Bottom of the Barrel

As clichés go, QA as a dream job is one of the most repeated in our industry. Joystiq and Kotaku both posted an article from the Seattle Weekly where one of the writers took a job at Volt, a local company contracted to test hardware for Microsoft and the 360. It's an interesting read, if not wildly extreme. While it does describe the conditions of a Quality Assurance department, this company looks like a Nazi concentration camp compared to my company. But the author brings up some interesting points and one quote in particular struck a chord with me:

"I think the [video game] industry in general, they want addicts," says Dr. Hilarie Cash, founder of Redmond's Internet/Computer Addiction Services. "It is to their economic benefit to have people really hooked on their games. That there happens to be a pool of addicts out there who will work for peanuts, like methadone treatment, is to their advantage," she says.

Quality Assurance always appears to be an after thought, an unfortunate cost that must be begrudgingly provided before a game can ship. It is a vicious cycle between the other departments loathing for us and their inability to provide an environment for us to succeed and prove our worth. We are constantly belittled for holding up projects by doing our job and then accept the full brunt of the blame when things don't go well. And yet, there is no active catalyst for change, there is no open discussion for how to improve what we do. So we stick with the status quo.

Reviling our ability to perform and then posting a job that only pays just above the state minimum wage only encourages more of the same. We will continue to draw from the same pool of mindless addicts instead of analytically thinking, intelligent people who could probably be enticed by a moderate increase in the starting wage. At the very least, we could be more discerning about who we choose to hire and hopefully weed out the bad apples that give us a bad name.

Unfortunately, we practically set up those that do make it through the loose screening process for failure with a training system that is antiquated and ill focused. Which brings me back to the quote; we don't want mindless addicts, we don't want drones. This defeats the purpose of QA. If one fails to see the details and becomes comfortable with the mundane, things begin to seep through the cracks. We need to stop pulling from the bottom of the barrel.

Quality Assurance can arguably be one of the most important aspects of game development. After all, there is no such thing as a B-Game.