Only read the last one because I have no desire to relive my year and a half in QA at EA Mobile. Pretty accurate. The worst part about that company in particular was the nature of the contracts prevented promotion to another department. For example, there was a game design position at EA Mobile literally 20 feet away from where I was working which HR would absolutely refuse to hire me for even if I had aced the interview. Foot in the door my ass...

But now I'm about to start a 1 year game design program at VFS. This will hopefully help me create the portfolio I need to get a real job.

I just applied for a night shift (7pm-4am) tester job. I have no illusions about what to expect, but I am glad, after reading this, to hear that testing does have the potential to lead to bigger things. I hope I get it.

I guess I should add that it wasn't a complete waste. I met a lot of cool designers and programmers during my time there who might be able to help me get a job in the future. Breaking in requires basically two things: A solid portfolio and a bunch of contacts. QA in a large studio can help you acquire the latter. The portfolio is something you'll need to do on your own time, because QA experience on a CV means jack. Also, it took me about 6 months of working harder than my peers before I was even given the opportunity to work directly with dev teams. Might be different for in-house console game testing.

Maybe I should post this on Edge where it might actually help someone...

Michel:

Your experience at EAM is unfortunate, but not uncommon. I believe most of the large publishers and even the console manufacturers do the 15-month contract, 3-month unemployment shuffle. As a general rule, these aren't the places where you will get hired as a designer: you are competing against 80-100 other people, many of them with more experience than you, and likely with stronger ties to the permanent QA pit staff (the QA leads).

Since these places hire huge numbers of QA people, however, they are your best step into a job that you can put on your resume as Industry Experience. Once you have Industry Experience, you have a much higher chance of getting hired for QA at a smaller studio. If you've done a good job at a place like EA, made a good impression, and soaked up as much knowledge as you can, you are instantly a much more attractive candidate at a dev house. Likely you will get another QA job, but hopefully it will be at a company where you can actually talk to the dev team about the bugs you find, and so forth (which will not always be the case. There's a thick membrane between QA and Dev at a lot of studios). In an environment like this, it's easier to get noticed, and competition, while equally or more fierce, is easier because there are less people competing, with a higher chance of people actually remembering your name.

Nowadays, however, QA isn't the only way to get into the industry, not by a long shot. You can take courses in game design/programming/art, you can make your own games with Flash, Game Maker, Unity, or any number of other tools, or learn Obj C and make games for the iPhone. There's a number of relatively well-known folks who have never worked at a large dev house who are still relatively well-known and respected for the games they have created. And none of these possible avenues is exclusive of the others. You can study game design and be tinkering around in Unity or Flash, or you can be working QA during the day and working on your first Indie game at night. Eventually, with enough time and work, something will pan out for you. Keep working hard, meeting and talking to people in the industry, and making what games you can.

Hey, you finally posted a picture of yourself!

Anyway, this testimonial does remind me that I should write a post about "breaking through" via QA just to frame some people's expectations. It's not how I went about things, but I do tend to see an awful lot of hopeful assumptions being made about the job. Mostly how it's the perfect gateway to just about any position in the industry, and it really isn't.

Plus, such a post would allow for plenty of anecdotes about funny bugs! Here's one of my all time favourites from a third-party studio:

The game we were working on had various collectibles, each one worth a static amount of money. Towards the end of the project, we got a bug -- well, more like a dissertation -- detailing the economical unlikeliness of such a system. You see, in a free market, values constantly fluctuate, and supply and demand plays a key role in the price of goods. In such an environment, the monetary worth of our collectibles couldn't realistically stay the same as they were perpetually flooding the market. To fix the bug, the value of the goods should constantly go down until a scarcity threshold is reached.

Half our team wasn't sure if it was a joke or a serious stab at getting attention from a former business grad, but I thought it was hilarious.

I am helping with the creation, and staffing of a corporation that will assist guys in getting software-testing joba, and I hope to get a job through the company. (http://www.aspiritech.org/) I, and the other potential testers have had little-to-no experience in the field, but the evaluators say that our work has been faster, and more efficient than many professionals. Our hours will be less than 7:00 p.m.-4:00 a.m.--10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. is closer to the norm--and the salaries will be $10-12 per hour. Can any of you experienced testers, please, give us some tips?

Devoured, good stuff. Mentions of The Tester, though, seem tacked on to loosely connect what is a standalone, important mini-memoir to the current event. I guess it's too early to know exactly what the show represents, because we know advertising can't be trusted to convey the truth of anything. But some synthesis would have been nice.

What I find most interesting about the show is that one of the female contestants was already on another reality show, vying to be on some competitive gaming team. She's an "expert" or whatever in a couple of genres, including music games. Her involvement seems weird to me, considering when I look at applications for game designer jobs it isn't uncommon to see "professional-level play" counted as a major boon to your application.

The truth might be more boring than the seeming absurdity of the show's concept would have us believe: these people want to be on television.

The industry has changed from 10-15 years ago. It has become increasingly difficult to make the transition from QA to full fledged development... what's sad is that most veteran devs, many of whom never had a QA job, continue to feed industry hopefuls the line that 'QA is an excellent way to break into the industry.' It makes me sick to my stomach. They have no idea how bad it is in the trenches...

This article brought a lot of bitterness and resentment from my time in QA back to the surface...

Wow, almost everything I read here hits dead on with the job I am currently in. I'm not bitter about it anymore, I understand at this point what the raw deal is, but I am okay with it given alternative jobs I have tried out (i.e. Phone Customer service..never again). It has drawbacks, but overall I get to hang out at work with people of like mind, and it has gotten slightly better than it used to be. Though slightly would be the preferred word. As a girl in the gaming industry (the word 'woman' is almost never used, as if it implies you must be pregnant or have been pregnant...still not 100% sure why)things have very much gotten better as far as the creepy looks and comments, but not on the front of 'so, your a girl, you must be good at puzzles and colors'. Hopefully that will be the next thing in the industry to evolve.

This was a very insightful read, Matthew. Your personal report on games QA added a lot of colour and specificity to my long-standing assumptions about testing. I for one am glad this is no longer the sure-fire route to a game development career.

University and video game design school tuition is as expensive as ever; the barrier to entry to the industry had better be high! Although I sometimes wish I got in on the ground floor during the "good ol' days", I'm also grateful to see the games industry mature to a point where not any joe with a high score can just walk in off the street.

And Michel: it looks like we'll be bumping into each other at the VFS soon enough!

For the doubters, QA is an entirely valid way to get into the industry. The trick is that it usually has to be an internal QA position at a game developer, not at a publisher. Some publishers are still willing to hire from QA to fill higher positions, but generally those roles are producer positions (starting with lowly associate producer).

I can say, from first-hand experience, that developers are still willing to take a good QA person and move them into more advanced rolls. A company I used to work for transitioned their QA guys into designer and programmer positions.

Even beyond QA, sometimes any job in a studio is enough. I know an artist who started out as the receptionist. He took the job purely so he could get to know the people in the studio and be close at hand when next they needed a junior artist, and that worked out brilliantly for him.

QA isn't guaranteed access to your dream job in the industry, and it isn't even always the best way into the industry, but it is one method that has worked and continues to work for many people.