Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

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Building Game Worlds
U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Many developers see the QA department as a launching pad for their career. It certainly
can be. You would be surprised by how many of today’s industry pundits have
passed through a QA department at one time or another. I think the QA department
will end up being to games what the mailroom is to other entertainment companies.
QA allows any developers to see how a game becomes truly final, and how various
kinds of decisions help to shape a game title. You can find out if you enjoy some of the
process of game making while working in a QA department. Some developers become
testers, but really want to be artists, programmers, designers, or audio engineers.
This is fine. In fact, you sometimes stand a better chance of moving where you would
like to go by starting in QA than by taking any job in one of the career tracks. These
tend to nail you down.
So again, if you can’t get in by any other means, go up through the test department.
I did, and so do many others.
Some choose to stay in QA, and that’s just fine too. If you become a QA manager
and help to run an entire test department, you can rest assured that as long as games
are being made, you’re going to have work to do in testing them.
QA as a Career Choice
Many developers only want to spend a couple of years in the QA department and
move on, while others choose to make a career of it. Both full-time and part-time
work are available in QA, whereas virtually every other role is full-time only. QA
testers can be paid hourly at $8–13 per hour part-time with no benefits. As a new developer,
this is a great way to test the waters. Full-time QA personnel can be put on
salary with benefits in the $25K range or more dependent on the scope of their duties
and experience. With a full salary and benefits, the full-time testers are often the minority
and are senior testers, as QA departments regularly rely on plenty of part-time
help. They can ramp up help when their testing needs peak, and then let the part-time
folks go after a big title finishes up. QA managers can earn $50K and upwards, but
their role expands to include many responsibilities to support the entire testing effort.
OPENING AN INDEPENDENT GAME STUDIO
For many new and old developers alike, opening your own development studio has
long been a dream. The ability to band together a group of dedicated and talented
friends to build games together seems like a great idea—even for those with considerable
industry experience. A great idea it may be (and this alone can change based
on many extenuating factors), but the pathway to success as an independent game