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Denver, 6:09 PM
Sat Nov 14
36 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/27/09
Most of the information in these posts are true. It really isn't as glamorous as it sounds, it only works that way if you refer to it in comparison to other jobs.
Yes, it is tough. Yes, it is competitive. Yes, we are all expendable.
But you know what? A lot of us don't care. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that I never would have thought I'd be doing this for a living. My occupation is also my hobby, and I'm pretty much the only person in my social circle who can say that.
Bring on the challenges I say. I love my job. :)
08/27/09
08/26/09
I could go on and on about how crazy it gets.
What I will tell all of you thinking of getting into testing is this, MOVE TO WESTERN WASHINGTON!!
There are literally thousands of testing jobs in the greater Seattle area. Anytime of the year you can find a testing job within a few weeks with no past experience. Almost all of them pay more than $9 an hour. And if you are smart you will get into one of the companies that make games that you like.
08/27/09
08/26/09
Here's the problem with testing:
1) Testers get paid badly, and are often forced to work in awful conditions (packed rooms, overtime, no days off, etc.)
2) Badly treated testers do not work very efficiently and/or quit--especially the smart ones who would be able to do some good for the game
3) A test team that does not do a very good job creates issues with the quality of the game.
4) Bad game quality causes developers to get resentful and they begin to blame many of the game's issues on the test team.
5) Resentful developers and management do not like QA and create awful work conditions for testers.
Full circle.
Solution: Hire smart QA managers who know all sides of game development--and who have a genuine interest in spotting 'diamonds in the rough' who stand out and want to move up.
Pay testers standard Software QA wages, such that the positions are more attractive to smarter and less greasy people.
Oh yea, and are royalties too much to ask for a position that is so important?
08/27/09
Hence, no union (please keep it that way; unions have currently ruined the movie/TV industry - everyone should be salaried and just get nice bonuses depending on their contributions).
08/26/09
Company A:
Cons: Pay started at $7.50/hour. Normal hours most of the time, but crunch saw 10-14 hour days for 6 days a week. They hire all QA as "Contractors", but the only thing I saw resembling a contract was the NDA. They had no vacation, no benefits, and an extremely demoralizing way of treating their employees. Random layoffs, sometimes during a project.
Pros: Extremely good training on bug writing format, and regression. Everyone was on the same page (unlike EA, Activision, and Disney).
Company B:
Cons: I didn't get to work there longer. Health and Dental was subpar, but was offered.
Pros: Breakfast brought in from whole foods in the morning. Pay was $12.00/hour, and a tiered system in place for experience (not a usual thing). Almost always 40 hour work weeks, and overtime was requested, not demanded. Very cool employee lounge. Free ice cream and assorted other food. Awesome people to work with. The company was completely open (meaning a QA person could walk into Art, Writer's Pit, Programmers room, Marketing, etc and be welcomed and talked to like an equal). The game that was being worked on is the only game that I would play again after having done QA on it.
The best way I have of putting it is... the game industry is presently like the movie industry was in the late 30's through the 50's. There are no unions, and the contracts are heavily favored to the company over the employee. Benefits are very iffy, if given at all, and the hours can be mind-numbing.
There is little to no respect of QA across most of the industry, but they are an integral part in getting a game made/shipped. I enjoyed my latter part doing QA and made some friends that I will always be in contact with, but it is a harsh and highly competitive industry. It will chew you up and spit you out if you can't hold onto your dreams while the whip is cracking.
08/27/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
This also ties into the fact that the "higher ups" of any gaming company make millions. The position seems appealing, but the "perks" involved are nothing compared to being in development. This is also not counting the types of "exclusion" behavior you see in development studios. If you're not part of a "clique" (artists, level designers, programmers, etc.), then you're on your own. Getting into the industry is not easy. It takes a ton of rejection, and even when you get in, you're going to have to bust your ass for minimal payout. Whats more, career websites state that doing QA work for other industries nets you sometimes double or triple of that $18,720 per year (before taxes); a large amount more than what doing the exact same work for a game gets you.
[swz.salary.com]
This is why the phrase "crime" comes up. Note that the link I provided is the national average for Software Quality Assurance, the exact same thing a video game tester does!
[swz.salary.com]
This graph (same site), is a better visual representation. People in the 10th percentile of "Software Quality Assurance" employees, make $44,000+ per year, well over twice of what game testing gets you.
As a game tester, expect lots of stress, long hours, and tedious work, for as little pay as the industry will provide. Keep in mind, this is an industry-wide problem, not a company-wide problem.
08/26/09
I don't envy these people, but someone has to do it to make the games I love. Kudos to them!
08/26/09
People do it because it is the de facto way to get experience in this industry. Unless you have both an amazing resume/portfolio AND know someone on the inside very well, you're going to have to start here, or in editorials/writing, or an assistant's position, etc., depending on what you want to do in the long run.
As a QA tester you are going to be testing games you dislike. It is an inevitable unerring fact! The rub with QA testing is that it is a vastly important job, but regardless of how important this job is to every-single-game-ever-released-EVER... you get nothing compared to the other employees in a company for that position. Let's face it, if no one tested a game before it's release, NO GAME would succeed as much (or as little) as they do. So then ask yourself, "Why is such an important job, paying so little?" The answer, according to companies, is that "They can get anyone to do it." This is the same type of answer that leads to the employees you don't like at Gamestops, EB Games, etc. They have tons of applicants, so they can pick and choose whoever. If it doesn't work out, well then they have hundreds of more applicants they can fill that chair with for the time being.
There is a bit of irony here. If anyone can do it, then why do we still get unfinished, buggy, broken, and/or incomplete products?
08/26/09
i did it just for a summer job and i love video games. i had no intentions of making a career at acclaim. and i doubt there was much true upward mobility. but i saw them dangle the dream of promotion in front of many testers to convince them to put in extra time or effort.
notice how there aren't many paid QA jobs for good games. good game companies generally dont have a hard time convincing devs, other staff and friends/family to play the games for free. maybe they have a handful of truly pro testers. but nothing like the mills that the big shops have. where they just churn out crappy licensed titles over and over.
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
$15.50
And that was only because when I got hired on full time they bumped my pay up a whole $2 an hour! WHOAHO! The rest of my raises amounted to about 50 cents to $1 each year. What a bunch of fuck faces they are over at ATVI.
Now you all know why ATVI makes so much damn money. It's because they are goddamn slave drivers. Did you hear what that poor girl said? 14 hour days! Ya, with ZERO gratitude from production or devs. I'd actually been yelled at for finding showstopper issues before release. Ya that's right. We found the issue before release but get yelled at for not finding it sooner, and guess what!? We couldn't have found it sooner because it only existed on the last build we received.
I pity the poor testers over there. ESPECIALLY anyone working on Guitar Hero downloadable content. How fucking boring would that be? 8 hours a day testing the new guitar hero pack each week. God just shoot me. Guitar Hero is fun, but the minute playing it becomes work you'll regret ever saying you loved that game.
08/26/09
Just saying I feel for you, bro. Hope you found something that leaves you playing games in your living room and not testing them at work.
08/26/09
But no more QA for me. Now I'm on a development team and actually making games is much more rewarding.
08/26/09
In Soviet Russia, Game tests you!
08/26/09
Guitar hero 6?
08/26/09
08/26/09
Though I am "lucky" that I got into the gaming industry bypassing QA, I have seen what these guys/gals have to do every single day, and if you did as well, you'd change your tune about how awesome of a job it is.
It's a ton of work, the hours suck, the pay is horrible, the tasks you get assigned are boring, and mundane.
But as far as I am concerned the QA guys are one of the bigger heroes of a game development team, so from me they always get a ton of respect.
The problem with QA nowadays, is though in the past it was a great way to get your foot in the door and then move up in the company, with bigger companies like EA the QA teams are getting bigger and bigger, ( my first company had close to a 100 testers), with that many people it makes it harder and harder to get noticed. You see a lot of guys get burnt out and end up leaving because they can't sustain their life while making so little money.
So it's not all "playing games" all day, it's a ton of work with the HOPE that you can really break into the industry...and it doesn't always happen.
Not to say if you are in QA now you should give up...keep trying, get yourself out there, get yourself noticed by producers, become friends with designers, do what you can to get noticed, work hard and you will make it.
08/26/09