Hello reader number one! My name is Ben Nitschke and I’m a QA Lead for Gearbox Software. The first thing I might want to do here is talk about the common confusion I get from laymen (and sometimes industry professionals) when I mention QA. It seems no other profession in the gaming industry is so misunderstood as that of QA. If one were to mention design, art, or code, all but the most hardcore shut-ins will instantly have at least some idea of what one of these other departments or positions might do. Yet when dealing with QA, most people are left clueless as to the nature and value of this strange ‘Kew-Eh’ thing.
Perhaps it’s the acronym - after all anytime anyone encounters an unfamiliar acronym they usually focus on what the letters could stand for, rather than what the words describe. Perhaps it’s because videogames are entertainment that people arrive at incorrect assumptions that quality is inherent and that anyone testing games is simply playing, thus having fun, therefore not actual doing a job. Perhaps these confused people are just the blissfully ignorant types who hate to learn anything new which doesn’t have to do with the necessities of their immediate life?
For the record, QA stands for Quality Assurance or Analysis. I love this job a lot and not because I play games all day. Alone, that isn’t actually even that great considering most of these games are either in very early stages of development (thus missing important features, art and sound), as well as overall being in various states of broken. But rather I love the creative and challenging aspects of QA. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of mundane drudgery to this job, but honestly that is true for almost any job. Overall this job requires a very critical mind, and a strong aptitude for finding creative solutions to massive problems of efficiency. QA touches almost every part of the production, and can even offer a strong source of feedback into the overall feeling of ‘fun’ the game provides.
One of the oldest sayings in pretty much all consumer product industries is “Quality is no accident”. This is just as true in the videogame industry as it is in the automotive one. I believe companies who want to own bigger slices of the pie are going to be the ones who truly appreciate the significance of this statement. To give an example of what I’m talking about I’ll use Blizzard Entertainment as a case study. There is much contention over what turned that company into the dominate force of MMO gaming, seemingly overnight, with the release of World of Warcraft. In my opinion the answer is quite simple; Quality.
Blizzard has a strong history of putting quality first and foremost without ever relying heavily on deep innovation. In a PC game industry where games are almost expected to release bug ridden titles in need of constant patching, Blizzard time after time releases games with very little need for patching. In fact the most common reason people might patch a Blizzard game is for MP balancing reasons – which speaks to the longevity of their games and how people continue to buy and play their games long after their initial release. How often do we see other PC games quickly become irrelevant after an initial push to market? Until Blizzard comes out with the next ‘The Sims”, I will keep putting forth it’s their attention to quality that maintains their continued success.
I love being at Gearbox because of our unique and elegant blend of quality and innovation. We are producing innovative games while remaining true to the fun aspects of games we know and love, specifically with the FPS genre. With Gearbox, I’ve been fortunate enough to get the unique opportunity to be apart of building a great QA department here while also being apart of a company that is doing great things in the industry as a whole. This industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and I expect to see this trend continue only up for human life and culture overall. Interactive entertainment is where it’s at, baby!
Aside from this, I’ve noticed lately I’ve been playing fewer games for my personal entertainment. Don’t be confused that this means I like games any less; I am just spending more personal time reading and writing than when I was playing games every moment of my free time. In fact, over the last few months, I finally started writing this story I’ve been thinking about since I was a kid. Basically it’s a science fiction/fantasy epic about relationships and choices starting in a futuristic scape and ending in an archaic period of earth’s history (think legends of Atlantis – as trite as those may be to you). The first part of the story will be loosely based off the elements, structure and motivations of the Peloponnesian war. Later, the story will be less about politics and more about an advanced society’s divine appearance to a primitive one and why dragons are universally depicted as evil monsters in western culture while being positive benefactors in the east despite being fundamentally mythological creatures only. I don’t expect to go on to be some best seller or anything, but I sure am having fun writing it! :)
Anyway, that’s about it for me. Thanks for reading this far!
