[Irregardless]

One guy had one bad experience as a gameplay tester, and now it's time for all gaming contractors to strike? That's a pretty big leap.

This sounds like a typical story of poor management in any industry: Lack of communication, failure to follow through on performance review policy, hostile work environment, inability to recognize and allocate talent, etc. Then again, we're relying entirely on this guy's self-assessment for that last part. This bit in particular set off some alarm bells for me:

> I took the job by the horns and ran with it. I did everything I could to stand out. I asked a ton of questions about code, the debug, the game modes, everything. I talked to all the producers and developers and level designers I could to ensure we were on the same page and also so they would know my name.

Despite his good intentions, he might have inadvertently gone too far and turned himself into "that guy". You know, the one who people see coming from a mile away and think "Shit, here he comes to bug me with a million pointless questions again." Ambition is a good thing, but sometimes they just want you to do the job they hired you for and stop distracting other employees, and those other employees only have so much patience for the new guy who keeps asking questions.

[stcredzero]

> One guy had one bad experience as a game tester (most kids' dream job)

I have a friend who was a game tester. It's not just a kid's job. If you ever see someone who is good at being a game tester do his thing, you will find out that they are very skilled and many have a wealth of experience in terms of where to look for bugs.

EDIT: Now my friend has moved out of the game industry and into corporate life. The pay is better and the job is more secure.

[omni]

I think Irregardless meant that this is a job that a lot of people dream about having when they are children. Landing such a job as an adult would serve to realize that dream. This makes it pretty devastating if the job turns out to be a disaster.

[Irregardless]

Right, also trying to reinforce the fact that we're talking about actual gameplay testing and not something code related (a lot of people might assume the latter since this is on HN).

I'm sure testing games is far more demanding and tedious than kids imagine it to be.

[fragmede]

> One guy had one bad experience as a game tester (most kids' dream job)

You might want to rephrase this then, your original wording comes off in a condescending "playing games? for money? he should be glad to have a job!" sort of tone to me.

[ctdonath]

An underappreciated point is there is a vast difference between creating something vs breaking it. Playing to win is one thing; playing to see if you can fall out of the universe in an obscure corner of a map, or trying every conceivable combination of actions in hundreds of situations, is a very different experience.

[reeses]

"I'm sure testing games is far more demanding and tedious than kids imagine it to be."

Everything is more demanding and tedious than kids imagine it to be. :-)

[dlhavema]

i think that also puts a lot of unrealistic expectations on the job that probably get squashed at some point: i'm guessing they consist mostly of the amount of time spent doing QA related "busy work" (bug tracking, tickets, logging, etc ) compared to time spent playing video games

[chopsueyar]

Yeah, I watched Grandma's Boy too.

[yareally]

With as many horror stories (albeit some are more amusing than mean) reported at Penny Arcade's from the trenches site[1], the pastebin does not seem all that surprising. Game testers seem to be mostly treated as disposable by the AAA game industry.

[1] http://trenchescomic.com/tales

[fragmede]

> ...and turned himself into "that guy"

Don't get me wrong, I wanted to blame the victim too, especially when he said "I stopped going in, and would show up whenever", but whatever this guy did, the point is that "they will work you to death and they will promise you potential, but it is for nothing."

[ctdonath]

At some point, all those questions needs to result in outstanding improvement in productivity for there to be any viable expectation of upward mobility. I kept waiting to see it in the story, which then ended.