In 2008, globally successful game developer Electronic Arts (EA) opened its doors in Baton Rouge at LSU’s south campus. Five years later, EA had outgrown its building there and moved to LSU’s main campus and into the top floor of the $30 million, 90,000-square-foot Digital Media Center. EA’s state-of-the-art facility is dedicated to quality assurance game testing—troubleshooting endless EA titles. Matt Hazen, an EA Baton Rouge recruiter who has been testing for six years, is considered a veteran in the world of game testing. He’s worked on the EA titles NBA Jam (2010), Fight Night Champion, Sim City (2014) and The Sims 4. He’s also worked on the websites for The Sims 4, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Unravel, Star Wars: Battlefront, EA Sports and many more. We spoke to Hazen about what it’s like to make a living as a tester.
What are thequalifications for being a game tester?
What we primarily do here is basic QA [quality assurance] testing, which [sounds pretty basic, but] is actually pretty complex. What we want is people with great ability for written communication, good verbal communication, attention to detail—and ideally a passion for games, but it’s not really necessary. It’s a legit full-time job.
What’s it like to be a game tester for EA Baton Rouge?
It’s one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, actually. We come in, and we have specific tasks that we need to do for specific projects. If you’re in the alpha version of a game, you’re going to be primarily testing integrity to make sure it’s not crashing, and as features are implemented, you’re testing them to make sure they function as intended. Mostly what we do is intentional testing. So, something may be working, but it might not be working the way it’s supposed to. For example, if you’re on the main menu of a game, and music is playing, but it’s the wrong music, it’s technically functioning, but it’s not functioning as intended. We’ll never catch all the bugs. There will always be bugs that make it out into the wild.
What are somemisconceptions people have after you tell them you test games for a living?
A lot of people think we do it from home, which we don’t—we’re here in our designated areas with our specific assigned game teams. People think we just play video games for a living, which to some degree we do, because there are points when testing requires us just to play the game—but it’s more than that.
What’s the longestamount of time you’ve spent testing games?
Usually I test for eight hours a day, but on overtime days, I’ve done 12 to 16 hours. Some guys have just sat here and done a 24-hour shift, which is irregular, and EA does not want that. We get a break every two hours, and we have a lunch break, which is required. We’ve had people who would sit there and work through their break, and I tell them not do that because they’re going to burn out. Pulling so many hours without breaks, when they go home at the end of the day, they’re going to dream about that game, wake up thinking about that game, and eventually, resent that game. It’s a 40-hour work week, but there were times I was pulling 60-70 hour weeks testing NBA Jam, and my co-workers were pulling more than that.
About how manyhours have you logged in your career as a game tester?
About 10,000-ish, as a rough guess.
Does testing thegames make it harder to play the games for fun?
I don’t play a lot of the games I’ve tested. Sometimes it’s fun to show them off to people when they come over, because I worked on it, and my name’s in the credits.
What’s your idealsetup for long stretches of testing?
All I need is my chair set up the way I like it and a full cup of coffee.
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