Test or Die: The #Truth about #Gametesting Part 3

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @seven16

The following took place in Late July 2009:

I just pulled into my parking lot at home, and I’m having a panic attack. I put my car in park, and manage to get out, crying for help, begging for it. Today was brutal.

It was a Saturday, and things were really heating up, both outside and inside the building. I had moved positions and was now working in a refurbished warehouse in Santa Monica which was the main tester headquarters at the time. The building wasn’t very clean. There was always a lot of dust and dirt, and there were still boxes lying around from when it USED to be a warehouse. It looked like someone had set up a sweat shop for game testers inside. There were rows upon rows of long tables with computers and game consoles every where. There must have been at least 70 people working the first time I walked in. It really was an assembly line, and incredible to watch in motion.

I saw someone nodding off on one of the consoles, looking tired and overworked. He was pale and had rings under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Testing is not as fun as some make it out to be. 

 

Because we were working overtime, my co-workers and I ended up getting free lunch from the company. The food was terrible to say the least. They had ordered from one of those chain buffet restaurants and the food didn’t look right. It also didn’t smell very good either. When I ate it, I thought that I would be okay, but something just didn’t agree with my system, and I started to get very sick to my stomach. I took an acid reducer, and the pain started to subside, a temporary band-aid of sorts.

I was situated with one of my co-workers in one of the dark rooms that sat on either side of the main area. The reason I called them dark rooms is because the lights would always be turned off. All of them had a nice setup. One had a 60” Plasma with a huge surround sound system, another had a full computer video station set up in it. The problem was not the awesome caliber of the equipment, it was that the small rooms would turn into a furnace BECAUSE the electronics would use so much power and there was no ventilation for the air to escape. We used to make fun of those rooms being death traps. Seriously.

After about an hour and a half of sitting in one of the rooms, the mixture of bad food, heat, and obsessively looking between a television and a computer screen, I started to get incredibly dizzy. I excused myself and took a seat at an empty desk in the main area. The room was spinning. I was overheated, exhausted, and completely unable to continue my task. My co-worker, bless his heart, saw all of this, and brought me a glass of water. I was thankful for it, and still appreciate it to this day. Testers are like a family, a really, REALLY dysfunctional family, but we stick together, and get the job done because we have to. My boss was giving me dirty looks, so I finally returned to the room after about 20 minutes of trying to fight off the dizziness.

Around 3:30, he came over to me, and interrogated me, not about when I was taking a short break, but he accused me of losing one of the checklists. I had no idea where this checklist was, as I was not the last person to have it. The night crew, which all the day testers (myself included) hated, forgot to put it in with the others, and I was the last person to have it the previous day. I was flabbergasted to say the least, but most of all, I was scared for my job. He went around asking the others about it, and all signs pointed towards yours truly. I had NEVER misplaced a checklist, as they were one of the most important things we testers were required to fill out, and keep track of at all times. 

I didn’t want my other co-workers to suffer for a mistake that someone else had made, so I took full responsibility. I was honestly expecting to get fired, but my co-workers, my friends, backed me up, all of them. They stood behind me, and knew that I was making a sacrifice in order for them to continue their work on the game, and they appreciated it. Camaraderie is such an important thing in any collaborative effort, and in this case, if one of us suffered, all of us suffered. If there was one good thing I could take away from that day, it was knowing that I wasn’t alone.

I’m crouching down on the ground, trying to catch my breath. My chest feels like its on fire, and I’m completely helpless to stop it. It takes me about 5 minutes and a few phone calls to my mom later to calm me down enough so I can finally get back in the car and park. I sit in the car a moment, still a bit shaken up, mentally exhausted, trying to comprehend why testing is the way it is.

I have no answer, even to this day.

Stay tuned for the epic epilogue!

-Henry Abrams aka @seven16

Click here to read Part 1

Click here to read part 2