I he you-and can see where you come from. Since doing film studies(which I only did as a minor)I can't take films at face value-sod all those books about how to "read" a film because of them I just cannot enjoy a movie any more as ?I find myself analysing every last detail. I can only imagine this does a similar thing to gamers.

As far as testing as a job goes ands being left out of the dev loop-it's lways going to be lke that with MOST QA testing. Often the creatives will see testers as "the enemy" when it'#s simply nopt true, and take any chancew to ignore and discredit you when, in reality, they should be happy that you're helping improve their work. There's no bone of contention and you SHOULD be credited for working on the same side but because you're finding THEIR mistakes, and some people take it as criticism, this will always happen. Christ, I even know proof readers who get this stuff for pointing out, as heir job, grammar errors and spelling mistakes!!

As a job, though, I can still think of worse things to be doing even than playing the same level day in and day out even though it's obviously not perfect or the best thing in the world it's better than some tasks in this climate.

Q/A is one of the most important jobs at a game studio, and from experience it can be very rewarding too. Not all studios are like this. I have worked at some Sony studios that they love the QA team mainly because they make them try harder to get things right the first time which in the end cuts down on dev costs. This is not a job for somebody that thinks they are just going to be playing games because that is not even close to what you will be doing. I remember going through one area for about 20 hours to make sure there was not any wall glitches in the online mode. That was the most boring 20 hours of my life lol.

I have tested a plethora of big name games.

Simply put, the under appreciation, sullying your favorite pastime, and grinding hours are, together, an absolute deal breaker.

You begin to see every flaw, every tiny scrap that could maybe possibly be slightly better in this marginal way.

You can test a game that sells millions and millions of copies and not see a single cent of profit sharing, after you and the rest of the QA team poured your heart and soul into making sure the game was ready to launch, and met the expectations of the investors, share holders, and potential customers.

You play the same game, for months and months and months, until, when that game finally comes out and is sooooo awesome to everyone else, and at this point, you could really, REALLY care less.

QA, when all is said and done, is a job for the guy who thinks games are neat, but doesn't actively engage in them, but mainly has an insane eye for detail and an iron will for monotony.

QA is NOT for a tried and true gamer who also happens to have developed an keen eye for quality control over the years. Just take your skills and thoughts, and make your own game. I promise, you'll be much happier.

I agree with most of your points, mostly the inability to turn it off.

I really liked this blog. Very interesting to see what its like to be a video game tester since it is most gamers dream to become one.

Which is a shame because it is important job unless the developer is just absolutly perfect.

Actually, no I have never really wanted to be a game tester. From the moment I learned that game testers are the ones who actually learn what works and what doesn't, I knew it'd be a terrible job.

God knows how many times I've gotten stuck, but the fact that I know it's completable (thanks to testers) always keeps me going. But what if you didn't know if it was your own flaws or the video game that was keeping you stuck?

No thanks, I'll take writing about games anyday. But I salute you testers and all that you do. You are truly hardcore.

Great article. I don't have much experience as a tester (just some betas back in the day before they became glorified demos), but ever since becoming a regular reviewer, it's a similar situation where you can't turn it off. Gone are the days for taking a game at face value. The automatic analysis kicks in and it gets harder to harder to just play games for fun anymore. So in a way, I can empathize.

lol

I was never interested in being a game tester because I had heard what a bad job it was. I'm more interested in being involved with the ratings board, anyone know the low down on that?

I know people who're in QA for Travellers Tales. They say it's fun if you have someone who you can race with, on your shift. Y'know compete for to get to a certain point in the level, or find the most bugs etc.

They also say they're treated pretty well by the devs, my friend specifically is QA management though (but only been working with them 5 years), but he goes out with them for drinks and such so I don't think they shun him or anything like that.

Guess it depends where you work.

I'm not sure if I agree with all those. I have done QA and although I ended up hating it, it was for a different reason: I wanted to move on and get into design (which I did :)

Firstly, I've never had the problem that "I can't turn it off" I dream of the game every now and then but I never really think about it at home, even when I tell myself "Well I'll think it over the weekend" I never do!

I also didn't find it ruined other games. Sure, when you play games 30+ hours a week you're less inclind to play a game when you get home, but I didn't find it made me analyize the game too much. Perhaps it's because I was already analytical of games (which is what helped me get a job in testing) but I didn't find that ruined games for me. If anything, the step-by-step bug repoing process helped me in other things, like if my laptop starts acting up.

On the other hand, QA does get largly ignored. I think it's really bad that developers don't listen to their QA team alot more, and I think QA should be implemented into the process at a much earlier stage in games developement. And as I said in another post, it's really annoying that developers take every letter a focus tester says as absolute, even though it's just a handfull of people that probably would never buy or play the game anyway :p

But if you want to have your say in game, QA definitly isn't the way to go. Just try and get into design or something. QA isn't the place to get your ideas into a game and it never will be.

I guess that's why alot of people get frustrated in QA. Alot of people get into QA because they want to break the game industry. I did it because it was the only way I could break the industry and luckily the game I worked on gave me the opportunity to progress into design. But QA isn't the best way of gettig into the industry, especially in this day and age where getting poached out of testing is becoming rarer I think. But certainly do QA rather than some crappy "game design" course at some Uni. Better yet, learn coding or modelling and start from there...

One thing I will say about working in the industry if just how wrong alot of fan speculation is. When a game get's delayed for example, fanboys cry "it's because they're scared of Call of Duty! blah blah blah, e.t.c." when the reality is it simply wasn't polished enough on time. Althugh I can't think of any other examples right now, there are loads of situations like this where gamers speculate and largely agree amongst themselves why something is going on but the reality is simply someone didn't turn up for work that day or something.

Back to the topic, QA is a job at the end of the day, so you have to accept that it comes with a certain amount of responsiblity and "work". The idea of sitting down and earning money by simply "playing" a video game doesn't exist. Although I too found testing games distastfull in the last couple of months did it, I wouldn't go as far as to say "testing ruined games" for me. Most of my friends in QA still play games outside of work too, just not as much as they would if they had other jobs.

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau