Playboring in the Tester Pit

Abstract

The labor of video game testers has barely registered within political-economic analyses of work practices in the game industry. This article addresses this gap through a critical deployment of the concept of precarity and its multiform nature experienced by game testers. Drawing on Harry Braverman’s concept of “degradation of labor,” I aim to contribute to media labor literature by introducing the concept of “degradation of fun,” where testers are alienated from play and forced to develop instrumental and selective ways of play. I make the argument that as opposed to popular representations, game testing is a decidedly precarious labor, due to its assumed low-skill status, and because of the existence of a large reserve army of labor, which depresses the wages and renders testers expendable. Ultimately, the “immateriality” and joy of testing as labor comes with material physical and bodily pains, and sentiments of second-class citizenship.

Outsourcing Digital Game Production: The Case of Polish Testers

“…The work of external testers bears similarities to that of testers based directly in development studios, from a shared hope in starting a career in the industry through QA to experiencing precarity due to the project-based organization of work (see Bulut 2015). Nonetheless, outsourced testers' experiences of work insecurity and instability were amplified by the structure of the outsourcing business model.…”

“…Like their counterparts in development studios (Bulut 2015), outsourced testers' work is quantified to measure their proficiency in finding and reporting errors in software. Quantification of testers' labor results in increased competition in the work environment, with interviewees suggesting that the most productive testers gain greater work security and protection from redundancy.…”

“…Testing's position in the industry's occupational hierarchy is characterized by various tensions. Chief among them, arguably, is that although testing is perceived by avid players as a "dream job" and as an entry point to a career in the digital game industry, QA is associated with low occupational prestige and precarious working conditions (Briziarelli 2016;Bulut 2015). In this article, I examine the experiences of testers who are employed by companies in Poland that specialize in outsourcing contracts, providing support services to various software and media sector clients, including digital games developers.…”

31. Game Production Logics at Work: Convergence and Divergence

“…Those at the lower end of the pay scale have less power to negotiate and less protection. A North American qualitative study argued that game testers are 'precarious workers' and pay is kept low due to the high demand for these positions and the perception that this job is a route into the industry (Bulut, 2015). My own research into community managers in the games industry in Ireland found that while these positions demand significant gaming and cultural knowledge, job advertisements rarely give remuneration details -indeed, some interviewees informed me that their employment contracts forbid them from discussing their remuneration (Kerr, 2016).…”

Economies of the Internet

“…Given the rapid rise of the commercial Web and its increasing concentration in large monopoly players such as Google and Facebook, it is no surprise that we have seen a resurging interest in studying the political economy of the Internet. Various studies engage with the conditions and labor practices of digital media industries, ranging from games (e.g., Bulut, 2015;Kücklich, 2005;Deuze, et al, 2007), to Web development (e.g., Neff, et al, 2005;Kennedy, 2012;Ross, 2003), to the high-technology manufacturing plants in free trade zones across the developing world (e.g., Dyer-Witheford, 2015;Qiu, et al, 2014;Sandoval, 2013). Such studies often emphasize the relative under-compensation of digital media industries, including for white-collar, middle-class, and creative work.…”