10 valuable soft skills for a QA Game Tester at Quantic Lab
A game is often more complex than applications designed for specific tasks. Compared to software testing, where there’s a finite number of actions and precise intended behaviors, games explore numerous possible interactions and conditions. This is why video game QA remains a human-centric field, which makes finding the right people for the job all the more necessary.
We all know that despite the optics, working in quality assurance for video games is more than simply just “playing games all day.” The realm of game development is filled with challenges and hurdles, and those who take on the role of QA testers in this industry should be armored with a solid base of soft skills.
If you’re looking into how to become a QA tester, you’re probably already flooded with information about what methodologies and tools you should learn. But let’s put this aside for a bit. Let’s think about the qualities you might already have that will help you thrive in a collaborative environment.
Based on our 20 years of experience building strong QA teams, we’ve put together a list of ten soft skills valuable for future game testers, along with a few words about why they matter specifically in the context of game development.
Attention to details
Probably the most talked about attribute of a tester in any field, not just video games, is attention to details. Of course, this is the lifeblood of the QA business. Your job is to granularly look at different parts of a game and notice even the smallest problems. Where other people might take a quick a look and see nothing, testers will notice a multitude of things that could potentially be fixed.
Considering that video games are all about details, players usually notice inconsistencies, quality of life issues or even small bugs. The importance of being thorough simply can’t be understated.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
Being detail-oriented helps testers to better identify the reproduction steps of a bug, to understand the conditions of the problem and offer insightful suggestions. Visual bugs specifically need a lot of attention and observation to find.
We’ve also noticed that when game documentation is still being developed and the information isn’t comprehensive, observant testers have a better chance at figuring out the mechanics without additional support.
Communication
The realm of game development is multidisciplinary, there are different stakeholders involved in a project. Some of them come from an artistic background, others from technology or business, but they all work together to build an entertaining product. Your message has to reach different kinds of people as effectively as possible, which makes communication a pivotal part of any collaboration.
At Quantic Lab, a good QA tester is equipped with the skill to convey information and explain situations clearly. More often than not, there’s no room for unnecessary back and forth, especially under the pressure of an upcoming releases, submission schedules and external deadlines. Over the years at we’ve learned a lot about the value of strong communication, so much so that we’ve made it one of our company’s core values.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
Making a game is always a team effort, testers are required to constantly communicate feedback and statuses to our partners. They must understand which bugs impact revenue and always think of the player experience. It’s not just the lead testers or manager roles who provide input, everyone must be able to share relevant information, starting with submitting bugs, and going into deeper conversations with the development team.
Proactivity
Since game development is a such a fast-paced, dynamic environment, information and ideas circulate at all levels. Everyone is responsible for making the game better and better, until it’s ready for launch (even then, it can still be improved through patches and updates).
Often, QA testers gain a broad overview of the game and they get to know the content at all stages. You might start noticing patterns and gaps where additional testing is needed. You might get ideas for a different approach, find a solution, or anticipate a problem. A proactive mindset supports developers and game designers even more than reactive testing does.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
Being proactive can definitely set you apart. Anticipating needs and going the extra mile can shine a spotlight on you and your work, which will surely help you grow in your career.
Apart from doing a great job at completing the assigned tasks, we’ve noticed that proactive testers can also help contextualize the bugs, by providing well-rounded suggestions. This helps the partners to better understand the player mindset, in order to refine and balance the game from one build to another.
Flexibility
Flexibility is another aspect we’re keen on in quality assurance. In the rapid-fire ecosystem of game development in which iteration is key, you can’t get stuck on a path for too long. Methodologies change, deadlines move up, priorities shift, new services come up all the time. And it’s not just the games and the builds, we’re dealing with continuously evolving technology.
And if you’re working as part of an external team, you’re most likely collaborating with various teams, each with their own styles and requests. Needless to say, this job is for people who understand how to be efficient and adapt quickly.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
A career in Quality Assurance means to frequently change tasks, projects, genres. There’s a lot of flexibility needed when your responsibilities and priorities shift, sometimes even from one day to another. At Quantic Lab, we work with many teams which have their own way of doing things, our testers are adaptable and able to seamlessly blend in.
Creativity
There’s a common misconception that creativity only applies to artistic projects or self-expression, when in reality we use creativity in more ways than one. Testing is not just a checklist, on many levels it requires creative thinking and if you have it, you will thrive.
How do we use creativity in the role of QA tester?
- Imagining scenarios that mimic the behavior of a regular player.
- Interacting with the game in unexpected ways.
- Trying to “break” the game.
- Looking for edge cases, exploits and workarounds.
- Offering feedback on player experience.
- Providing suggestions on how to fix design problems.
All these thought processes tap into our creative side.
Analytical thinking
As a game tester, your job involves more than just to reproduce a test case and report your findings. Troubleshooting and problem-solving play a huge part in this role. You’ll need to understand the broader conditions, to design complex scenarios and track underlining issues.
Everything you test creates multiple layers of context that need to be unpacked through analytical thinking. You’ll need to discern if a bug affects a small part of the game or if it has a deeper impact, to understand all the actions needed to reproduce it, to evaluate how it affects player experience, and so on.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
We’ve noticed that analytical thinking can help you find the root cause of the problem, so you can provide a more comprehensive report of the issue, or even share on-point solutions (when this is possible). For example, in Quantic Lab’s Compliance team, colleagues have been able to suggest clear fixes for submission problems, based on past experience and a deep understanding of the service.
Time-management
Game QA is performed in rounds, there’s a certain number of hours allocated for each task, which usually includes familiarization with the game or the feature, along with the technical configuration required for testing. Especially when working as a service provider or an external QA partner, this is a crucial aspect of how the business is structured. Which means, there’s little to no room for waste.
Good time-management is an asset to a QA tester, it will help you structure your workflow efficiently and accomplish your tasks as best as possible.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
Creativity can lead you anywhere, which is great, but you also need to be careful and avoid getting lost. As a tester, it’s crucial to keep your focus and manage well the time spend on a task. And of course, we’re always dealing with micro and macro deadlines that must be respected.
Curiosity
A healthy dose of curiosity can always push you further. Even though some things might be clear from the start (i.e. the sword should to X amount of damage, the door should open, the quest should appear in the quest loc, the NPC should be found in a certain spot – to name a few examples), game testing is all about asking questions.
What happens if I do this? What happens if I go there? If I try this after doing that, will the result be any different? Even when a feature seems straightforward, the curiosity to continuously investigate may lead to unexpected results.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
This is another skill we’ve noticed in our best testers. Being curios will help you figure out how things work, you’ll try all the different paths and unavoidably find new bugs. And of course, curiosity may lead to edge cases. For example, we’ve seen a situation in which a colleague discovered a crash because he played with the volume bar during the action phase to “see what happens.”
Patience
Through the nature of the job itself, testing means to try the same thing multiple times, working on a lot of the same content. Whether you’re establishing the reproduction rate of a bug, regressing a known issue or doing a quick check on a new build to make sure everything is in place, you’ll often find yourself repeating the same actions over and over again.
And then, there are other aspects of the job which require patience:
- The builds and the setup might take a long time to be ready.
- Replies might not come right away.
- Bugs might not be fixed from one patch to another.
- The diversity of the work environment requires a lot of understanding.
And more importantly, you’ll need to be patient with yourself, as you go through the learning curve of understanding new projects and tasks.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
Let’s be honest, when you’re playing something for the 100th time you DO need patience. Especially when the early builds are broken and you stop at every step to report something. Being a dedicated tester on a project is rewarding and you get to know the project inside out, but you’ll also deal with the same content over and over again.
Even when you don’t already know the game by heart, some tasks can test your patience. For example, testing trophies and achievements can highly repetitive. Retro games can seem slow or clunky, until you get to know and appreciate their style.
(True) Passion
Game development is famously filled with dedicated people. Games become part of our lives, as we build a unique understanding of game design and muscle memory. True passion comes with a layer of ingrained knowledge which simply can’t be taught.
If you’re one of those passionate people, you’re close to the true player experience, you know your favorite game systems better than the average player and you’ll most likely have a deeper context for the projects you’ll be assigned on. Your passion can be a real advantage while working as a QA game tester.
💡From our experience at Quantic Lab
In the end, you don’t need to be a gamer to be a good or even great tester. But it does help. People who are usually passionate also stay in gaming longer, instead of moving on to different career plans. They are the ones who will build on their passion and keep working for the love of games, not just for the job.
If you’re one of these passionate people, a company like Quantic Lab can help you turn this passion into a long-term career. There are many growth possibilities in game quality assurance that start with being a QA tester. We have colleagues who have been working with us for over 18 years, they’ve gone through different roles and still continue to do more for the game industry.
This is our quick rundown of useful soft skills in game quality assurance. In future articles we’ll touch more upon what being QA tester implies from a technical standpoint, but for now, we hope this gives you a better idea of what traits will help you build your path. If our list of soft skills spoke to you, there’s a good chance you’ll fit right in!
