This is a new series I’m starting, and it is basically what it sounds like it’s about. I’m going to explore the world of gaming gruntwork by being a QA minion. I think the official title is “QA Engineer” but whatever, I’m not naive enough to think I’m engineering anything.

As a bit of background, I’ve been interested in video games since literally the age of 3, when we got an Apple IIe and I played Pacman on it for hours. Soon, I was better than my parents. But while I’ve been playing games for over 30 years now, I’ve not actually (technically) been part of the videogame industry. Sure, I’ve written about it and I know people in it and whatnot, but I’ve never actually been part of the industry myself. So when I found an ad for game testing, I thought it’d be a reasonable place to start. Why not, I mean? What could possibly go wrong?

So, this series is a firsthand account of what it’s like to enter the game industry at the subbasement level. I know that it’s often said that this is where most people start, so I’m just going to go with the masses and see what it’s like. To be clear, I’m not going to list who I work for and what projects I’m working on. Obviously there’s the standard nondisclosure agreement for that sort of thing. But for what it’s like to be slogging it out daily on the front lines of bug smashing, well, I can talk about that with some degree of vagueness.