Test or Die: The #Truth about #Gametesting Part 2
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Seven16
The following post is an excerpt from a journal entry on April of 2009.
It’s 9 am. I don’t remember driving into work this morning. Another sleepless night seeing endless streams of game characters roaming around my head. I can’t tell what’s a dream, and what’s reality anymore. The day blurs into night, and then back to day again. One straight month, another two to go.
What most people don’t realize about testing is that it’s not like Grandma’s Boy, it’s more like you’re working in an Auto Assembly plant, but instead of cars, you’re testing videogames. You’re finding everything wrong with them day in, day out. My hatred of this project has not hit its peak, but I’m getting there.
We all sit in a line with a bunch of consoles, computers, and other stuff in front of us. There are no cubicles, no place to set your stuff down, it’s just get in and go. I’ve been staring into this small broken television screen for a while, and my eyes are starting to hurt. I can’t just readily get up because my boss is sitting right next to me, and I only get 3 breaks, one at 10am for 15 minutes, an hour at noon for lunch, and one at 3pm for another 15 minutes.
It was fun at first, and I immediately connected with the source material, but the problem was not with the content, it was with having to see it every waking moment. When you go in for 8 hours a day to an un-air conditioned floor with a bunch of sweaty nerds and soda cans, the outcome is never pretty.
It’s finally lunch, and I bolt for the door. If I don’t get my lunch in the next 15 minutes, I’m not going to have enough time to eat it. Everything is close, but it takes 15 minutes just to walk to most of the places because the building is on a main street. The light takes forever to change. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept right in days.
I head over to TOGO’s and grab a sandwich, then head back to the break room on the 4th floor. There’s no place to sit, and it’s too crowded. Most of the testers can’t get a seat because there’s just not enough space. Half of the people head back to their desk and eat there. I decide to grab another free soda (the only REAL perk), and head back to my desk.
I’m chewing on my sandwich while people play World of Warcraft near me, some play Street Fighter, others are on the internet watching Hulu. Before I know it, it’s time to go back to work, and even though I’m already at my desk, I still loathe that my short break is over.
This is where the day starts to get hard.
I have only found 5 bugs today, and the database is full of bugs that are getting fixed. We don’t know when the next build is coming in, so all we are really doing is endless checklists to make sure everything in the game works aka “Busy work.”
The lead is a complete fool. It’s his first real project he’s handled, and he’s going about trying to encourage us in the wrong way. It’s not that he’s heavy handed about it, it’s that there’s no real incentive to go along with him asking us to do more when all we are doing is what we can.
The environment around the office is tense. Everyone is getting prepared for crunch time and lots and lots of OT. Games are usually finished about 3 months before they actually hit the shelves, aka “Going gold”, so the real work goes into the 3 months BEFORE they submit the game to the ESRB. Apparently, every time they submit, it costs $10 to $20 thousand dollars, so they put massive pressure on us to make sure they can cut costs as much as possible.
The sad part is, we don’t have all the equipment we need, and we’re treated like crap. We might be the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to game development because we make sure the product is up to snuff, and yet they treat us like we don’t know everything. We do know everything, from the game mechanics, to the levels, to the bosses, how to make certain bugs pop up, it’s all there. Explaining it is another matter entirely.
It’s almost 5. The atmosphere is getting even more intense. Everyone wants to leave, and we are all antsy to get home. One of my coworkers starts to slack off. No one cares, myself included. We are all tired, stressed, and worked to the bone. We might work through a temp agency, but we answer to the game company.
One of my bosses sees him and tells him to get back to work, which he does begrudgingly. As the sun starts to go down, the light hits my eyes so I’m blinded by both the terrible television I’m working on and the sun at the same time. I wish someone would shut the blinds, but there are none to be shut.
It’s finally 5, and everyone starts to put everything away. I file out with all of the other testers to the elevators and wait for 10 minutes to just head downstairs back to my car. I’m pooped, I’m hungry, but most of all, I just want to go home.
I sit in an hour of traffic on the 110, and I finally make it back home, where I immediately spread out on my couch. I just have to remember, tomorrow is just another day, and the routine is just getting started.
Stay tuned for Part 3!
- Henry Abrams aka @Seven16
