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Test Lead – Experis – 2011-2012, 2015

Following the Oregon trail.

Salaries remained stagnant all through the recession and I began to look elsewhere for opportunities in video games. A friend who had just moved to Oregon suggested I apply for a role at a company called Experis, which focuses on game test contracts with first-party publishers.

I applied and was happy to have been hired from a single phone call! I quickly moved to Portland and found myself in a Software Test Engineer role on a project called Kinect Rush. It was my first time working on a game that utilized the Kinect peripheral, and I quickly learned that testing on a game that requires one to move around constantly is a great way to get in shape. This was also an opportunity to learn a different set of game test plan guidelines that were more akin to what test engineers execute on non-game projects. I took on a couple of smaller projects in the STE role and once again learned that it’s best to remain flexible to adapt to widely varying project timelines.

My time as a Test Lead at Experis was short, but it allowed me to delve into such areas as automated testing and data-driven test plans, which have often been luxuries at other companies due to the software engineering resources required to create builds with the proper instrumentation.

QA Lead – EA Games – 2008-2012

Movin’ on up at breakneck speed.

My first six months as a tester at EA quickly led to getting hired full-time as an assistant QA lead. This was the start of a brief but intense period of working on multiple projects at the same time and taking on more and more of a QA lead’s responsibilities. This was also my first time working directly with game producers to keep them appraised of the project’s status and inform them of ways they could help make the QA testing more effective. The projects weren’t the most exciting–Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf N-Strike–but I learned that smaller projects can allow one to have more ownership of the project.

After another six months, I was promoted again to a QA lead and moved to the massive Sims 3 project. It was an entirely new type of game and testing requirements, and at first I was only one of several leads on the project. I eventually took on the main QA lead role for the game’s first expansion and experienced what was likely the most intense period of crunch in my career. I was so exhausted and stressed by the end that I nearly left the company, but EA had an opportunity to work on an entirely different series of games.

My final set of projects at the company were Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3, games that each had unique expectations. For DS2 I was the lead of the smoke test team, which meant we arrived early in the morning to fire up the latest build and quickly report on build stability. I joined the design QA team during DS3 to assist level designers with specific tasks and to generate progression data that would be used for the game’s checkpoint system.

The Simpsons Game – EA Games – 2007

A dream fulfilled.

My longtime goal was to work on a video game based on The Simpsons. It began during college, when I studied graphic design and wrote video game guides on the side, including guides for the many Simpsons games released since the show began in 1989. I was already a fan of the show, but this led to an appreciation for the license and the potential that a great Simpsons game could have.

When I started at Vivendi, I felt certain that I’d get an opportunity to work on a Simpsons game there. Their most successful title during that period was The Simpsons Hit & Run, a title which my manager described as, “the game that sold so well it allowed us all to keep our jobs.” How could the company pass up an opportunity to capitalize on that success with a sequel?

Well, nothing is ever certain, as EA Games revealed in 2006. With marketing losing its luster and an  upcoming need for testers to work on that Simpsons game at EA, I decided it was time to leave Los Angeles and move north to the Bay Area. Thanks to friends of friends, my résumé made it to the top of the pile and I received the call to join the team. I even had to explain that I was there to specifically work on their Simpsons project. (Thank goodness for understanding managers.)

The project itself was a whirlwind of quickly stepping into a senior tester role to organize testing for the PlayStation PSP port of the game, meeting lots of new friends, and finally an invitation to fly down for the release party in Hollywood!

Sierra Entertainment Website – Vivendi Games – 2006

Making progress in a committee.

One of the largest projects I’ve ever taken on is the development of the Sierra company website. The parent company–Vivendi Games–had chosen to leverage the Sierra brand for all video game production, and part of that included creating a new and more dynamic company website. My manager was the lead on the project and I assisted with the day-to-day work of design, development, contractor communication, copy localization, and ultimately personally populating the website with decades of product content.

My background had included an education in website design and development, but it was nothing like this. This involved approvals from the highest heads of the company and documenting design specs for our contractors to build the website for us, a process that was at times grueling. We were not 100% successful in making the website the best that it could be, but it was leaps and bounds beyond the previous version of the site. One particular oversight that has always stuck with me is that no one remembered to specify that URLs should remain short and user-friendly. The developers set up product pages with long, garbled URLs that no human could remember, and by the time we realized this it was too late to fix it. The lesson was that there’s never too much detail when it comes to a design spec!

I was ultimately proud of the work we did to revitalize our online presence, but it sadly only lasted for about two years. Vivendi Games was eventually merged into Acitivision, and all online traces of Vivendi Games and Sierra redirected to Activision’s website. C’est la vie.

Community Management – Vivendi Games – 2005-2006

Learning from the players.

My stints as Interactive Marketing intern and coordinator included some time as the company’s community manager. Mind you, this included keeping an eye on communities that spanned back to games released by Sierra Entertainment in the eighties. Sierra was simply a brand and logo for Vivendi Games in the mid-aughts, but they still tried to support the legacy of the brand and the many games that came before.

Although I made some effort to engage with our communities and regularly posted, this was only a part-time role, and I was not as engaged as I could have been. If I had to do it again I would have initiated more chats, more developer Q&As, and even just MP contests or giveaways. Activities to help the community feel more involved.

Another critical aspect of this role was customer support. We had a dedicated customer support department, but as the primary online voice I was often deep in the forums, particularly after a game released. Console games were light on technical support but those PC games sure needed a lot of attention. This was the first time I’d had to help on this side of a product release and it was certainly an education in organizing huge influxes of user reports.

Interactive Marketing – Vivendi Games – 2005-2006

Some games sell themselves. Most need help.

Although a short part of my career on paper, the year and a half that I spent in the Interactive Marketing department of Vivendi Games was formative. I rapidly moved along the ladder from intern to coordinator to associate manager, and the sudden responsibility helped shaped my capabilities. It also sharpened my strengths, namely a willingness to learn what I need to learn in order to complete a particular task.

The work varied from creating ad banners and updating websites to managing the online marketing budgets and campaigns for the titles I owned toward the end of my time there. Ad buys, website designs, creative agency contracts–all part of a typical day. The scopes also varied. In the images above, for instance, F.E.A.R. and Scarface: The World is Yours had multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, whereas titles such as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown and SWAT 4 were more in the mid-range.

This was also my first exposure to working on game titles based on licensed properties. Scarface and Ice Age 2 had rigorous approvals processes, to say the least, and navigating those turbulent waters was both exhausting and thrilling. Who knew it could be so exciting just getting people to send an email with their approval?

50 Cent: Bulletproof – Vivendi Universal Games – 2005

Playing a different game.

I had been a tester at Vivendi for a year by the time 50 Cent showed up on the test floor. It was the second (and final) game by the developers at Genuine Games, whom I knew well from our previous encounter. 50 Cent was a similarly lackluster effort meant to quickly capitalize on a license.

However, my time on the game was limited. There was an opening as a Interactive Marketing intern within the company, and one my test managers knew that I had experience as a web designer. I applied for the position believing that it only made sense, given my experience. I was interviewed right there on the test floor and offered the job later that week. I had moved to the Interactive Marketing group by the following Monday to begin a new life in online marketing and design.

But there was one more project for me to help with. 50 Cent was in the middle of finishing up and there was test overtime to be had, so in spite of having moved to the marketing department I volunteered to stop by the test floor in the evenings and on the weekend for some overtime testing. It was perhaps two or three days total, but it’s amusing to know that I played a small part in the release of such an iconic game.

Empire Earth II – Vivendi Universal Games – 2005

Real-time strategy testing.

I started in the game industry during the height of Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube. I personally owned two of the three systems and played the most popular types of games for them (3D action and shooters), so my first eight months were familiar territory in terms of understanding the gameplay and system capabilities. This gave me the time and space to figure out the testing process without also having to figure out how to run or play the games.

That all ended with Empire Earth II for Windows PCs. I owned a computer but only played emulated consoles from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. I doubt my machine could have run anything in 3D. I was also into games that required a controller and instant movement, so strategy games were nowhere in the vicinity of my radar. Nevertheless, getting thrown into the middle of Empire Earth II, with its myriad compatibility and gameplay issues, was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I learned far more about computers and keyboard/mouse-based gameplay than I had ever learned before, allowing me to contribute much more effectively on later PC projects.

My focus was almost entirely on campaign gameplay, running through historical battle scenarios starting from the stone ages all the way to the near future in which lasers and robots are commonplace. My most extensive experience with this type of game had been a demo of Age of Empires, so getting into an RTS for the first time was a treat.

There was a moment on the project that I’ll never forget. I sat across the aisle from my test lead, who was not the most outwardly friendly person. Still, he was a professional, and I was there to do a job, so I never minded it. I was focused on getting through the Korean campaign when another lead stopped by to chat with my lead. At some point the visitor asked me a question that I completely missed because I was so focused on the task at hand. Finally, my lead said something along the lines of, “Oh, that’s Vic. This is how he always is, and I’m thankful for it.” Shortly thereafter, on a day off that I’d earned after several weeks of late shifts, I won a prize for Best Tester.

It became the first time I became conscious of this ability to focus on the work and shut out the noise, a skill which has served me well over the course of my career.