I. What is your name?

Steve Victory

II. What is/was your title?

Quality Assurance Manager

III. What is/was your yearly salary?

45K plus bonuses gaming industry is about half of what comparative jobs are in other fields.

IV. What company did you/do you work for?

Interplay Productions Inc

V. What exactly do you/did you work on?

I had over 100 titles credited to me as either a Tester, Lead Tester or QA Manager, the most well known were Baldurs Gate and the Fallout Series.

VI. Did you/Do you have any perks?

We did. We had a fully stocked kitchen and a soda fountain. The owners used to close down the entire company(500+ people) and rent out an entire movie theatre for a private showings of new movies.

They also took the entire company to Disneyland more than once. We had lots of parties at different restaurants with free food and drinks. Free pizza every night that we worked late. When stress got to be too much during crunch time we would all take breaks and have Nerf gun fights until everyone unwound a little bit.

We had epic Christmas parties where the owner would get bands like KC and the Sunshine Band( a 70's disco band) to come into clubs that were rented out to us; drinks were free as was really good catered food.

We had "movie nights" where we would get together and watch a movie or play Playstation games on a huge TV in the breakroom, or just hang out.

VII. How long have you/did you work in this field?

Off and on for 10 years now. I worked for Interplay for 5 years. I still get contracts to perform testing for different titles that are being produced. Not as much lately as my time gets taken up by website building. I do miss it, and am hoping to start the development of an RPG game of my own design within the next couple of years.

VIII. Have you worked on anything that’s been used by large amounts of people?

Yes, The Baldurs Gate series sold around a quarter million copies; I am not sure if that would qualify.

IX. If you could, would you go back and redo anything you’ve done?

Yes, quite a few things. I wouldn't have pushed the people I had working for me so hard; The last year or so of being at Interplay was really difficult as the company had been performing poorly and money was getting tight. I(Along with all of the development team) had been working 80 and 90 hour weeks for months on end to try and get games completed so that we could get revenues up. Unfortunately I pushed the testers equally hard to do the same, which lead to a lot of burnout and turnover. Ultimately the company just kind of shut down after several development blunders; so I don't think that had I been that much of a help to the situation, and there were a lot of hard feelings about the long hours. It wasn't worth it; anytime that making a game gets to be grueling work, you know that you have screwed up somewhere.

I would have also taken more advantage of learning the tricks to the programming that make games great. In the gaming industry it is common to work on your own time(no pay) as an understudy for whatever career you wanted to get into. Game Testers wanted to become Animators, artists, programmers, or whatever else; after their normal work days was done they would go over to a programers/artist office who was a mentor to them and begin to learn that particular craft.

They would progress to a point where they showed enough proficiency to be able to get paid for their skills, and then get promoted to a junior level in that field.

As I had been promoted to being in charge of the QA department I was too busy to take advantage of that, and always wanted to be a good programmer, but didn't get the chance.

X. Did you/Do you enjoy your job?

Very much so, although I wouldn't like to have to do the long hours again, It is too tough on the family life to be worth it. The low pay wasn't so great either...Overall I have very fond memories if doing it.


Thanks.

What inspired you to get into this business?

I had always loved computer games; and started programming and creating games back on my first Commodore Vic-20 (20 k of ram…wow). When I got out of the Army and went to college I was taking different computer classes and ran into a friend that I had known years earlier. He had begun to work for Interplay, and told me that they were looking for people for a new project they were working on called Descent. I went down the following day and applied and interviewed a week later. Towards the end of the interview they asked me when I could start and I said “Right Now”… I started that day and loved it.

What kind of training and preparation was needed for you to enter this line of work?

The college computer courses helped quite a bit, as did the endless hours of tinkering around d the computer on my own. I had a very good understanding of the gaming industry and loved games a lot. I was willing to work very hard and learn whatever I needed to, to be the best.

What special skills or talents do you feel are necessary to have?

Great attention to detail, great creativity, and a love of games.

Describe what an average day at work was like.

I usually got to work early in the morning (6:00am)to get a lot of work done that was left over from the crew that worked late the night before the office got filled up and too busy too get paperwork done.  During the morning I would have to attend meetings with the different development teams of each of the games I was working with to go over how things were going and to make sure we were getting the stuff done and on track.

Most developers get in mid-morning, and at that point I would divide up whatever work that we had to get done and then get to work. 

We would work until early evening; if it wasn’t too busy I would be able to get all of the work done by 7:00pm and be able to leave. The folks that came in later would stay until close to midnight.

How many hours did you work for in an average day?

12 hour days(6 days a week) were very common, and it could be much more when a title was getting ready to get shipped out (crunch time). I worked 80-100 hour weeks most of the year, except for rare slow times after a big title shipped. There is no such thing as a 40 hour workweek in game development.

How do you see this career changing in the next few years?

Yes it will continue to change. When I first began in the early/mid 90’s most games were being developed by small groups of developers and were often completed with a team of half a dozen or more people. Having a 25 person development team was extremely uncommon and considered too expensive. As time went by the teams kept getting bigger and bigger and game designs kept getting more and more intricate and complicated. 

Around the end of the decade 50 person development teams were common. It was great and allowed a lot of people to get into the industry. Unfortunately it was hard to be profitable with such a huge expense, and gaming companies began losing money, and many have closed. It is a lot tougher to get into gaming now than it was ten years ago; you really have to be talented to get into the industry.



now for my own questions:

What kind of people did you meet while working there?

They were mostly great; and all were incredibly creative and fun people. Making games should be fun, and the people that make games are generally fun people to be around.

Game developers get paid about half of what software developers would in other software development jobs, so they do it because they love it. They are all dedicated and work long hours for mediocre pay…

What was the hardest part of your job?

Without a doubt it was the long hours.

Easiest part?

Loving the games…

Is it mostly team work or individual work?

It was mainly solo work, but you have to be able to work well in groups as team meeting happen a lot. You have to be able to work under high stress conditions for extended hours, and still be easy to work with…

thanks