The Club

The Club was developed by Bizarre Creations in 2008 and published by SEGA. I worked on this title as a Lead Quality Assurance Tester for SEGA Europe.

About the Game

The Club, created by critically acclaimed developer Bizarre Creations, is a new breed of third-person shooter, combining fast-paced run and gun gameplay, destructive environments, and lethal weapons. You will fight to survive in a shadowy underground blood-sport controlled by a faceless, obscenely wealthy and influential elite who place their bets on who will survive as the blood-bath ensues before them. Take control of up to eight uniquely trained killers motivated by greed, driven by pure insane bloodlust, and hell bent on earning respect on a global level.

The game featured 5 single player game modes; Sprint, Time Attack, Survivor, Siege and Run the Gauntlet. The flow of the game was designed to apply racing game philosophies to the third-person shooter genre. Where players were encouraged to learn the course of the level and where enemies would pop out from, just as a player in a racing game would learn the track and how to take corners. Speed and accuracy were rewarded heavily.

Chaining shot combos together was an important part of the game, where certain kinds of shots were rewarded (such as head shots, long shots, ricochets), and hitting these in quick succession would multiply the points earned.

Skills and Experiences

I joined this project fairly late, so the test plans had already been authored. I mainly worked on multiplayer for this game on PS3. Testing was enjoyable, and it was a genre I hadn't worked on before (or since). I remember early on, before the game was in test, I was involved in focus testing for the characters themselves. We were given concept art of each potential character and a questionnaire about how they came across.