The gruesome life of a games tester - Page 2

What gamer hasn't dreamed about playing games for a living? While this may seem like a great career, and a cool way to get a first job in the games business, the truth is less appealing.

IGN reached out to quality assurance (QA) testers from all over the world to hear their sides of the story. We received dozens of emails from contributors across numerous game companies. They told us stories of demanding working conditions, low pay and shaky worker morale.

They have been employed by a broad range of publishers, including traditional games publishers and newer outfits operating in the mobile games business.

QA testers sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with their employers and can be fired or even sued for divulging information. All the testers we contacted spoke to us on condition of anonymity. We have given them pseudonyms to protect their identities. We have checked each of their credentials. We asked for comments from a variety of games publishers, but have received zero responses.

Tedious Tasks


While the job may sound like a dream come true, Reuben says it's really not about getting paid to play games all day. "Imagine your favorite movie. Now take your favorite 30-second clip from that movie. Now watch that 30-second clip over and over again, 12 hours a day, every day for two months. When you've done that, tell me if what you've been doing is watching movies all day. I'm willing to bet you'll find that it's not quite the same thing...You get an area of the game, that's your area, and you test everything about that one area for months on end."

Furthermore, testers don't get the luxury of choosing the titles they'd like to play. "It's very boring playing a kid's game over and over," says Rich.

Frank adds, "I have seen people quit gaming because of the frustration of the process plus the repetitive nature of playing a game that you may hate or not recognize as something you would play. You get jaded."

Poor Compensation


Though some boring and repetitive jobs can pay decently, game testers do not get compensated nearly as well. Because the industry is made up almost entirely of contractors with zero union protection, they receive no benefits or negotiating power.

Companies often pay contractors a higher base pay in lieu of benefits, but Danny only made $10 an hour. Extrapolating this data, means the average salary for a full-time position is roughly a meager $20,800. The federal minimum wage is $7.25, but game-testers are information workers, not burger flippers. It takes skill and knowledge to test and judge a game.

Though the industry doesn't pay well for entry-level positions, what about more seasoned QA testers? Danny says, "I work with a guy who has spent the last eight years keeping his nose clean, never in fights with leadership, does whatever is asked of him, and is a freaking QA Ninja when it comes to PC testing. After eight years, he is still paid $14 an hour. I just think we're worth a whole heck of a lot more than $10 an hour." He believes that game developers/publishers should "offer some benefits like they do the rest of the company".

Lack of Respect


Keith tells a story about how his employer was too cheap to give him a promised copy of the game he'd worked on. He wrote, that "after two months and forty hours a week of playing this game, there was no way in hell I was going to buy it."

While financial benefits are one form of compensation, Danny believes that respect is also severely lacking. "We deserve to be treated like regular employees, instead of someone you don't invite to your Christmas party but then tell them to have their own last minute [party] in another building through the back entrance...True story."

"I am absolutely not alone in these feelings," he adds. "Most probably won't voice their opinion for fear of getting fired; others who might are already out of the industry because of the very conditions I'm talking about."

Harsh Working Conditions


Unlike typical nine-to-five jobs, the final months leading up to the release of a videogame company's product have been come to known as "crunch time."

According to tester Pete, there were numerous occasions in which he was neglected pay. "They had us stay overtime on the studio for a particular game release, but they never paid those extra hours worked."

For Frank, this meant mandatory overtime every day. "It got borderline illegal. It got to that point when I was so tired at three or four in the morning that I passed out a couple of times. Others did too and not anyone of us disturbed that person. We just let it go for a bit and brought each other back to life when we needed to."

Sleep deprivation wasn't the only way these harsh hours physically affected Frank and company. "Our nutrition habits were horrible. The only thing near us that was open at those hours: a McDonalds attached to a Chevron station that we quaintly called 'Chevronalds.' I was feeling like s*** and I just wanted to get it over with."

Reuben says that maintaining a healthy family life extremely difficult. "Once the overtime starts, the hours seem to be nearly endless...My longest period of straight overtime lasted just over seven months where my shortest work week was 65 hours and my longest was 92. This was stretched out over two projects that just bled straight into each other."

Poor Job Security


Compounding the physical and mental stresses that QA testers endure was the complete lack of job security. "During training, they told us it's not a matter of 'if' you'll be laid-off but 'when'," says Keith. "They flat-out tell you that what makes a good employee is the number of bugs you find and it is this number that will determine if you are kept on or not." This methodology, however, did not accurately take into account the quality of dedication that went into a project. "Here I was recreating and logging how to get stuck in the tail of a helicopter. I would have other testers comment on how much they liked my bugs, because I was one of those guys who would be able to reproduce those bugs that stumped everyone else, but when it came to the end of the project, the guy next to me had more bugs, so I was laid-off and he was not."

If being laid off isn't bad enough, finding continued employment is also difficult. "Everyone tries to advance to positions that aren't available and won't get," says Phil. While this may also be true for other careers within the games industry, he believes this problem is compounded because testers are often hired through a staffing company and not internally. Many publishers won't offer a reference because of contractor policies. Most testers are not, technically, employees.

Reuben explains, "The majority of people will come in, give up their outside lives for six months to a year, and then be let go. It's disheartening to see so many people you've spent so much time with be laid off like that."

While being laid off can be a part of any career, he adds that the process is cold. "The way [my employer] used to handle these things was to send out meeting notices. You would go to a meeting, and someone would walk into the QA area where everyone who didn't have the meeting request were still sitting and simply say, 'If you're here, you've been let go, pack up your stuff, we're escorting you out'...you always hoped that you would be one of the few that would be kept on."


No Power to Change

Because playing videogames all day as a career has been heavily glamorized, companies are never at a loss for willing recruits. "Everyone in QA is expendable," says Frank. Reuben adds, "If management doesn't like someone, they just refuse to renew their contract, thus avoiding any hassle at all. This leads to people who start asking questions about workload and length to be branded as trouble makers and their contracts are simply not extended."

Forming a union at the tester level is next to impossible
Frank says, "Once the product ships, you're out of a job. There are no benefits, no perks and definitely no promise of being hired full time. There have been so many talented people I have worked with and it's a shame to see that talent getting wasted." While some organizations offer job protection, "there is no union for QA contractors" he adds.

Could testers form a union? While it is theoretically possible, Reuben believes it isn't realistic. "Forming a union at the tester level is next to impossible due to how contracts are handled. If you try, you'll find your contract not being extended. The part that really hurts is that the industry is so small that if for some reason you are let go, most companies in your area know about it and won't hire you."

Facing the Blame

Even after passing through QA, it's still commonplace for today's videogames to have bugs both small and game-breaking. Take the PlayStation 3 version of Bethesda's Skyrim. If QA testers work as fervently as they claim, how can such technical travesties slip through the cracks?

The truth, according to Phil, is that "many reported bugs don't get fixed." Furthermore, developers often ignore the advice of QA testers. Frank says, "They shot our opinions down without even a slight bit of consideration. They waste money and resources" before faulty projects are canned.

The company blames us for all the bugs that make it into the final product.
"Sometimes game companies have to pick and choose their battles and decide what bugs must be fixed," says Trent. "The thing about QA testing is that not everyone games the same. There are millions of combinations of things a gamer could do that a team of 100 or less won't find and it ends up in the final product." This, combined with some bugs not being repeatable, explains why catastrophic glitches are able to seep through. "There were plenty of times you would find a bug, but if you can't write up a detailed way to reproduce the bug, you can't count it, even if it's game breaking...You must be able to make it always happen or happen often enough for it to be reported."

Even when developers listen to the QA team, issues can still arise. Trent adds, "Sometimes the developers swear they fixed something, but the next build of the game breaks something else that wasn't an issue or sometimes their fix doesn't solve the problem."

Though many of these glitches may not be the fault of QA testers, Saul, who declined to name the company he worked for, stated. "The company blames us for all the bugs that make it into the final product." Pete notes that "Producers don't listen to QA anymore....but if a bug shows up when the game goes live or gold, that's QA's fault, even if QA previously reported it as an issue."

To avoid delays, Sam says publishers "bully" their QA testers to "get projects to retail on expected time tables, meaning excessively long hours." He described one employer as "very totalitarian" in the way it treated QA staff. Among the testers who contacted IGN, this was a common complaint about a variety of publishers.

Conclusion

While the popular view of the game tester living an easy life is a misconception, there are alternatives to the over-worked, mistake-prone model that testers have reached out to talk about. Companies like Valve and Blizzard are famed for taking their time finishing games and eradicating bugs although, for different reasons, this is not always a luxury available to companies squeezed by stock-holder expectations. Other companies are opening up their games to the public via crowd-sourced beta programs, which creates a whole new set of issues.

History has demonstrated that when QA testers are a more integral part of the development cycle, game companies end up with a better product, greater sales, and most importantly, perhaps create more humane working conditions as a result.

IGN would like to thank all the QA testers who spoke to us. Let us know your thoughts in the Comments section.