to request to have their trial featured. When a request was received, I would play it to see if it was of a high standard, and suggest tweaks to make it better. The first trial to be featured under the QA system was The Bitter Turnabout by Hodou Okappa. Since then, the QA process has evolved and improved. We've also hired new QA inspectors over the years to help with the increasing demand for inspections.
In the early days of AAO, trials were quite short (usually between only 100 and 400 frames); a far reach from the 4000 frame trials that some of our authors today like to pump out! Back then, the Trial Editor and Player were relatively limited, and authors sought to emulate the style of the real Ace Attorney games as closely as possible to make their trials thrilling and attractive to players. That is the environment that the QA system was created in. However, many of the trials of today seek to go beyond the AA games with their own styles of writing, atmosphere and gameplay (including the dreaded super-objection; curse you, Blackrune!). Therefore, the QA system had a much needed revamp early 2012. Now, the QA process is hopefully much clearer, better standardised and more open to the styles of different authors.
And it's this legacy that I hand over to our new leader of the QA team: ShadowEdgeworth! Shadow has played many trials during his time as a QA inspector and understands what makes them tick. From now on, all QA requests must be sent to him. He makes the rules now (with your input, of course), and I trust that he will make an excellent leader!
Shadow will also be joined in blue by a new QA inspector: Bad Player! BP has a great wealth of experience in making high quality trials. His advise and input has been well-sought even before he was given the role, so there should be no doubt that he will make a great addition to the QA team.
And that's all folks! I wish Shadow, BP and the rest of the team luck in the years ahead!
(And come on, guys! Let's have some more feature requests! There's loads of trials created this year that need featuring! )