Last week, I read an article on Kotaku by one Nathan Peters called "Don't Sign That Contract", in which the author recaps his experience working on Halo 4 as a QA contractor and concludes with a call "...for all would-be workers to not accept positions as contractors in the game industry."
Naturally, I wanted to know what Gamasutra's readers -- the vast majority of whom have far more experience working in contract game development roles -- thought of this article. So I asked around: What kind of advice would you offer the author for succeeding in game development?
Tulay Tetiker McNally (Director of Studio Development QA, BioWare)
Anything I'd say to the author, I've already said in my blog post here: "The End of the Dark Ages for QA in game development". In my blog, I describe how QA is a valid career path at BioWare, and will hopefully be in the rest of the industry one day.
Contract work is a reality in many different industries, not just games or QA. There are also laws protecting contract workers from getting exploited. Part of the problem is that many people don't read their contracts or T&Cs properly, or they just quietly hope that people will hire them full-time if they work hard enough. But if you hang in there as a contractor for a few years and build up experience working on triple-A games, that's certainly a way to work your way up the ranks if you're talented and passionate about what you're doing. And what happened to apprenticeships or internships?
Matthew Burns (Founder and Creative Director, Shadegrown Games)
Reading the piece, it seems that working as an hourly QA tester hasn't changed much since I did it over a decade ago. I recognize many of the attitudes and behaviors.
Is contract work in the game industry a "flawed system", as Nathan says? Certainly it is. But what corporate system isn't deeply flawed? (For example, salaried employees are usually exempt from overtime pay. Contractors get overtime for working overtime.) Will doing contract work "get you nowhere?" It didn't get him anywhere, and he seems to believe it is the rule more than the exception.
I don't have hard data on this kind of thing, but I can say that not an insignificant number of my peers -- some of whom are now lead designers, creative directors, VPs of publishers, and even CEOs of their own studios -- tested games for an hourly wage for their first game industry job. Nathan doesn't say how long he was at Certain Affinity, but it sounds like it was less than a year. Most of the people I know were in test for multiple years before they moved up. Of course, it's not for me to say what cost/benefit is right for him -- we all make those determinations for ourselves.
Brian Schmidt (Brian Schmidt Studios)
I've been in games for 26 years, 15 years as a contractor. Not as a tester (I've been in audio the whole time), but it sounds more like he's just not cut out for contract work. I never really felt the "outsider" thing he did in any big way, and when I did, I tried to increase my own engagement, not just sit back and hope they engaged me more. Heck, he even said that the studio head personally asked him for his input, so it sounds like there was reach-out and a desire to have people feel heard. That's Good Management 101.
Contracting's not for everyone. You have to enjoy the varied people you meet and the varied projects you'll have. And yes, you sometimes feel a bit like an outsider, but I've found that's 90 percent because of your own actions and 10% because of your clients' actions. But weighing the freedom of being able to move from project to project against being a full-time employee, the successful contractors I know enjoy the former immensely.
I also think he has a tough point to sell. One of the reasons that their "promises came to nothing" was that he stopped showing up to work and was fired. It really sounds like the author just didn't stick it out to the end. And no one wants to hire as a [full-time employee] someone who doesn't stick with things when it gets tough. To be frank, he seems to have quit his previous endeavor (the music business); selling your equipment doesn't really show a "dust yourself off and try again' attitude, so perhaps there's a pattern there.
Stephan Beier (Production Director, Travian Games)
In the end, it sounds like the author is not contented with where he is in life. I think the working conditions are acceptable for somebody right out of college, but not for someone in his 30s.
The situation described is a great opportunity for entry level workers. If you work as an embedded tester, you get the opportunity to meet a lot of experienced guys on the dev teams, and if you are really good, then you do have a good chance to get a permanent position and start a career. I don't know anything about the author's qualification, but obviously he does have some talent in sound and gaming, but he also lacks the skillset and opportunity to make his own enterprise a success. The only failure on the side of his superior is that there were no evaluation talks. Whether these are the tasks of the dev team, or of his agency is up to debate.
(For what it's worth, I personally have seen a lot of situations that were way worse than in this story (two back-to-back 90-hour work weeks without compensation for the extra hours at EA Germany, numerous unpaid extra hours at an indie developer, being completely ignored when providing QA support from an outsourcer position, having my whole QA department being deleted from the in-game credits after Ubisoft bought my employer...the list goes on.)
Matt Hansen (Senior Producer and former Contract QA tester, Double Fine Productions)
Breaking into the industry is a combination of skill, luck, perseverance and attitude. With fewer AAA game studios in North America and a large group of experienced developers out of work, it is a very difficult time for someone without industry experience to move from an entry level contract job to a full time employee at a studio.
I have found that people new to the industry who maintain a good attitude and go out of their way to be helpful in the sometimes crazy environment of game development have the best chances of moving on to bigger roles on the team. But like any job where you have a large passionate group of people all trying to advance, it is never a sure thing that all of those people will be given an opportunity to show their potential. It's a huge risk to take a lower paying job as a contractor with the slim chance of moving on to your dream job, but as with many things in life, sometimes you just have to take a risk to see what is possible.
How would you advise a budding game dev that was feeling discouraged from contract QA work? Tell us in the comments!
Contract QA itself shouldn't a dead end...but depending on the studio (especially with publisher QA) it can very well be a dead end. Sure there are QA Testers who have no problem staying in QA because they have no drive to move up, have no social skills or just simply enjoy being QA...the larger problem is with QA Leads & Production teams (and even Recruitment teams sometimes) who don't give QA Tester a chance to prove themselves (especially if they have the experience & make it known.)
Just because someone is in QA doesn't mean that is all they've ever done and that they've never worked higher positions. Like with any industry there are times where, out of necessity to have an income, you have to suck it up and take a lower paying job. It's easy for some people to say "just stick it out & you'll get your chance" when the it seems like a lot of individuals who say that...haven't gone through QA.
From a different perspective, I started as a contract QA tester, moved up into a design / production role, and then left to be a contract QA person again. Granted, it's at a non-game company, so the established hierarchy is a little different, but I love QA, and I see it as a very viable career choice for many people.
I was a QA contractor for 2 years. It gave me the opportunity to get into the games business. I learned a lot and made some really good friends there. Is it the worst job in the video game business? yup, but it is far from the worst job in the world.
When I started in QA seven years ago at THQ, it absolutely felt like and was a valid foot in the door position. There were very clear advancement paths after getting hired in as a full-time regular tester instead of a temporary contract tester (and there were enough full-time regular positions that one didn't have to be hyper-competent to get offered one. Though it helped). Many of the best APs, Producers and Project Managers I worked with got their start in QA. I managed to work my way up to Microsoft Compliance Lead over the course of six years, and it was a position I was comfortable with and very good at (though I still had and have production aspirations).
After getting laid off in the early stages of THQ's dissolution I spent six months applying for similar positions and getting no response, until I eventually broke down and started applying for temp contract positions. I don't know if it's due to the parent company of the studio where I've ended up, or a more general change in the attitudes toward QA due to the current AAA assembly line climate of the industry (or maybe it's just me), but it definitely feels like a dead end position now.
If I'm lucky my contract through the staffing agency will be extended to the next project after the current one ends (which is legally dubious, as the reason that contracts at THQ were year long followed by a 3-6 month 'cool down' were due to CA laws about temporary workers being paid less and given no benefits to do the same work as full time), but the chances of being brought in to an internal testing position are slim to none (I was told by the QA Manager when I interviewed that for the duration of his time in the position he'd only seen a handful of testers advance). There is very strict segregation of the QA Team from the Development Team, to the point that testers have to exit the building and walk to another entrance to get between the two designated QA locations, instead of walking through the building, and 99% of the non-database communication between QA and production is through the QA Leads or the QA Manager. There doesn't seem to be any sort of SDET positions, (just a generalized 'Tools' team that does everything, with their focus on development tools, not test tools) and given the team segregation there is no real opportunity to prove oneself capable of doing any sort of production work, be it design or coding, unless you can sneak that information in to a bug, or get a conversation going in the comments of a bug.
And while hourly QA gets overtime pay and salaried employees generally do not, if given a choice between working unpaid overtime, but having a salary that guarantees that my bills are paid (plus a decent health plan, sick, holiday and vacation pay, and other benefits), or being hourly with paid overtime, but having to RELY on 50-60 hour weeks in order to barely break even, with basic or no health coverage and no other benefits (which is what Contract QA is like for the vast majority of people who work it. Entry level Contract QA with overtime is MAYBE 25,000/year if copious amounts of overtime are worked, before taxes. And I have seen a lot of testers come in to work sick as a dog, getting the rest of the team sick, because they just can't afford to miss a day of work to get better), I'll take the former every. single. time.
I know exactly what you are talking about. I worked for a game company out of So Cal that worked very similarly. There was distinct segregation of contractors. It also was not a foot in the door. As QA, you are there to fill a seat, and nothing more. I saw one person move into some sort of a programming position, and from what I understand, she had to do some...special favors to get the job. I suppose QA is good in that it meets the pre-requisite for a job that requires you to have 'atleast 2 titles' under your belt.
It bugs the crap out of me that every time a woman moves out of QA and into a "better" position, its because she's rumored to have done some...special favors to get the job. This happened to me, and it happened to two very close friends as well. I can assure you that we got to our new jobs through our job dedication, knowledge, and expertise, and not because of our "assets".
I agree with you, and dont mean any offense. But this particular woman was cut of that cloth. There were other females in dev that got into that position with pure skill and were very well respected and cared for. Im just pointing out one instance. Additionally, she was laid off with the rest of QA, so she clearly wasn't all that knowledgable/skilled. I never talked to her after that, so I didn't get the full story. Anyhow, I apologize for offending you.
@adam just because you think she's "cut of that cloth" (I presume you mean open with her sexuality?) doesn't mean she used it to move up and that she wasn't competent in her own right. Unless you know with 100% certainty, this is a dangerous and harmful thing to assume of someone.
It wasn't like it was a big secret. Im not trying to start a gender war. But let's not pretend that these things don't happen. They do happen, in every industry. It's not just women either. But I can say, with fair certainty, that she did not get into that position based on her skill. She had no skill. I've seen men do the same thing, just not in this industry specifically.
I read that article the day it was released. I had trouble getting my responses to save properly and each time it changed or got shorter.
I had a different take on the matter with Mr. Peter's article. This gentlemen complained about "promises" not being fulfilled and working hard and such. I worked for the same company on their previous project (Halo CE: Anniversary Edition) Then, it was only 4 of us in the QA department. The same QA Manager, the same full time devs. I had no problems at all. Had a role in Design actually. We weren't promised anything, but were told some similar lines like the possibility of getting hired on full-time by the company itself.
In the end, this guy QUIT! He choose to put in his two weeks. He choose to stop going to certain meetings. Of course he was going to get the boot. Especially if he was a contractor. Why continue to pay someone for half-ass work and walk around with a piss poor attitude? In this industry, we don't need people wasting others time. So you didn't anything about a conversion to full-time. So what. That gets handled at the end of your contract. I've seen it happen all the time. You have to wait because none of that can be discussed while you're a contractor and many companies have you interview for the full-time position or possible new role if you fit the description.
First job in the industry... coming from a failed attempt in another. Did this really surprise anyone? This industry isn't for him. Especially with that quitting attitude.
There's two things I've learned working as Contract and Full-time QA:
1. It's a drop in the bucket. After you've shown you have more time, are more personable, are willing to do it all then all the other testers around you, there's still never enough positions.
2. You have to care about the QA work first. If you want to be in Audio, Design, Programming, MoCap, great, but right now you're a QA Tester, and if you can't care about the job you're being paid to do, how can anyone believe you'll really care about the job you want to do?
Ultimately it has to be for the experience, or because you like it. It really helps to not have commitments, and incredibly forgiving friends. Anything is possible once your foot is in the door, given enough luck and talent, but if you really want attention, get it by doing your job well first.
Also, it was echoed above, but I and those around me had to work for several years as contract QA before becoming full-time employees in QA alone, let alone other departments.
My first job in the game industry was technically contract (co-op junior programmer) and it was definitely a foot in the door. What I've learned since then is that beyond doing a good job, the relationships you form with your colleagues can be so much more important. Every job I've had since then I heard about through or was referred by someone I worked with prior to it. I cannot stress this enough: do a good job, be your friendly and likeable self, and stay in touch.
I did contract Testing work for about 6 years before getting hired on FTE. Once I went FTE, I was laid off twice, both times because the entire studio got cut. My time contracting was great, although I can definitely understand where he's coming from. The thing is, not all Test jobs are the same. My first Testing job was in certification where you are 10 layers removed from the developer who can fix your bug. That is a miserable job that pays for crap and is a complete and total dead-end. I quit, because I realized that, and went on to contract elsewhere, where I could have direct contact with the developer. Once I had that... the rest was history.
One thing about testing in games is that it is so customer focused that once you leave testing games you bring a completely different and valuable attitude to development. I left games 5 years ago and while I miss it, I've made double what I made in games and work half as hard. I salute those testers willing to stick it out, because it's almost always a thankless task.
I feel sorry for anyone who works in a jurisdiction where salaried employees are not eligible for overtime pay. Salaried employees are certainly entitled to overtime pay in Ontario, where I live, under most circumstances (managers are exempt, for example).
I feel like some of the advice given here is pretty unrealistic. The idea that you need to "hang in there as a contractor for a few years and build up experience working on triple-A games", as Tulay Tetiker of Bioware says, seems pretty unrealistic and unfair to me. If you're willing to work in an uncertain job with exceptionally low pay and no prospects of raises, benefits, or promotions *for a few years* you *might* find something more permanent? Why would anyone subject themself to that if they had any other options?
In my experience it's for precisely these reasons that those in QA tend to be young people who don't have other options and thus have little choice but to accept a poor situation. This is reflected in the quality of testing that many of them do, since they have little motivation to perform well given that the prospects for improvement are slim at best.
The advice itself is sound, it's the situation you don't like. Not saying I like it either, but to put it into perspective, at least for Contact QA:
-It requires little to no work history
-Usually only a high school diploma
-Little to no dress code
-Pay is typically a few bucks over minimum wage
What it comes down to is people willing to work it. You're right, it's young people without much options, but it's also an opportunity to get work experience and a healthy pay check for a good chunk of a year at least (provided you have solid work ethic) with an almost non-existent barrier of entry.
@Dave Bellinger: Frankly, I'd be happier if the barrier of entry were higher. Not necessarily a degree, but a solid grounding in logical thinking and basic competency with programming would be a start. Every time I hear a tester/lead/supervisor say 'I dunno, I'm QA, I just find the bugs' I get a little bit enraged, because game QA is still a technical field, and that attitude is a big part of why QA departments are so frequently the ghettoes of their publishers/developers.
Finding bugs is good, but being able to intuit the logic that caused the bug to happen in the first place and provide that information so that the devs can better reproduce it and target what underlying system needs to be fixed is better.
And understanding the overall game development process enough to target bugs to milestones would be better still. Writing a hundred low-priority polish bugs a week on a project that's still pre-alpha amounts to wasting at least four different people's time (and potentially causing trouble for whoever ends up with those bugs in their backlog, if a producer new to the project comes in and sees that Level Designer Bob has been sitting on 200 bugs for the past three months and decides that he's not doing his job without looking at just what those bugs are).
David Lejeune., I sort of agree with parts of your argument, but it honestly sounds like you have never worked in QA. Ever. QA is a technical field, I agree, but saying QA should know programming in order to test games and find bugs is like saying one needs to be a film director to be a movie critic. How many people at a game developer or publisher that work in marketing or sales do you know that regularly plays video games? That grew up playing video games religiously? Even the very games they are trying to market to their precious 13-31 age demographic? Those people were hired because they are smart and talented at their specific job role, regardless of whether or not it's related to the product they create or manage. Just because you lack the knowledge to create content or fix issues yourself does not mean you can not be good at locating problems and possible solutions. Game development is still a team effort, if I recall, and if the software engineers could find and fix all their own bugs - why do QA Analysts and Test Engineers even exist?
I do not quite understand the jaded aura I am feeling off your third point though, about how writing low-priority polish bugs clearly outside that stage in development. It sounds to me like the QA departments you work with are given fairly poor direction, training, or understanding of QA methodology anyway - which may not necessarily be their own fault. I do not blame the art department, especially one filled with cheap contractors I recruited just out of high school, for creating a bunch of unnecessary assets when their only direction for the game scene was "Oh, just fill it with stuff and keep us posted!" It's why many other software developers outside of video games have clearly defined and prioritized manual test plans to document and complete, in addition to free-form testing.
That being said, what's the harm in documenting known issues early so they do not blow up into *big* issues in later stages of development? Is pre-Gold Status crunch time a better time to start writing those, or would you rather avoid crunch altogether? Also, I do not want to sound like I am putting you down, but it clearly sounds like you have never worked for a developer that literally judged a QA contractor on the number of bugs found and documented in the database per week - because that is a reality at far too many places.
While that may be technically true... I can't count the number of QAs I've met with Bachelor degrees in computer science, software engineering etc, and gods only know how many have college degrees in game design, sound, art and the like.
While it might only "need" a HS diploma, so many QAs have vastly higher qualifications but are overlooked for promotion because "they are only testers"... :(
I agree with all the replies here to mine earlier, I just wanted to clarify a few things:
-I wasn't saying that "This is how QA should be", just enlightening that "This is how QA is"
-I agree that it would be great with a higher barrier of entry
That being said, it's not possible unless the employment conditions change. It's certain you get plenty of QA with degrees, most related to the industry, but if it was just limited to people with credentials like these, do you think QA work would get done ever efficiently? A bunch of individuals thinking, KNOWING they could do something else better, not really caring about their QA responsibilities?
What about pay, benefits? People with degrees rarely maintain patience doing bottom barrel work, especially when it requires watching someone else do things in the same field that they want to work in, but not doing things the way they would do. Do you really want 10 programmers directly looking over your programming? (Not a sarcastic question, a serious one, how would you feel about this?)
Finally, what happens when qualified audio, design, artists end up being good at QA? What incentive is there to move them into positions NOT in QA? What if they're your only, or best QA? Now you have frustrated workers locked into positions they never wanted in the first place because they cared about doing their job too well (Something that already happens, but I believe in this case would be made even worse)
I'm not saying the way things are done are the best way, but there are reasons it's done this way. The advice given here is geared towards that reality :\
@Jose Blanco: In the same way that a film critic who has written a screenplay, or understands the fundamentals of photographic composition and colour theory is a better, more rounded critic than a guy who just watches lots of movies (i.e. Roger Ebert vs. Harry Knowles), a tester who understands the basics of programming, (like how a function works, or what instancing is) is a better, more efficient tester. It's better to write one bug that gets to the heart of the problem than it is to write fifty bugs that all have the same root cause. And as for targetting bugs to milestones: yes, there is potential harm in flooding the database with polish bugs, or 'no shit' bugs (by which I mean stuff like placeholder text in UI that has only just been implemented, or missing textures in a level that's still whitebox) in the early stages. At best, you'll have taken a minute or so out of your test lead, a project lead, and a devs time when they have to look at the bug and decide to throw it in the backlog, and at worst you risk those bugs being forgotten and triaged out due to how old they are when it comes time to fix them. And there are a lot of other things like performance issues and texture draw-in issues that will get fixed just due to general optimization, or the removal of debug code, so don't need to be entered until beta or later.
QA's job is to illuminate issues that were caused by something that a dev didn't account for when they wrote their code, or laid out their level, in order to make sure the game is as good as possible. Not to justify some producer's over-inflated production budget. Producer's that get annoyed at low bug counts are best ignored.
I get your frustration, but it's almost perfect world talk. Placeholder bugs will be written because, if someone just happens to forget to implement that one line of subtitles and it's coming down to crunch time, QA is asked if it was written. If the answer is "No", it's not a good time. Producers may have QA write those bugs because they've been burned before by that kind of neglect, it's no one's fault because we're all human.
If you're thinking QA should "stand up" to those kinds of producer requests, I assure you it happens from time to time, but the final decision is not up to QA. If a producer feels more comfortable that these issues are logged, then they get logged. When it comes down to it, QA's job is to bring issues to attention so a decision can be made on them. Sometimes the decisions is "That's okay" or "That's intended", sometimes it's "...huh."
My point is, QA is not entering in the right code, or illustrating the right movement, designing the right balance. It's figuring out what is wrong *if anything*. Yes, if we had programmers and designers and audio guys doing QA work it would probably be more efficient for those areas assuming those individuals cared enough about work that wasn't theirs.
As it stands now, does it make more sense to have QA be very liberal in their reporting, or very discriminate? The safe option is the former, and it requires a little bit more time invested, but I've always felt that's what Quality Assurance meant.
Well, then I must have been extremely lucky at THQ, because for the most part when a 'Where are all the bugs at?' e-mail came down from a Producer or PM I would just explain that the current state of the project doesn't justify flooding the database with absolutely everything possible for the reasons that I've previously mentioned , and I would get a 'fair 'nuff' as a response (getting those e-mails in the first place was pretty rare because I'd usually give a rundown of my testing methodologies in the kick-off meetings and the devs would usually say that it sounded good to them). And those few times where a 'Don't care. Give me bugs.' came back, I would oblige them, but those projects would invariably have very troubled development cycles. I get that there are producers who want ALL THE BUGS! ALL THE TIME!, (and god knows I've had the 'why wasn't this found earlier?!' conversation plenty of times, but it was never for bugs that I or my team de-prioritized on our end) but that shouldn't be the default mode for testing, because a lot of the time (in my experience) the /devs/ don't want that, and they're the ones whose jobs we're trying to make easier.
And again: I'm not saying that QA should be staffed with full-on programmers who are capable of putting together games themselves, but that testers should have a BASIC understanding of programming. It could even be programming in BASIC, it's the understanding of the core concepts of programming that's the key, not the actual programming ability. Doing a handful of CodeAcademy courses would provide sufficient grounding, and a lot more than a lot of testers I've worked with have.
I see a problem of people who started and have long established themselves in the video game industry trying to compare the experiences and path changes they and their peers had five, ten, or fifteen+ years ago to the experiences and climate of the cramped, humorless, and sometimes even degrading environments of modern video games QA departments. The video game industry of the 1990s and early 2000s is not the same one that exists today. I doubt in 1998 the studios would bar contractors from using the coffee machine or elevators - but someone can feel free to prove me wrong at any time.
While I do still see contract QA work as being a great way to get your foot in the door, today it's highly dependent on a number of factors that are quite simply out of the average person's control. Small indie developers do not have the same priorities and opportunities as big AAA studios. That is not to say that indie and AAA are automatically more or less fruitful for neophytes, but smaller places that cannot afford to just hire a different person for every possible position tend to make people multitask, thus allowing them to gain more skills that they can put towards different jobs within the same development house, or carry them on to new employers and different projects. Then again, there's still plenty of studios both big and small that will hire you and immediately start counting down the days and hours until either the project has ended and you are no longer needed, or until the contract ends so they do not have to be forced to actually hire you and pay a wage greater than $10-$12 per hour to make sure their potential millions of customers do not start making phone calls.
That being said, I am not absolving all jaded QA contractors out there. I still meet some of you every year with an attitude akin to "Meh...I just play video games all day, anyway...so what?"
Honestly if you want to get your foot in the door, do side projects. If you are a programmer, build some simple games. If you are an artist, make a bunch of cool art (and better yet, get it into a game). If you are a designer, design lots of cool stuff (I don't care if you can't code, make it pen and paper, make it with little plastic figures, whatever). If music is your passion, do music. Build some mods, etc... Heck, if game QA is your absolute obsession, then some top to bottom QA analysis of existing games that you can show someone and say here, look what I have done.
Seriously, if making games is your life's obsession, then show it in your side projects. Because those are the best thing to demonstrate your skills and passion with when talking to a potential new employer as you first try to climb into the industry.
But if you don't have a passion to be doing this, and you're just thinking of starting it 'as a career', turn around and leave now. I don't say that to be mean, I'm just telling you up front that the gaming industry pay and benefits are putrescent compared with mainstream development, and if you're not trying to get in because gaming burns in your blood, then you can have a far happier and better paid career somewhere else.
And I want to repeat that again for people who find themselves out of school, looking for that first job, who thought a game career might be cool, but don't honestly give enough of a damn to do anything on the side. Don't do that to yourself! There's much better money and conditions to be had in other industries than this one.
I wish before people enrolled in Game Development programs they ALL had to experience this questioning / thought . absolutely critical for success in our industry.
@David Paris
It seems like you are talking to people who are completely outside the industry so this may be off topic.
I agree with your point that side projects are the way to get your foot in the door for a higher position. However, as someone who was (until a few days ago) working as a full-time QA employee I always felt constrained by the IP agreements that anyone wanting to work in the industry are required to sign.
I never felt like I could make an original side project , on my own time and equipment, without having to worry about the idea and work being absorbed by the company. I think it is ridiculous to have that sort of agreement be mandatory for all employees as opposed to ones who have been purposely hired to do work-for-hire (artists, designer, and engineers). Even in those cases I am still not too keen on a company essentially saying, "You can work for us but we own you and all of your ideas. Even your off time ones.". Note, I am not talking about DLC or anything at all related to a project that the employer has in the works, just an ORIGINAL side project.
I wish the industry would move more towards a model where they would request that you give them first crack at publishing the game, making the people who worked on it part of the team (as though they bought out a start up complete with positions and raises), and if there is no movement on the project after a set time or if the company decides to pass then the team is allowed to self publish. I feel a model like this would be much better for the company as a whole as well as employee morale. All the lawyers might have a simultaneous stroke, but I think it will work out better than the current model.
Whereas side projects can give you a good feel for the work and a bit of a portfolio, QA has an immense 2nd benefit that a lot of people overlook. Yes you are in a reactive job but a number of the people around you will be in this industry for a while. If someone who does move up can say they are impressed with your work and you are easy to work with, that opens a lot of doors. Some people who move up out of QA seem to forget this immediately. This is a small and rather incestuous industry. The QA tester you are calling a mouth-breathing monkey today could easily end up your producer and or lead in 5 - 7 years.
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that your company cannot legally claim anything you do outside company time & resources. As long as your work doesn't use their time, machines, or ideas, you are good to go. You should not be in danger from your employer. I've never had nor seen issues with that as long as the seperation is clear. I've been told before that while occasionally someone wants you to sign something like that, it is unenforceable. Perhaps one of our lawyers can jump in to confirm.
QA can get you in the door from the standpoint of yes, you are in the building, and yes, you now know who to talk to, but it is nontrivial to jump to that next point from there. You largely need to be busting your balls to do the side projects I mentioned while you are QAing, so that as you go to demonstrate why you should make that next move within the company, you have concrete evidence that you have the skills for the next job even though you currently are doing QA (which doesn't tend to get the same respect).
Unless of course you really love QA, in which case you are a different breed of beastie and I hope you find joy in what you do :)
I can't reply to your comment that this actually belongs on, but depending on the contract you signed, the company may very well prevent you from doing outside side projects. I know because I've signed one.
Some good points are all being made, but as a current QA contractor, I can tell you one hard and fast rule in respect to the topic. It all depends on where you work. It makes a REALLY big difference on how you're treated and how many doors open up to you for advancement.
The individual complaining about the project he worked on (Halo 4), meant he was most likely contracted directly for Microsoft, or was actually at 343 (Still getting paid by Microsoft). I worked a full contract at Microsoft on Gears of War Judgement as a QA contractor, and they treated me great. The Caveat is that they treat you for what you are at the time, an unskilled labor force, and that is because they are willing to hire people with no testing experience.
I did my time there, got the experience, and now I work at Arena Net where they treat their QA as developers. I've also personally seen at least 3+ QA individuals get moved into Design and other roles throughout the company. So it very much is still a "foot in the door" type job. Like I said, it really depends on where you work. I think the original author of that complaint had painted himself an unrealistic picture of what to expect.
Lastly, I hate to sound like someones grandmother, but Attitude = Altitude.
In the 28 months since I've started as QA on the dev team here at, there's been no shortage of opportunities for other positions and recognition of our work by the rest of the team.
Out of the 40+ testers who've come and gone during that time, almost 30 of them came from our QA-Only division, 7 had their contracts constantly renewed since 2 years even when the workload was very low and 14 got promoted to various design, rig, artistic, management and production positions, myself included.
QA is not always easy and there's most certainly horror stories for every studios that ever existed. But people tend to think these things only happen to us... Surely I don't need to remind you of the numerous and sometimes unceremonious studio closures that occur every year...
I have however witnessed plenty of talented and motivated people climb through the ranks to tell you that QA as a career or as a foot in the door for other departments is NOT A MYTH. I would suggest making sure you are in a workplace that recognizes your efforts and ambitions before giving countless hours to your employer, but once that's done, hard work and perseverance WILL pay off.
Most game studios do not have a shortage of work that needs to be done.
People in QA that are embedded in with development teams have a unique vantage point of being able to see what's falling through the cracks in ways that no one else on the team can see.
Usually, this stuff isn't going to be glamorous, and you can forget about it relating to the discipline in question you actually do want to get into some day.... In fact, its usually going to be the kinda crap no one wants to take any responsibility for (which is why its slipping), because its hard work. Nevertheless, if you can find a role that needs filling, and own it, you are very much likely to be invaluable to the team in question. Opportunities open up after that in a wide variety of ways.
I started as contract QA, and then was made full time QA. I then got a promotion with in QA and then later moved on to a production position elsewhere. I'm not far enough along in my career to consider myself a "success story" by any means, but I am an example of someone who has used that "foot in the door" within the past five years. I think I had a natural proclivity for it, and I learned everything I could from everyone who had something to teach - even when that involved being criticized, and I respected the culture of the department. I also benefitted from timing - I happened to be there when there was need.
I definitely know good testers who have been let go at the end of their contracts not because of their performance but just because the need for them had ended. But most of those people quickly bounce back, get another job, and continue to advance their careers.
No one is going to take your career as seriously as you are. If you feel like you are in a dead end, express the desire to move up, ask for honest feedback on whether there is anything holding you back, improve your skills if you can, or apply for other jobs. Applying for other jobs should tell you if your perception of your potential is in line with the need for your qualifications or not - if not, you'll know what to improve. And seriously, even if your job isn't where you want to be, you are still being paid to perform a job and have an obligation to do that properly. If you stop doing the job you have properly, you will likely never move up - and that is probably as it should be.
It's nice to see other perspectives on this issue.
Just because someone is in QA doesn't mean that is all they've ever done and that they've never worked higher positions. Like with any industry there are times where, out of necessity to have an income, you have to suck it up and take a lower paying job. It's easy for some people to say "just stick it out & you'll get your chance" when the it seems like a lot of individuals who say that...haven't gone through QA.
After getting laid off in the early stages of THQ's dissolution I spent six months applying for similar positions and getting no response, until I eventually broke down and started applying for temp contract positions. I don't know if it's due to the parent company of the studio where I've ended up, or a more general change in the attitudes toward QA due to the current AAA assembly line climate of the industry (or maybe it's just me), but it definitely feels like a dead end position now.
If I'm lucky my contract through the staffing agency will be extended to the next project after the current one ends (which is legally dubious, as the reason that contracts at THQ were year long followed by a 3-6 month 'cool down' were due to CA laws about temporary workers being paid less and given no benefits to do the same work as full time), but the chances of being brought in to an internal testing position are slim to none (I was told by the QA Manager when I interviewed that for the duration of his time in the position he'd only seen a handful of testers advance). There is very strict segregation of the QA Team from the Development Team, to the point that testers have to exit the building and walk to another entrance to get between the two designated QA locations, instead of walking through the building, and 99% of the non-database communication between QA and production is through the QA Leads or the QA Manager. There doesn't seem to be any sort of SDET positions, (just a generalized 'Tools' team that does everything, with their focus on development tools, not test tools) and given the team segregation there is no real opportunity to prove oneself capable of doing any sort of production work, be it design or coding, unless you can sneak that information in to a bug, or get a conversation going in the comments of a bug.
And while hourly QA gets overtime pay and salaried employees generally do not, if given a choice between working unpaid overtime, but having a salary that guarantees that my bills are paid (plus a decent health plan, sick, holiday and vacation pay, and other benefits), or being hourly with paid overtime, but having to RELY on 50-60 hour weeks in order to barely break even, with basic or no health coverage and no other benefits (which is what Contract QA is like for the vast majority of people who work it. Entry level Contract QA with overtime is MAYBE 25,000/year if copious amounts of overtime are worked, before taxes. And I have seen a lot of testers come in to work sick as a dog, getting the rest of the team sick, because they just can't afford to miss a day of work to get better), I'll take the former every. single. time.
:(
It bugs the crap out of me that every time a woman moves out of QA and into a "better" position, its because she's rumored to have done some...special favors to get the job. This happened to me, and it happened to two very close friends as well. I can assure you that we got to our new jobs through our job dedication, knowledge, and expertise, and not because of our "assets".
I agree with you, and dont mean any offense. But this particular woman was cut of that cloth. There were other females in dev that got into that position with pure skill and were very well respected and cared for. Im just pointing out one instance. Additionally, she was laid off with the rest of QA, so she clearly wasn't all that knowledgable/skilled. I never talked to her after that, so I didn't get the full story. Anyhow, I apologize for offending you.
It wasn't like it was a big secret. Im not trying to start a gender war. But let's not pretend that these things don't happen. They do happen, in every industry. It's not just women either. But I can say, with fair certainty, that she did not get into that position based on her skill. She had no skill. I've seen men do the same thing, just not in this industry specifically.
I had a different take on the matter with Mr. Peter's article. This gentlemen complained about "promises" not being fulfilled and working hard and such. I worked for the same company on their previous project (Halo CE: Anniversary Edition) Then, it was only 4 of us in the QA department. The same QA Manager, the same full time devs. I had no problems at all. Had a role in Design actually. We weren't promised anything, but were told some similar lines like the possibility of getting hired on full-time by the company itself.
In the end, this guy QUIT! He choose to put in his two weeks. He choose to stop going to certain meetings. Of course he was going to get the boot. Especially if he was a contractor. Why continue to pay someone for half-ass work and walk around with a piss poor attitude? In this industry, we don't need people wasting others time. So you didn't anything about a conversion to full-time. So what. That gets handled at the end of your contract. I've seen it happen all the time. You have to wait because none of that can be discussed while you're a contractor and many companies have you interview for the full-time position or possible new role if you fit the description.
First job in the industry... coming from a failed attempt in another. Did this really surprise anyone? This industry isn't for him. Especially with that quitting attitude.
1. It's a drop in the bucket. After you've shown you have more time, are more personable, are willing to do it all then all the other testers around you, there's still never enough positions.
2. You have to care about the QA work first. If you want to be in Audio, Design, Programming, MoCap, great, but right now you're a QA Tester, and if you can't care about the job you're being paid to do, how can anyone believe you'll really care about the job you want to do?
Ultimately it has to be for the experience, or because you like it. It really helps to not have commitments, and incredibly forgiving friends. Anything is possible once your foot is in the door, given enough luck and talent, but if you really want attention, get it by doing your job well first.
Also, it was echoed above, but I and those around me had to work for several years as contract QA before becoming full-time employees in QA alone, let alone other departments.
One thing about testing in games is that it is so customer focused that once you leave testing games you bring a completely different and valuable attitude to development. I left games 5 years ago and while I miss it, I've made double what I made in games and work half as hard. I salute those testers willing to stick it out, because it's almost always a thankless task.
I feel like some of the advice given here is pretty unrealistic. The idea that you need to "hang in there as a contractor for a few years and build up experience working on triple-A games", as Tulay Tetiker of Bioware says, seems pretty unrealistic and unfair to me. If you're willing to work in an uncertain job with exceptionally low pay and no prospects of raises, benefits, or promotions *for a few years* you *might* find something more permanent? Why would anyone subject themself to that if they had any other options?
In my experience it's for precisely these reasons that those in QA tend to be young people who don't have other options and thus have little choice but to accept a poor situation. This is reflected in the quality of testing that many of them do, since they have little motivation to perform well given that the prospects for improvement are slim at best.
-It requires little to no work history
-Usually only a high school diploma
-Little to no dress code
-Pay is typically a few bucks over minimum wage
What it comes down to is people willing to work it. You're right, it's young people without much options, but it's also an opportunity to get work experience and a healthy pay check for a good chunk of a year at least (provided you have solid work ethic) with an almost non-existent barrier of entry.
Finding bugs is good, but being able to intuit the logic that caused the bug to happen in the first place and provide that information so that the devs can better reproduce it and target what underlying system needs to be fixed is better.
And understanding the overall game development process enough to target bugs to milestones would be better still. Writing a hundred low-priority polish bugs a week on a project that's still pre-alpha amounts to wasting at least four different people's time (and potentially causing trouble for whoever ends up with those bugs in their backlog, if a producer new to the project comes in and sees that Level Designer Bob has been sitting on 200 bugs for the past three months and decides that he's not doing his job without looking at just what those bugs are).
I do not quite understand the jaded aura I am feeling off your third point though, about how writing low-priority polish bugs clearly outside that stage in development. It sounds to me like the QA departments you work with are given fairly poor direction, training, or understanding of QA methodology anyway - which may not necessarily be their own fault. I do not blame the art department, especially one filled with cheap contractors I recruited just out of high school, for creating a bunch of unnecessary assets when their only direction for the game scene was "Oh, just fill it with stuff and keep us posted!" It's why many other software developers outside of video games have clearly defined and prioritized manual test plans to document and complete, in addition to free-form testing.
That being said, what's the harm in documenting known issues early so they do not blow up into *big* issues in later stages of development? Is pre-Gold Status crunch time a better time to start writing those, or would you rather avoid crunch altogether? Also, I do not want to sound like I am putting you down, but it clearly sounds like you have never worked for a developer that literally judged a QA contractor on the number of bugs found and documented in the database per week - because that is a reality at far too many places.
"-Usually only a high school diploma"
While that may be technically true... I can't count the number of QAs I've met with Bachelor degrees in computer science, software engineering etc, and gods only know how many have college degrees in game design, sound, art and the like.
While it might only "need" a HS diploma, so many QAs have vastly higher qualifications but are overlooked for promotion because "they are only testers"... :(
-I wasn't saying that "This is how QA should be", just enlightening that "This is how QA is"
-I agree that it would be great with a higher barrier of entry
That being said, it's not possible unless the employment conditions change. It's certain you get plenty of QA with degrees, most related to the industry, but if it was just limited to people with credentials like these, do you think QA work would get done ever efficiently? A bunch of individuals thinking, KNOWING they could do something else better, not really caring about their QA responsibilities?
What about pay, benefits? People with degrees rarely maintain patience doing bottom barrel work, especially when it requires watching someone else do things in the same field that they want to work in, but not doing things the way they would do. Do you really want 10 programmers directly looking over your programming? (Not a sarcastic question, a serious one, how would you feel about this?)
Finally, what happens when qualified audio, design, artists end up being good at QA? What incentive is there to move them into positions NOT in QA? What if they're your only, or best QA? Now you have frustrated workers locked into positions they never wanted in the first place because they cared about doing their job too well (Something that already happens, but I believe in this case would be made even worse)
I'm not saying the way things are done are the best way, but there are reasons it's done this way. The advice given here is geared towards that reality :\
QA's job is to illuminate issues that were caused by something that a dev didn't account for when they wrote their code, or laid out their level, in order to make sure the game is as good as possible. Not to justify some producer's over-inflated production budget. Producer's that get annoyed at low bug counts are best ignored.
I get your frustration, but it's almost perfect world talk. Placeholder bugs will be written because, if someone just happens to forget to implement that one line of subtitles and it's coming down to crunch time, QA is asked if it was written. If the answer is "No", it's not a good time. Producers may have QA write those bugs because they've been burned before by that kind of neglect, it's no one's fault because we're all human.
If you're thinking QA should "stand up" to those kinds of producer requests, I assure you it happens from time to time, but the final decision is not up to QA. If a producer feels more comfortable that these issues are logged, then they get logged. When it comes down to it, QA's job is to bring issues to attention so a decision can be made on them. Sometimes the decisions is "That's okay" or "That's intended", sometimes it's "...huh."
My point is, QA is not entering in the right code, or illustrating the right movement, designing the right balance. It's figuring out what is wrong *if anything*. Yes, if we had programmers and designers and audio guys doing QA work it would probably be more efficient for those areas assuming those individuals cared enough about work that wasn't theirs.
As it stands now, does it make more sense to have QA be very liberal in their reporting, or very discriminate? The safe option is the former, and it requires a little bit more time invested, but I've always felt that's what Quality Assurance meant.
And again: I'm not saying that QA should be staffed with full-on programmers who are capable of putting together games themselves, but that testers should have a BASIC understanding of programming. It could even be programming in BASIC, it's the understanding of the core concepts of programming that's the key, not the actual programming ability. Doing a handful of CodeAcademy courses would provide sufficient grounding, and a lot more than a lot of testers I've worked with have.
While I do still see contract QA work as being a great way to get your foot in the door, today it's highly dependent on a number of factors that are quite simply out of the average person's control. Small indie developers do not have the same priorities and opportunities as big AAA studios. That is not to say that indie and AAA are automatically more or less fruitful for neophytes, but smaller places that cannot afford to just hire a different person for every possible position tend to make people multitask, thus allowing them to gain more skills that they can put towards different jobs within the same development house, or carry them on to new employers and different projects. Then again, there's still plenty of studios both big and small that will hire you and immediately start counting down the days and hours until either the project has ended and you are no longer needed, or until the contract ends so they do not have to be forced to actually hire you and pay a wage greater than $10-$12 per hour to make sure their potential millions of customers do not start making phone calls.
That being said, I am not absolving all jaded QA contractors out there. I still meet some of you every year with an attitude akin to "Meh...I just play video games all day, anyway...so what?"
Seriously, if making games is your life's obsession, then show it in your side projects. Because those are the best thing to demonstrate your skills and passion with when talking to a potential new employer as you first try to climb into the industry.
But if you don't have a passion to be doing this, and you're just thinking of starting it 'as a career', turn around and leave now. I don't say that to be mean, I'm just telling you up front that the gaming industry pay and benefits are putrescent compared with mainstream development, and if you're not trying to get in because gaming burns in your blood, then you can have a far happier and better paid career somewhere else.
And I want to repeat that again for people who find themselves out of school, looking for that first job, who thought a game career might be cool, but don't honestly give enough of a damn to do anything on the side. Don't do that to yourself! There's much better money and conditions to be had in other industries than this one.
It seems like you are talking to people who are completely outside the industry so this may be off topic.
I agree with your point that side projects are the way to get your foot in the door for a higher position. However, as someone who was (until a few days ago) working as a full-time QA employee I always felt constrained by the IP agreements that anyone wanting to work in the industry are required to sign.
I never felt like I could make an original side project , on my own time and equipment, without having to worry about the idea and work being absorbed by the company. I think it is ridiculous to have that sort of agreement be mandatory for all employees as opposed to ones who have been purposely hired to do work-for-hire (artists, designer, and engineers). Even in those cases I am still not too keen on a company essentially saying, "You can work for us but we own you and all of your ideas. Even your off time ones.". Note, I am not talking about DLC or anything at all related to a project that the employer has in the works, just an ORIGINAL side project.
I wish the industry would move more towards a model where they would request that you give them first crack at publishing the game, making the people who worked on it part of the team (as though they bought out a start up complete with positions and raises), and if there is no movement on the project after a set time or if the company decides to pass then the team is allowed to self publish. I feel a model like this would be much better for the company as a whole as well as employee morale. All the lawyers might have a simultaneous stroke, but I think it will work out better than the current model.
Whereas side projects can give you a good feel for the work and a bit of a portfolio, QA has an immense 2nd benefit that a lot of people overlook. Yes you are in a reactive job but a number of the people around you will be in this industry for a while. If someone who does move up can say they are impressed with your work and you are easy to work with, that opens a lot of doors. Some people who move up out of QA seem to forget this immediately. This is a small and rather incestuous industry. The QA tester you are calling a mouth-breathing monkey today could easily end up your producer and or lead in 5 - 7 years.
QA can get you in the door from the standpoint of yes, you are in the building, and yes, you now know who to talk to, but it is nontrivial to jump to that next point from there. You largely need to be busting your balls to do the side projects I mentioned while you are QAing, so that as you go to demonstrate why you should make that next move within the company, you have concrete evidence that you have the skills for the next job even though you currently are doing QA (which doesn't tend to get the same respect).
Unless of course you really love QA, in which case you are a different breed of beastie and I hope you find joy in what you do :)
The individual complaining about the project he worked on (Halo 4), meant he was most likely contracted directly for Microsoft, or was actually at 343 (Still getting paid by Microsoft). I worked a full contract at Microsoft on Gears of War Judgement as a QA contractor, and they treated me great. The Caveat is that they treat you for what you are at the time, an unskilled labor force, and that is because they are willing to hire people with no testing experience.
I did my time there, got the experience, and now I work at Arena Net where they treat their QA as developers. I've also personally seen at least 3+ QA individuals get moved into Design and other roles throughout the company. So it very much is still a "foot in the door" type job. Like I said, it really depends on where you work. I think the original author of that complaint had painted himself an unrealistic picture of what to expect.
Lastly, I hate to sound like someones grandmother, but Attitude = Altitude.
Hope that helped shed some light on the debate!
Out of the 40+ testers who've come and gone during that time, almost 30 of them came from our QA-Only division, 7 had their contracts constantly renewed since 2 years even when the workload was very low and 14 got promoted to various design, rig, artistic, management and production positions, myself included.
QA is not always easy and there's most certainly horror stories for every studios that ever existed. But people tend to think these things only happen to us... Surely I don't need to remind you of the numerous and sometimes unceremonious studio closures that occur every year...
I have however witnessed plenty of talented and motivated people climb through the ranks to tell you that QA as a career or as a foot in the door for other departments is NOT A MYTH. I would suggest making sure you are in a workplace that recognizes your efforts and ambitions before giving countless hours to your employer, but once that's done, hard work and perseverance WILL pay off.
Most game studios do not have a shortage of work that needs to be done.
People in QA that are embedded in with development teams have a unique vantage point of being able to see what's falling through the cracks in ways that no one else on the team can see.
Usually, this stuff isn't going to be glamorous, and you can forget about it relating to the discipline in question you actually do want to get into some day.... In fact, its usually going to be the kinda crap no one wants to take any responsibility for (which is why its slipping), because its hard work. Nevertheless, if you can find a role that needs filling, and own it, you are very much likely to be invaluable to the team in question. Opportunities open up after that in a wide variety of ways.
I definitely know good testers who have been let go at the end of their contracts not because of their performance but just because the need for them had ended. But most of those people quickly bounce back, get another job, and continue to advance their careers.
No one is going to take your career as seriously as you are. If you feel like you are in a dead end, express the desire to move up, ask for honest feedback on whether there is anything holding you back, improve your skills if you can, or apply for other jobs. Applying for other jobs should tell you if your perception of your potential is in line with the need for your qualifications or not - if not, you'll know what to improve. And seriously, even if your job isn't where you want to be, you are still being paid to perform a job and have an obligation to do that properly. If you stop doing the job you have properly, you will likely never move up - and that is probably as it should be.