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[Kotaku] The Human Cost Of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 by Jason Schreier
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
I'm surprised but not at the same time. Who is in charge of this kind of thing within Treyarch?
Depends on the testing required. I use to volunteer as a QA tester for a company who would contract work from companies like EA and THQ. We primarily did network and bug testing for online multiplayer games. Some of the games tested were Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor, Crysis 2, Dead Space 2 and Homefront. I also remember testing Gaikai before Sony purchased them.
As I said, it was volunteer work. We were not paid but we received a free copy of the game if you were a somewhat active tester. In some cases (particularly with EA) we would receive multiple game keys. In the case of Bad Company 2 testing, the top testers (those who found and reported the most bugs) received gifts. I had a 9800 GTX graphics card sent to me as a top tester.
It was before my time with the company, but apparently they had tested EA Origin while it was in it's infancy. Those who tested the service were allowed to keep all the games they downloaded during the testing.
Im glad i didn't bought a Call Of Duty game in a while (not having the games on Switch is helping)
The worst part for me is the lunch thing. How is it only legal?
The worst part for me is the lunch thing. How is it only legal?
Employees in Sweden have the right to take at least 25 days of holiday each year. In the first year, these are an advance. If you leave within five years, you have to pay them back.
The difference to the USA is still night and day. It is one of just 13 countries in the world that does not guarantee paid time off.
Sorry but this is still what QA is doing at larger companies no one in QA is touching anything in engine especially at cod studios MAYBE at some small studio where people to have multiple roles. But in general they run around report bugs they see either visual or gameplay related, test collision, they will run through the segments of gameplay over and over on different builds. They then take screenshots or videos of the bugs and write up the reports send them to their lead who send it back to the devs. The devs then go and fix whatever performance, gameplay, or art tasks that are called out as bugs depending on level of importance. It's nice to want to put QA on a pedestal but that's the reality of what they are doing at larger companies unfortunately the turn over is so large is because it's not a glamorous job and can be taught to people with no experience without issue.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but that's capitalism for you. It's not healthy, nor sustainable in the long run. Every fucking dime matters to the shareholders.
What the hell am I reading here. Is this real? I never really liked Treyarch as a CoD developer (prefer IW) but this is just shocking.
Nothing. Same as always. Crunch has been a factor in games for almost 40 years. Remember when RDR2 bombed due to gamers backlash against the repeated tales of crunch culture at Rockstar? No, I don't either. The biggest change regarding this was about 15 years ago with "EA Spouse" and similar tales from other companies, back when unpaid overtime was a lot more common. Now at least people are typically well compensated for it. This article e.g. mentions that some might not be able to afford to live in LA if not for the overtime comp.
Well yes. The question was rhetorical. Far be it for egregious worker and psychological abuse to get in the way of a video game.
I'm also not comfortable with the reality that living close to your job can only be had if you work a crapload of unhealthy overtime.
Understood it's rhetorical. Nothing. You see how testy people get when it comes to diversity in games, now imagine better conditions for workers pushing games back even further.
the aircon thing blows my mind
poor pay, crunch I get, capitalism without healthy regulation fucking sucks. at a massive games company with a huge turnover How are you going to leave your employees in risk of overheating though? how would basic fucking aircon or even a few fans or whatever not improve efficency
poor pay, crunch I get, capitalism without healthy regulation fucking sucks. at a massive games company with a huge turnover How are you going to leave your employees in risk of overheating though? how would basic fucking aircon or even a few fans or whatever not improve efficency
I have a friend who worked QA at Activision for years. Everything stated is just about correct.
How one studio works is not how everybody works.
But what do I know.
OK, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. The thing is though, the games you listed are total dumpster fires that were widely mocked. I honestly think Bethesda and Bioware in particular are in deep trouble: I'm certainly not buying their next game during the release window. I think the majority of players who would normally be interested in games from those studios feel the same. It's a serious problem for them. FO76 is a key example - that game only sold a few million copies, whereas FO4 sold millions more and Skyrim was a billion dollar juggernaut. Skyrim was glitchy, but FO4 and FO76 were progressively worse and that has to have impacted the sales.
So, QA should unionise. If QA in a studio were to strike and the studio pressed ahead and released the game anyway, then they would see the cost of not having quality assurance.
What would prevent the studio from contracting with a different agency that does not use unionized QA workers?
This is nonsense.
There are tests who do that, yes. But that is not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of what QA does.
You are always entitled to 25 days of vacation by law "semesterlagen", but the law only gives you the right to have vacation it does not give you the right to payed vacation. The money is regulated in the collective agreement. You earn ca 2 days of payed vacation per month that you can use the following year, to get 25 days of payed vacation the first year you must make an agreement with your employer.
Again, I think most of this falls onto the contractor company, Volt. Reviews on glassdoor don't make it seem like a great company to work for and they are technically the ones responsible for the QA testers. When I had issues like AC (ours was left on overnight on full-blast and we froze our asses off for 10 hours straight overnight), I had to go to my lead. I didn't talk to the FTEs unless they talked to me first. Other companies had much better benefits as contractors. Frankly, I worked for an American defense contractor and my benefits and pay were significantly worse than those who worked for Indian companies.
Does that mean DICE treat it's QA testers good then?
OT: At least Treyarchs response is taking the problem head on, unlike Bioware. However, I doubt much will change since many of these issues are Volt's doing, and I don't think Treyarch has much say in that.
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This seems like an oversimplified generalization. I work at a big AAA studio and our QC is specialized, certain QC teams often work in engine (or other parts of a pipeline like 3DSMax), and do a tonne of really valuable work.
It surely is. Quite depressing the number of people that don't get that, including perhaps the author himself.
Horrible working conditions indeed, but not much to do with Activision or Treyarch.
Yep. I worked as contract IT alongside full-time regular employees, kinda similar experiences. Not as absurd as being told I couldn't talk to the 'real' employees, but still fucked up in different ways.
Activision's COD dev cycle is catching up to them. Black Ops 4's campaign, Call of Duty 2020 development turning into a mess, how much longer can they keep pushing their releases like this?
I dealt with this kinda crap on multiple contracts, even the catered thing was something I saw when working on site at one studio in QA. We didn't get to forage for the scraps though xD
But there's free soda and bottled water!!! What a perk! /s
Sometimes during crunch staying for overtime certain companies would get the team pizza or Chipotle or something complimentary but that was about it.
QA work culture has been shit for a minute now and its nice seeing Jason shine more of a light on it.
The first couple contracts I was wide eyed and oblivious to the crummy conditions because I didn't know any better having a short work history at the time. They lure in gamers through the nostalgia trap and wowee I'm getting paid to play vidya! Once you go through crunch the first time and are still getting shit pay and no benefits you realize its a bunch of bs.
But there's free soda and bottled water!!! What a perk! /s
Sometimes during crunch staying for overtime certain companies would get the team pizza or Chipotle or something complimentary but that was about it.
QA work culture has been shit for a minute now and its nice seeing Jason shine more of a light on it.
The first couple contracts I was wide eyed and oblivious to the crummy conditions because I didn't know any better having a short work history at the time. They lure in gamers through the nostalgia trap and wowee I'm getting paid to play vidya! Once you go through crunch the first time and are still getting shit pay and no benefits you realize its a bunch of bs.
Read something like this, and then Treyarch puts out the massive update today which features
A new character... that unintentionally doesn't have footstep noise in it's BattleRoyale mode.
Jesus people treat the QA better.
A new character... that unintentionally doesn't have footstep noise in it's BattleRoyale mode.
Jesus people treat the QA better.
You assume that's something the dev team and producers weren't always aware of, and decided it was acceptable to put out that way.
It's gets worse when you realize that the character, Reaper, who was in BO3, had the exact same issue at launch of that game.
I worked as Volt as a tester contracted to EA. We were treated differently, but we were still treated decently ok. We were not allowed to use the gym by ourselves, but if an employee brought us it was ok. I didn't drive but we were allowed to park on site. They treated us decently well considering we were contractors.
It sucks for those contracted to Treyarch have it rougher than me as I worked in the mid to late 2000s in testing. What others have mentioned though is that contractors have to be treated differently. For example in Canada, if you are given tools to work, have to show up to the same location every day, have the same schedule day in, day out, you are getting close to having an argument that your contractors are actually employees and would need to be treated differently. Creating a haves and have-nots makes it an easy argument to argue that they are contractors and not employees. Again, HR rears its ugly head and serves to cause more misery.
It sucks for those contracted to Treyarch have it rougher than me as I worked in the mid to late 2000s in testing. What others have mentioned though is that contractors have to be treated differently. For example in Canada, if you are given tools to work, have to show up to the same location every day, have the same schedule day in, day out, you are getting close to having an argument that your contractors are actually employees and would need to be treated differently. Creating a haves and have-nots makes it an easy argument to argue that they are contractors and not employees. Again, HR rears its ugly head and serves to cause more misery.