The Games Industry – QA

Quality Assurance

Up until a few years ago QA was seen as one of the main entry ways into the industry. Join QA! Learn the ways of making games from the inside and then make a career out of it. Only in recent years have we seen the rise of actual games education, both in universities and through dedicated schools, often with mixed results.

For me the QA route worked out well. I started in localization and learned the ropes at a, back then, reasonably sized publisher. I got to work on some amazing games, some of them from franchises I adored. I tried to pay attention to what worked in games and what did not, which parts of the development cycle caused problems, what recurring issues we found and I also paid attention to planning and project management. I was fortunate that the team I worked for allowed me to take on responsibility and through that develop within the company. Many of my friends from that time have since moved on to different roles in the industry, in production, as coders, as artists and as designers. Some made a career out of QA and went on to become QA managers.

So as far as the old believe goes, it’s fairly accurate – you can use a job in QA to build a career in the games industry.

But it is this very notion which also acts as one of the main reasons why QA are often treated badly as a team within development and publishing.  It is the notion of it being an entry level position which allows companies to pay minimal wages for what often amounts to insane working hours. Stick with it, work hard, pay your dues and eventually you too can become a games designer (programmer, artist, producer – whatever floats your boat)!

But this excuse is bullshit. Just as with any other discipline within games development, no game could be shipped without QA. Well actually that’s not true; we could ship a game without QA. Some companies certainly try. But what you get is a piece of software that’s riddled with issues. You end up with a game which is unplayable, sells little and often ends up in the bin.

Quality assurance is essential in game development and since the rise of agile development embedded QA personnel in the various dev pods from a very early stage is getting more common. So clearly the industry recognizes the need for QA, as early as possible, yet we still fail to provide adequate support for them. We still often see them as a lesser part of the development cycle and companies treat them accordingly.

QA testers have the lowest income in the industry. A survey of games industry salaries from 2012 shows this. Compare this with the salary of a “regular” software QA technician and you can see that the average salary of a games QA technician is about 1/3.

Of course, software QA technicians might have different qualifications and training, but their function is essentially the same: test and find bugs, report them, regress them and ensure a piece of software is delivered to the satisfaction of the paying customer.

QA personnel are often seen as a necessary evil, a hindrance in development and the bugs they report are seen as an annoyance by many developers. Companies themselves exploit the fact that many people entering QA want to eventually move on to become developers themselves and they bank on the fact that new QA personnell will be willing to work extra hours (often unpaid) and accept almost any salary to get a shot to join the club.

The workflow alone is against QA in many cases. Once a build is completed it then needs to be tested. While the developers go and enjoy a Friday beer and their weekend, QA often pull extra hours to ensure the build is tested and ready for delivery to the publisher. Often this is expected and often this is unpaid.

When I started my career I was paid 11.000 GBP annually by a publisher. After taxes this was around 750 GBP a month. Living in London, where my publisher was based, this meant that I had to learn very quickly to manage my finances. Not necessarily a bad thing, but also not really a necessary thing either. The work I and my colleagues provided was essential to the publisher. It was essential to the development of all the games we worked on. I remember many late nights and weekend shifts. For the delivery of one particular title we did not have a single day off for about 3 months. Often what I was told was “Well someday you’ll be a developer! You got to pay your dues at some point!”

I have no problem with paying my dues. I do have a problem with people being exploited because they don’t know better and because they are eager to work in the industry. I have a problem with people not being paid their worth.

These days it’s gotten even worse to some degree. Many big publishers now outsource QA to eastern European countries in an attempt to cut cost even further. Many developers and publishers in Europe and the US utilize pure QA studios in Romania (800 LEI per month is equivalent to about 250 USD per month) and Bulgaria for example. QA is as far removed from the actual development process as it possibly can be.

In an ideal scenario there is a dialogue between the QA tester and the developers. It’s not just about finding and writing bugs in bulk. It’s about feedback, about how the game feels, about going outside of the parameters of a strict test plan. And QA personnel are the best people for that job. Often their insight, their feedback, is invaluable. They can provide usability feedback well before a build ever makes it into beta or focus testing. Removing that process by outsourcing QA to another country, to a factory where testers who never meet the developer, never even talk or email a developer, goes through a strict test plan, point by point, does not allow for that kind of feedback. What you get is clinical testing by numbers, clinical bugs. There is no dialogue, there is no feedback and creativity takes a dive. In those cases it is also almost impossible for any QA tester to actually learn from developers and get new skills, to eventually move on and do something else within the industry.

Some studios hire bulk QA towards the end of their development cycle, make them crunch through 80 hours a week at minimum wage and then terminate their contracts when the game ships. A few years later they repeat the cycle. People hired (and fired) this way have no chance of developing skills and progressing their career in the industry. The “advantage” of having a foot in the door never exists for those poor testers.  They obviously also don’t reap any benefits in the form of bonuses if a game does well.  But studios find no shortage in applications. When companies like Rockstar advertise for testers, paying a measly 14k GBP for a contract position (Contractors usually are paid better due to lack of security and company benefits – including bonus – a permanent employment offers), they are flooded with applications from people not only eager to play their favorite game, but also to get a foot into the industry. This is what companies bank on. These contract QA people work far more than the normal working hours, they get no benefits and when the game ship, their contract is over. No sales bonus.

These examples show what companies really think of QA. Personnel that is (unfortunately) necessary, personnel that does not really have to be listened to, personnel that can be exploited at minimum cost. Obviously not every company is like that; some (smaller and independent) studios value QA, pay them reasonably well and create an environment where feedback is encouraged. But so many companies, so many big and well known companies, prefer the route of exploitation.

But it could be so much better! Most QA testers are avid gamers, they have passion, they have drive and they have ambition. Most of them also know what works and what does not work in games. They are the people who play the games we make hundreds of times, they know all the ins and outs, they know the game backwards and their knowledge is priceless.

I think it’s about time we listen to what they have to say. I think it’s about time we pay them what they are worth. I think it’s time we all fully integrate them into our teams and embrace what they have to offer to the project as a whole.