作者：Jeff

总有人困惑于QA职业是否为通往游戏开发者的不错路径。答案是“不一定”。以下是有关原因。

首先我们先解决为何游戏测试员看起来像是通往游戏开发的美好途径。其中蕴藏的逻辑如下。

我们通常难以获得靠制作游戏谋生的职业。这类工作的数量有限。全球个个玩家都想拥有，由此可见其竞争之激烈。

而且这类职业通常要求从业者具备专业技能，比如数十年的开发经验。

tester(from helloliefje.com)

典型的程序员至少应毕业于名牌大学本科。但这还不够，此外你还应展示出技能、经验与兴趣。这通常意味着要么提交一份出色作品集，展示自己编写的杰出程序，或是已取得成功的独立游戏；要么是在专业编程大学（游戏邦注：比如The Guidhall at SMU）获得游戏编程硕士学位。

在我看来，编程是游戏开发中的最酷职业（更别提可以获取丰厚收益），但并不是所有人都有机会接受相关教育与实践。

美术是另一个选择。但并非更加容易。同样，专业的游戏美工应通过2D美术、3D模型与3D动画作品集展示自己惊人的美术功底。他们通常是在本科阶段发展技能，或是在Guildhall继续深造。此外他们还应具备天赋，并不断实践。

关卡设计是第三个主要选择。从前，关卡设计对非专业人士而言是个专业领域。如果你还未具备较高水平的技术或美术技能，只是热爱游戏，有制作游戏的想法，那你可以以此进军游戏开发领域。然而，如今越来越多的关卡设计也是个高要求专业，你需要数年的学习与经验积累。

可是，如果你渴望制作游戏，且又没有时间发展某个领域（游戏邦注：如编程、美术或关卡设计）的专业技能时该怎么办？在这种情况下，你可能会考虑任何渠道，无论是痛苦，还是卑微。

此时你会注意到QA职业。该工作意指测试游戏，找出其中漏洞，而后上报。这听起来十分有趣。虽然成为游戏测试师并不是光荣职业，但却是游戏开发中的一部分。对许多有抱负的测试员而言，QA已带他们跨入游戏开发中。他们以为只要每天花8小时体验游戏，持续个1-2年左右，便有机会实现自己的创意。最终从人群中脱颖而出，受到万众瞩目，获得提升，成为真正的游戏开发者。那是QA测试员的梦想。

事实是，这种梦想从未实现。

如果你成为某家游戏公司的测试员，你极有可能是数十个，甚至上百个测试员中的一员。他们也都拥有同样抱负。他们也有想要制作的游戏。他们可以探讨各种导致游戏出色、糟糕或精彩的元素。而目前的编程、绘画或关卡设计技能不足，无法获得“真正的”开发职业。虽然你效力于游戏公司，但你仍是众多瞄准游戏开发职位的竞争者中的一员。

其实，有些方面会影响到提升机遇。通常，游戏开发者视测试员为下层阶级。虽然某些出众的游戏公司抵制这种趋势，但它却从未消失。测试员常常被孤立在贫民窟中——有时是开发者办公大楼中的拥挤隔间，有时是远离开发者的独立建筑。

游戏开发者们鲜少尊重测试员。在他们看来，测试员似乎没有任何闪光点。而开发者与他们之间的唯一互动方式便是收到问题报告与抱怨。由于作品遭到批评并不是趣事，因此他们不喜欢与测试员联系。有时测试员会忍不住在寻找漏洞之外提交自己的想法。对开发者而言，他们并不是杰出人才，而是无关紧要、愚蠢、无知且自大的人群。加入QA团队后，你可能会经常遭到开发者的蔑视，而不是赞赏。同比在游戏领域外培养自己的技能，创建作品集，有时你会觉得离游戏开发岗位越来越远。

从事QA领域的另一劣势是，工作本身极具挫败感。“依靠玩游戏谋生”听起来相当精彩。但试想下，如果自己被迫每天8-12小时，甚至数周，或数月重复同款游戏，你作何感受。也许那仍是件趣事。但如果游戏中充斥着大量漏洞，你竟然次次失败，那你有何感想。有一半的时间里，摄影机会不受控制地颤抖，这时你会感到眩晕，几乎要癫痫发作。由于保存的游戏无法运作，你不得不从头开始。

QA并不是指以玩游戏为生，而是以找漏洞为生，即每天有数小时的时间与漏洞共存。

然而，测试员本应获得尊敬。你所钟爱的每款佳作都得历经数个月的漏洞查找与修复过程。其中QA部门发挥着关键作用。如果没有他们，漏洞将不会被发现，也无法得到修复，用户不得不抓狂地体验充斥大量漏洞的作品。QA是一份重要且可敬的职业。优秀的游戏开发者应感谢他们提交的漏洞报告，感谢他们的谨慎寻找与详细描述。然而无论该职业具有多大价值，QA仍是吃力不讨好且单调乏味的任务。除了测试，没有哪种方式会令你快速反感游戏体验。

那么，QA是通往游戏开发的美好途径吗？不一定。加入QA团队并非意味着加入游戏开发小组，但却是进入位居游戏开发团队下游的肮脏贫民窟。而且QA并非指代以玩游戏为生，而是以寻找漏洞为生，这是完全不同的两方面。

总之，有时某些QA测试员肯定会脱颖而出，获得游戏开发的认可。这种情况鲜少发生，但如果发生，那便会加快进入游戏制作领域的步伐。作为测试员，你可能不会受到游戏开发团队的敬重，但至少能被他们认识。如果某天，开发团队需要初级设计师、基础脚本程序员、纹理美工、音效师助理、或是行政人员，而你碰巧具备这些领域的相关技能，那你极有可能获得提升。

请不要过于震惊。毕竟这种“毕业”机遇少之又少（也许每年或每两年一次），而且只有一小部分测试员（可能是1%）受益。也许QA岗位无法将你引入游戏制作行列。它也许毫无作用。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Is QA a Good Way Into Game Development?

by Jeff

I often get questions from people wondering whether a job in quality assurance is a good path to becoming a game developer. The answer is, “not really.” Here’s why.

First let’s look at why getting a job as a game tester might look like a good way into game development. The logic runs something like this.

It’s hard to get a job making games for a living. There are only so many jobs. Every gamer on the planet wants one. Competition is fierce.

Most of those jobs require professional skills that take years to develop and prove.

Programmers typically need at least a bachelor’s degree from a good university. Even that isn’t really enough—you also need to show skill, experience, and interest beyond just a 4-year degree. This usually means either coming with a awesome portfolio showing the amazing programs you’ve written, the indie games you’ve already made successful, or a Master’s degree in game programming from a solid, professional program like The Guildhall at SMU (where I teach).

I think that programming is the coolest job in game development (not to mention one of the most lucrative), but not a lot of people have the discipline to get the education and experience you need to be a professional game programmer.

Art is another option. But it’s not really any easier. A professional game artist also has mad art skillz demonstrated through a killer portfolio in 2D art, 3D modeling, and/or 3D animation. They often develop these skills through a bachelor’s degree and, again, a Master’s degree like the one we offer at the Guildhall. Not to mention lots of talent and practice.

Level design is the third major option. Once upon a time, level design was the specialization for people who didn’t want to specialize. If you didn’t have any higher-level technical or art skills—if you just loved games and wanted to make them—level design was the path for you. But more and more, level design is also a highly demanding professional specialization requiring years of experience-building and study. (And yes, the Guildhall trains level designers too.)

But what do you do if you’re desperate to make games but you haven’t yet spent the time to develop a professional level of skill in one of these areas—programming, art, or level design? In that case, you’re liable to consider any path into game development. Even a painful or humble one.

Hence the attraction of quality assurance (QA). In a QA job you test games, finding bugs and reporting them. That sounds pretty fun to most people. And although being a tester isn’t the most glamorous role in game development, it is a role. To many aspiring game developers, QA sounds like a foot in the door. They imagine they’ll spend a year or two playing games eight hours a day, chiming in their own ideas whenever the opportunity arises. Eventually they’ll stand out from the crowd, a bright light will shine down upon them from above, and they’ll be lifted up into the glory of a real game development job. That’s the dream of QA.

It’s a dream that virtually never comes true.

If you become a tester for a game company, you will most likely be one of dozens, maybe hundreds of testers. All of those testers will have the same ambition that you have. They all have games that they want to make. They all can talk all kinds of smack about what makes this or that game great or terrible or what-have-you. They all currently lack enough skill in programming, art, or level design to gain a “real” job actively contributing to a game. Although you’ll be working for a game company, you’ll still be one out of a big crowd of competitors all gunning for a tiny number of jobs.

Indeed, in some ways you’ll have harmed your chances. Game developers often see testers as a lower class of being. Good companies fight against this tendency, but the tendency is still there. Testers are often consigned to their own isolated ghetto—either a packed hive of cubicles within the developer’s office building, or even a separate building situated remotely from the actual developers.

Developers tend to have little to no respect for testers. From a developer’s standpoint, there seem to be hoards of them and they come and go without apparent fanfare. The only interaction most developers have with the people who find their bugs is receiving problem reports and complaints from them. Since it’s not much fun to have your work picked apart and criticized, developers often don’t feel a fond association with testers. Sometimes testers can’t resist going beyond mere bug-finding to offer their own brilliant ideas. Except they don’t seem brilliant to a developer—they just seem irrelevant, silly, uninformed, or presumptuous. By joining a QA team, you put yourself at risk of earning game developers’ contempt, not their admiration. In some ways you’re farther from getting a game development job than if you had stayed on the outside and simply built up your skills and portfolio.

Another downside to working a QA job is that the work itself can be terribly frustrating. “Playing games for a living” sounds mighty nice. But imagine being forced to play the same game every day, eight or ten or twelve hours a day, week in, week out for month after month. Maybe that still sounds fun to you. Now imagine that the game is full of bugs. You keep falling through the ground unexpectedly. The camera shakes uncontrollably 50% of the time, giving you a headache and nearly inducing an epileptic fit. Your save games don’t work, so you have to keep starting over from the beginning. One day the enemies are impossible to kill, then the next day they become laughably fragile.

QA isn’t playing games for a living. It’s finding bugs for a living. And finding bugs means living with bugs. For hours and hours every day.

Testers don’t get much respect, but they should. Every game you’ve ever loved only got that way after months of careful bug-finding and -fixing. QA departments are crucial. Without them, bugs don’t get found, bugs don’t get fixed, and customers are left with irritating, bug-ridden games. QA is an important and honorable job. A good game developer appreciates the bug reports he or she receives from QA and the people who carefully find and describe them. But no matter how valuable the job is, QA is a thankless and often tedious task. Nothing will make you sick of playing games (or at least certain types of games) quicker than testing them.

So is QA a good way into a career in game development? Not really. Joining a QA team doesn’t mean joining a game development team—it means joining the reeking ghetto that sits downstream of a game development team. And it doesn’t mean playing games for a living—it means finding bugs for a living, which is most definitely not the same thing.

All that said, it is true that people do sometimes graduate up from QA into a real game development job. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s a relatively quick path into making games. As a tester, you may not be well-respected by the game development team, but you might at least be known to the team. And if the team has a need for an entry-level designer, a basic script programmer, a texture artist, an assistant audio engineer, or an administrative go-fer, and if you happen to have somehow shown some skill in one of those areas, then you might get a chance at moving up.

Just don’t hold your breath. Those “graduation” opportunities come up rarely (once every year or two, perhaps?) and only benefit a small proportion of testers (perhaps one in a hundred?). Chances are, a job in QA won’t lead to a job making games. Chances are it will lead nowhere.(source:jeffwofford)