I’ve been working in the Quality Assurance (QA) space for 7+ years now and have worked on roughly 14 games varying in scopes from indie to AAA with some big name studios such as Square Enix, Eidos, Ubisoft, and Rocksteady. I’ve also had the opportunity to work on subscription products such as the EA Play Subscription service and help bring the service to new platforms such as PS4, Steam, the latest generation of Consoles, and even the Xbox Game Pass subscription. During my time in QA, I’ve seen many games through from early prototype to final release and have been able to see how valuable sharing feedback and opinions throughout development can impact a final product. Though it may not be as rewarding as writing game code or crafting exciting worlds and experiences, I’ve been able to learn a lot and have many exhilarating experiences that I’ll never forget. Though QA is often presented as the “lowest rung” of the game development ladder, it has allowed me to gain invaluable knowledge of many aspects related to game and product development processes/pipelines that I’m able to carry forward into a designer/developer role.
VMC Experience
As a Functional QA Tester at VMC, I learned how to utilize my recently acquired skills from post-secondary education and how QA for AAA games functions as a whole. At the time I joined VMC, I was excited to finally be working in the games industry and was prepared to show my fellow teammates just what I was capable of. Through my hard work and background knowledge of video game development, I was able to quickly advance up the ranks of Tester and become a dependable asset to my project(s) and team members.
Functional Testing skills that I was able to expand upon and solidify:
– Test Cases
– Regression of known issues
– Destructive and Creative Testing
– Testing procedures and practices on all major platforms (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC)
– General Bug Investigation
Games I worked on in this Role:
– Mad Max (Released Sept 1, 2015)
– Nosgoth (Released Mar 26, 2014, servers shut down May 31st, 2016)
– Life is Strange Season 1 (Released Jan 29th – Oct 30th, 2015)
– Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Released Aug 23, 2016)
After working on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for a few months, the team grew and I earned a promotion to Test Coordinator in order to use my existing knowledge of the game and the team’s processes to help onboard new team members. My tasks as a Test Coordinator at VMC started small, with simply vetting issues written by testers and coaching them on ways to improve their bug writing, but quickly grew in complexity as the team I was on also began to grow in size and required effectively coordinated testing efforts. During my time as a Test Coordinator, I have gained a vast amount of knowledge related to leading and managing large scale projects by using my newly honed skills in task management and helping testers stay on a course to improvement.
Other skills I was able to expand upon:
– Managing day-to-day activity in the issue tracking database, including routing issues, providing feedback to testers on the quality of their bug write-ups and performed end-of-project triage.
– Creating and maintaining extensive gameplay design documents for QA purpose.
– Mentoring new team members in regards to proper protocols and practices.
– Quickly providing in-depth answers to testers that required more information.
– Locating and writing bug reports pertaining to single and multiplayer functionality, balancing, performance, exploits, visual appeal, and overall entertainment level.
– Implementing and enforcing QA best practices and processes.
– Participating in staffing plans related to the QA Lead’s project(s), and being responsible for day-to-day coaching and evaluation of testers on the team.
Games I worked on in this Role:
– Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Released Aug 23rd, 2016)
– Batman Arkham Knight (Released Jun 23rd, 2015)
– Watch_Dogs 2 (Released Nov 15th, 2016)
– Magic: The Gathering Online (Released Jun 24th 2002)
– Magic: The Gathering Arena (Released Sept 27th, 2018)
– Rise of the Tomb Raider (Released Nov 10th, 2015)
– LawBreakers (Released Aug 8th, 2017)
– Outlast 2 (Released Apr 24th, 2017)
– Halo Wars Definitive Edition (Released Dec 20th, 2016)
I relocated to Vancouver after a few years and was converted to a QA Development Support role at EA. As a QA Development Support Tester at Electronic Arts Vancouver, I was able to build upon my testing skills even further by working alongside developers to learn and utilize new tools and practices for testing applications instead of games. Working with an application instead of a game has allowed me to learn new testing strategies to find and report bugs that are relevant to a user’s experience with navigating menus, receiving specific product promotion information, and having a great experience with a hub application in general. During my time in this role, I aided in the development of a revamped version of the EA Access Hub app on Xbox One and also contributed to the efforts required to bring the subscription service to PlayStation 4.
Skills I learned and was able to expand upon in this role:
– Agile and Scrum methodologies
– Providing assistance while integrated with the development process, and attending stand-ups
– Application testing
– Providing Qualitative feedback regarding the product
– Maintaining the Quality Assurance pipeline from discovery through a fix to regression verification
– Teamwork
Products I worked on in this role:
– EA Access on Xbox One (Subscription service + Hub application, Live Service)
– EA Access on PlayStation 4 (Subscription service + Hub application, Live Service )
– Origin Games Launcher (Live Service support)
EA Experience
Due to my efforts with the new version of the EA Access Hub App and shipping of the service on PS4, I was converted to a full-time employee at EA and given the role of Associate Quality Designer (which is really just a fancy term for Senior QA Tester). As an Associate Quality Designer, I’ve been focusing on creating a more specialized skillset to help my team succeed and improve the QA practices across EA. In this role I’ve learned and refined my skills in knowledge sharing, being an advocate in design and implementation decisions, analyzing consumer/player data and using it to guide decisions in both functional and automation spaces of a project. As I’ve learned more, I’ve begun taking on more leadership opportunities and tasks as well. Now an acting Scrum Lead, I have gotten to experience the people-managing side of QA and have been really enjoying my time working with and building up an effective team of quality professionals that constantly challenge our developers to meet a very high level of quality. During my time in this role, I’ve aided in the development of bringing EA Games back to Steam, making EA Games available on the Epic Games Store, bringing the EA Play (formerly EA Access) subscription to the current generation of consoles, as well as spearheading the QA initiatives that brought the EA Play subscription into the Xbox Game Pass subscription.
Skills I learned and was able to expand upon in this role:
– Reviewing with other Designers/partners the impact of features and their influence on essential product metrics; provide risk-analysis to development
– Identifying, proposing and implementing viable process and measurement solutions within team
– Providing task breakdown, planning, considerations and time estimates for assignments
– Providing Qualitative feedback regarding the product
– Providing input to management team to assist decision-making; helping assess project impact of available options
– Translating end-to-end Customer experiences into Test Strategies for a Product
– Analyzing personal and team process for innovation opportunities, and escalating potential improvements
Products I’ve worked on in this role:
– EA Access on Xbox One (Subscription service + Hub application, Live Service)
– EA Access on PlayStation 4 (Subscription service + Hub application, Live Service)
– EA Access rebrand to EA Play (PS4/XB1 Hub application updates)
– EA Play on Xbox Series X|S (Subscription service + Game Pass Partnership, Live Service)
– EA Play on PlayStation 5 (Subscription service, Live Service support)
– EA Play on Steam (Subscription service, Live Service support)
– EA app (Windows PC Game Launcher and Storefront currently in Open Beta, Live Service development and support)
– EA app Developer Tools (Internal tool development)
