The unsung heroes

The common perception of the game tester, that humble QA employee at the bottom of the developers food chain is that of the slacker that got lucky – being paid to play games for a living is many a gamer’s dream, yet the relative glamour of such a lifestyle remains just that, the reality is far more mundane.
Of course, for the gamer willing to make the jump from passion to profession, the chance to make an impact on the design of a game is not to be sniffed at. Along with the kudos generated like a drifting car among peers, the position is often used as a foot in the door to greater things yet the initiation by fire into the industry can burn more than it ingratiates.
The early days of employment in the QA department can be heady times. Working with like-minded gamers, talking games, playing games, living games, being part of the inside machinations of the past-time you’ve loved and laboured over since childhood – it’s mainlining gaming without the guilt of wasted time and the high of talking about it until you’re blue in the face and no one is looking at you strangely.
Like the Zerg’s creep though, reality gradually overcomes the initial head rush. As days blend into weeks and into months, the physical and psychological impact of playing the same game non-stop every day begins to be felt. Late into the project means late into the night and regular hours become stretched to a breaking point for small thanks and little money. Pizza trays and left over takeaways become new architectural constructions as waistlines expand amid the disposable city and disillusionment spreads like a virus through the sunlight shy denizens of the impromptu space.
Despite their obvious and odorous commitment, the tester’s worth to the company is almost a begrudging one - they are employed to criticise the very product it makes. Bug reports have even been known to cause affront but in an industry that treats crunch time as a norm it’s hardly surprising that tensions become this personal and little surprise that with Microsoft’s ever-so-cinical PR move, console beta-testing may become more regularly outsourced to the masses after the sure-fire success that was Halo 3’s pre-release multiplayer.
Of course it isn’t a given that all QA departments are like this – one developer may nurture and value their testers while another may battery farm them through bio-mechanical interfaces. One thing is a given though - the preconception of the average game tester. Choosing an easy life playing games for a living is a wildly different reality to the truth and why, with the increasing complexity and depth of game worlds, they are gaming’s unsung heroes – battling the glitch to ensure the consumer never once loses their suspension of disbelief.
If something makes it through the beta though, just remember – it’s not a bug it’s a feature.