Outsourcing Digital Game Production: The Case of Polish Testers

Abstract

This article investigates the experiences of digital game testers working in external quality assurance departments in Poland. As compared with video game developers, testers have received relatively little attention in game labor studies, and there is a particular gap in the scholarship with respect to testers within firms that perform work that is outsourced from game developers and publishers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Polish game testers, my research reveals that outsourced game testing is characterized by sharp tensions between self-realization and self-exploitation. The article explores three aspects of testers’ response to these tensions, including enduring precarious working conditions, seeking better career prospects, and engaging in resistance in the workplace. I examine testers’ work through the conceptual lens of hope labor, which designates undercompensated work carried out in the hope of gaining more stable and rewarding employment opportunities in future.

Studying Game Development Cultures

“…Studies of national game development histories (Banks & Cunningham, 2016;Sandqvist, 2012;Švelch, 2018) and regional specificities associated with game production (Parker & Jenson, 2017) have shown how contextual factors always affect the evolution of local game industries. Since the European game industry "constitutes of highly diverse regions, each differing in market size, demographics, local development communities, and national creative industries-related policy development" (Nieborg & de Kloet, 2016), more detailed situated studies are urgently needed (Meda-Calvet, 2016;Ozimek, 2019).…”

Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

“…The detrimental effects of these social dynamics have been largely documented since the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) first Quality of Life report (IGDA, 2004), but collective solutions have rarely been received enthusiastically within the sector. Recent research projects have identified trends in how game workers perceive the establishment of a union: among other things, as inappropriate for a context of production where companies rapidly mobilize capitals and relocate production across the globe (Kerr, 2017); where most workers are independents or sub-contracted (Ozimek, 2019a;Woodcock, 2021); as an obstacle to creativity and passion (Bulut, 2020); as dangerous for careers and potentially exposing oppositional attitudes in the workplace (O'Donnell, 2014).…”

“…On the other, productions are often canceled before being released, leaving employees with no evidence of the time spent on a project (Bulut, 2020). Workers are often outsourced and subcontracted and made partly invisible in the production process (Ozimek, 2019a). Employees are typically asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that forbid talking publicly about the project they have been hired to conduct, making the internal dynamics of the workplace opaque (O'Donnell, 2014).…”

IGDA finland hubs and their role in local game development

“…Therefore, it has been inspiring to observe how in the past few years carefully crafted situated studies of regional game development environments have started to appear. In addition to leading manufacturers, dominant publishers, and large-scale domestic markets, scholars have set sights on exploring national game development histories [3,4,5], local development cultures [6,7] and particular game studios [8,9]. This article draws inspiration from this recent emergence of game production studies, putting special focus on the informal networks between individual developers.…”