The Grass Is Always Awesomer On The Other Side

Have a look here at this Penny Arcade cartoon, then we will begin*.

It's a problem when talking to people about your job, when your job is videogames. Because to them, since videogames are fun, then obviously the jobis fun too. And it is, don't misunderstand me - I get to play videogames for hours and - in your face, suckers! - it's research. Even being on-the-job is pretty fun, particularly when a product is nearing completion. There are worse things than spending all day, playing something you've worked hard on. And that worse thing is spending all day, in the months prior to release, actually making the game.

Again, don't misunderstand me - I love my job. My job is awesome. But as a job, is is also at best "work" and at worst "hard." Hours of document writing, late nights when things need to be caught up, the general stress of working to keep a group of people headed in the right direction, on time, and within the budget, post release support, customer interaction, etc. and etc. - like I said, it's a job and jobs, no matter how awesome and perk-filled they are ("I'll be over here at EB Games while you shop, sweetie." "I thoug..." "RESEARCH! Whoo-hoo!") take effort.

All of this came to mind when Sony announced The Tester, the reality game show where 11 contestants compete for $5K and the chance to go to work as a videogamer tester. And in an industry that is (as qualified above) both awesome, but work, testing has the suckier awesome-work ratio. I know this, because that's how I got into games.

When I started, the games industry in Vancouver was basically booming, and Radical Entertainment was growing to the point that it was decided an internal testing team was required. Being lucky enough to have heard about it through friends, I applied and was accepted. Not because of my skills per se (I was a decent gamer working on a liberal arts degree, and hence, could both ponder and communicate with a minimum of "ums"), but because testers made jack, I held out for an additional squat, and viola, I was in the industry.

"This will be awesome, because I am playing video games all day!"

Oh, so innocent. Here's what testing means;

- You will play one game all day. Getting bored and doing something else isn't an option.

- This one game will be broken. So, the thrill of being one of the first in the world to play the game is somewhat mitigated by it not being feature complete and/or working corrently.

- Bugs are not as simple as visual glitches, crashes, etc. More subtle errors can exist in the game as well, but as you're not the designer and do not have a headful of The Big Picture, and the development team is not thrilled to get anything amounting to gameplay feedback from a tester, not only are these errors hard to identify, even if you do get it right, informing people who can take care of it is a minefield. Not because they are jerks, but they are working (there's that word again) hard on something they really, really don't want to be broken. Broken means not done and thus more work. Broken is not awesome.

- You will play this game for weeks and weeks.

On the plus side, lunchtime and after work sessions of multiplayer GTA and Quake were that much sweeter for it.

I will be the first to admit my ability to test the more subtle aspects of a hockey game (NHL Powerplay '98 - the first game I tested) were limited, so I was put on the following grunt work task;

Check out every player in the NHL, in-game, and confirm that their name and numbers were displaying correctly on their jerseys. That's hundreds and hundreds of players. Home and away jerseys. And this was the first year alternate third jerseys were being rolled out.

This is when we found I also had a limited attention span. If only iPods had been around then.

The point is, that's what testing is in reality. It's not a lot of fun because it is a break into the industry and they have a term for this kind of thing; paying your dues. I'm where I'm at now because I put time in to learn as much about game development as I could. And between that, the patience of my co-workers, and some lucky breaks, I'm not a tester any more and the awesome-work ratio is much much better.

Gus Mastrapa put it best in his Wired article on the show - it is a public competition, replete with humiliation and defeat no doubt, for the fairly questionable honor becoming low man on the totem pole in the video game industry.

Whomever wins, I hope they seize the chance, because for all the negatives about the job as I've outlined it, it is in its own way a brass ring. There aren't a lot of testing jobs out there, and if you're looking to get into the industry, but aren't trained as a programmer or artist, this is the proverbial foot-in-the-door. The Tester that wins is not winning an awesome job, they're winning hard work. But with a little extra effort, it could give them the chance to do something really awesome.

c

* We didn't get nutrient-rich sludge at Radical. We got free pop and cheddar smokies. Which was pretty awesome.