Think back to the times you have seen a game destroyed within a launch period. Think of the mockery that gets thrown at the developers. Where does it focus? On QA, the Quality Assurance team. Poor saps that are forced to brute force mechanical tests whilst observing and reporting stability issues as well. The team that is more or less crucial to the final product working. They are frequently overworked, underpaid and then to top it off, are the targets of ridicule in situations they can’t control.
Many issues sit within the process of bug testing, the biggest of which is outright refusal by other departments to work with what QA reports. Several nightmare workplace stories I have encountered include overtime to an inhumane level and little to no job security. What I would love is for this to not be the case, as hopelessly optimistic as that might seem.
I have previously published two articles centering around the formula that glitch hunters use outside of QA, the malicious methods, intended to break instead of resolve. I want to show the industry that there is something here that can assist them. Not as a replacement, for traditional QA helps a product stabilize, work properly. That is far beyond the typical scope of what we do in speed running. However, inheriting the mindset is an important step that I think will improve not only the QA process, but the lives of many workers that almost always get the short end of the stick.
Mechanical Autonomy vs Creativity
Described without fail in every recounting of QA work I have heard is the banality of the methods used. It’s always a strict combing from one side to the other, not really thinking about what is being tested. This results in the enjoyment of the process faltering, the morale required for anything to actually be discovered dropping to the lowest point. Surely it being such a rigorous mechanical process would add to the chance of something unique slipping through the cracks. Different methods for different situations as it were, glitch hunters don’t just run in guns blazing and brute force amazing things to happen.
Lots of the discovery happens through the understanding of engines at a physical (in-game) level. ‘What would happen if this mechanic’s function clashed with this other one?’ ‘If this is what the game wants me to do, what can be used to fight that, to loosen the grip the game has?’ Just two thoughts that I’ve found going through my own head, among hundreds that form dependent on the situation and the opportunities that a given game can present the player with.
Creativity and problem solving sit at the heart of glitch hunting in the speed running community. If that motif can be injected into the QA departments across the globe, surely it would increase quality of life for those that do this type of work. This can not only reveal cracks faster, but assist in securing positions for the minds that can expose them. With brute forcing there is a robotic style to it that is what results in QA being almost expendable on an individual level. If you can prove to a developer that you are valuable through proper creative thought, discussion and remedies, that’s already a first step to avoid being an easy lay off. You can be unique in the way you observe games in action, not an android made to scan and shut down creatively.
Help Us Help You Help The Industry
In 2015 it’s almost expected for a launched game to be thoroughly broken by the gamers that play it. What people should realize is that many times multiple departments are to blame.
Imagine being a QA tester, finding a crippling bug and reporting it to your superior. They either don’t touch the report, or forward it on to the programming and design team. Let’s say that then, the programmers, under the guise that what they do is always solid gold, becomes offended by the idea that their work isn’t perfect and needs mending. They thus don’t fix it out of denial. This isn’t a rhetorical story, this is a story I have directly been told by a friend who company hops on QA teams. It’s the reporting that lies at the heart of this. This crippling bug is just a blip in a database of employee reports.
We have all worked somewhere with that one guy who thinks he is hot shit and does everything the best way. These types of people always get in the way until they can be properly confronted. In the context of this article, this would be someone explaining how and why something is broken directly, whether in-person or via phone calls or e-mails. The implications a glitch can have can be absolutely humongous and until that is emphasized, every little bug is going to be considered the same in severity from the top down.
I’m unsure of the best way glitch hunting mindsets can be properly assimilated into a QA culture, because the bottom line is that combing is still necessary, and for the time being it’s still considered an expendable portion of a studio. I still believe that the key to improve the work cycle is to attack the problems with a creative mind, instead of a trial-and-error one.
In the end, speed runners simply can’t replace QA as whole. However, QA itself would greatly benefit from what we have learned over the years of attacking engines from a consumer standpoint. Video games are some of the most complex forms of software on the planet. Tradition is not what should be held on to, not without at least heeding advice of people who demonstrate prowess at achieving the same goals through different methods.
Glitching Is Art 
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