Combat testing - HvZ style!

Since we posted about the Stock Extenders yesterday there appears to be a little bit of confusion about how we go about testing our stuff.

We have a couple of stages to our testing. First there's the office test. We put our gear through it's paces in the office. We throw it around, drop-kick it, step on it and generally abuse it to find any problems before they become a problem. There are many days spent holding blasters at odd angles, throwing them at things and just down right being mean to them,

For the second stage, our guys head over to BUZAN (Bristol University's Nerf group) and test our stuff with their players. We hand our stuff over and let them at it. If it doesn't survive contact with the user base then it goes back to the drawing board. By testing with the people who actually use our stuff, we get all sorts of feedback from durability, functionality and pricing information. We've always designed for University HvZ players and having a group on hand that are happy to host us means we can offer products that are genuinely tailored to that market.

We hand kit out, have people play with and in some cases break it. It's always fun in the first term, freshers get handed a piece of kit and break it so you have to spend an amount of time explaining that we're encouraging them to break it. On occasion, we also have to explain that, no, if you break it you don't have to pay for it!

It's an effective means of putting our gear through our paces. We're very lucky to be able to get our stuff into the hands of eager people before launching to the public. Of course, there is the slight guilt factor of watching a piece of kit fail at a critical moment and seeing people get eaten by zombies! We like to temper that feeling with the many more successful moments where a holster provides that last minute hold out shot and the player in question goes on to clear that jam, down half a dozen zombies and goes out in style, rather than ignominy! :D




NOTE: All our testing staff are associate members of the University of Bristol Student's Union and of the Bristol University Zombie Apocalypse Network (BUZAN) with all appropriate dues paid up - we're very happy to support student projects both in a personal and business capacity. :)