Megan Deacon, QA Tester
Marvel Heroes Forums: AgentMadness
At the young age of fifteen, Megan got a huge interest in gaming from participating in play tests. When she turned nineteen, a friend of hers who worked at Sony reached out to let her know about openings for game testers. Megan worked at a few studios – Sony, Bandai/Namco, and Storm 8 – before coming to Gazillion. Her dream was to get into gaming since that first play test, but her dad did throw a little doubt her way. “I had a very good time calling my father and saying ‘hey Dad, guess where I’m working?’ He hasn’t doubted me since.”
Megan’s primary focus is compliance, which doesn’t just deal with the way the game functions, but requirements (for example, Steam requires you post technical specifications for the game, agree to their terms of service, and accept their terms such as their refund policy). “I like to look at the peripheral edges, things people don’t tend to zero in on a test case. I may not follow the steps exactly – I’ll do it the first time, but then I’ll mess with it to make sure it’ll pass no matter what way you look at it.” Megan said peripheral edge tests are things like testing functionality in the game, such as logging in, logging out, and then logging back in again using the same character to make sure everything looks and works right.
“At each of those places [previous studios of employment], there was a prevailing attitude that QA is a doorstopper kind of deal, where we are not so much as part of the team, just there to catch their mistakes. Even then, we’re more a bother than a help.” Megan has worked in studios both large and small, and felt the same way across the board. Being at Gazillion is definitely a huge improvement. “Gaz implements their model without realizing what they’re doing because they see the value in that. Just knowing that when you put in a bug that someone will see and say ‘yes, now I can fix it!’ has been a million times better for moral and the experience for any new testers we have here. For them to have their first experience in QA rather than feeling like everything they do is looked down upon. It’s one of the reasons why I love being here.”
Megan recommends anyone interested in getting a job in QA take a few courses and get some basic coding knowledge. “Get some knowledge with C++, java, and scripting HTML. Learning SQL will be really useful if you want to get into mobile testing. Getting a certificate in the department you want to get into also helps – if you want to go into art, or programming, or engineering, go into that. People are now looking for people who are QA.” She encourages people to set a goal, and set a path to that individual goal versus going from field to field.
