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Yeah, but now that there's a union to represent QA employees in the industry, you are likely going to see other QA employees start Union drives in order to try to obtain whatever benefits the Union at AB is able to extract.
Someone needs to uncover bugs during active development. The *real* problem is the scope of many projects go beyond what anyone is capable of. It's *hard* to develop across multiple sites, especially when management has no clear vision of what they want your game to even be. So things get built, tested, replaced, redone, time after time again, and more often then not everything is stitched together in the last six months of development or so. Frankly, I'm shocked most titles are able to be completed at all the day they release.
Think back to the days of open Beta testing...
Yup, having people work just hard enough to not get fired will definitely get those creative juices flowing! Also, harboring employees who are not productive to begin with will increase everyone's productivity!
Indeed. The one thing you can be sure of is that this is not going to help gaming companies. Unions are about the employees, not the company. I have no idea how someone could fathom that your QA employees unionizing would help you make better QA employees.
It could help indirectly. If QA has adequate personnel/funding/time to do their jobs properly, its possible games could release in a better state, leading to better initial reviews, and more sales (profits).
Right, the problem is the Beta's for most games started to ship in a broken state, and a bad Beta (it was feared) would lead to a bad initial response and thus less sales. So, companies instead decided to can Betas, put NDAs on reviews until after the game launched in order to hide any negative indications prior to launch, and doubled down on pre-order bonuses to try and get people to "lock in" their purchase before word of mouth spread the game was hot garbage.
Very true, forgot about that angle of it...
Blame the internet, get it out the door now and fix it later, back in the days of no internet on consoles for example, you had to try and ship a dam near perfect game right, sometimes you would find a couple bugs in a game, but usually nothing that would be game stopping!
And then you'd get a second run with v1.1 of the game, and 99.9% of the world would never know. But yes, as internet speeds have stopped being a concern (for most of us anyways) there's certainly the mindset of "fix it later".
Work for a corporation for more then a few years, and you start to understand this line of thinking. They don't care about things like "success", they just want to make money NOW in order to meet their Wall Street expectations. There's very little concern at the corporate level for the long-term effect of multiple poor releases, only meeting the current financial obligations. So if the choice is "ship it broken and fix it later" or "delay until after Christmas to do it right", the option is quite obvious: Ship it now.
Larger, sure. But I've worked on large projects, and you can segment out independent systems easily enough. The problem is typically one of:
I am fully aware of how it works, i just simplified it,. the problem still lies with being rushed out the door usually by people up top as you noted. I was in charge of a dev team for an online poker site, i know how it all works. I also know how well a good team can work together and integrate code well with proper QA and Agile processes, but also dealt with a CEO who had a shiny new ball almost daily forcing us to release code we know had bugs that we could of fixed if given time.
Pretty much this. The *real* problem, nine out of ten times, is management. What a Union does, in theory, if forces management to address their own crap practises.
But also, Union can breed lazyness with their often archaic systems of having to hire internally and other things...at least from some companies I have delt with that have partial unions in some departments. They are always the slowest and laziest to get anything done cause "we in a union"
But the union management falls into the same traps and really don't address the issues themselves. I been in a union before and it really left a sour taste. It was no surprise when we got constantly under bid for everything. One job was 3 journeymen and 1 apprentice to change out one 40' pipe that required no welding. That job was scheduled for 7 10 hour days. I was the apprentice then and I did all the work while the journeymen fucked off somewhere else. So the plant we were working at paid almost $20k in labor to bolt 5 flanges together... The real kicker was on the last day we sat around for 4 hours after the day was complete waiting for our check because by union rules you suppose to receive your final check when you get laid off. So some poor sucker had to drive all the way down from NY at the end of the day to deliver us our checks. None of the journeymen or foreman on the job site would accept them being mailed to us.
It's easier to be an advocate for yourself when you are less replaceable. QA testers are considered the lowest rung in the game development hierarchy despite being a critical part of the development cycle, but they are no doubt low-skill ceiling and easily replaceable. On the other hand it eliminates motivation to go above and beyond the bare minimum, as you are guaranteed a salary and benefits level by virtue of the union contract.
When I worked in the pipe fitter union I knew a own that left the union cause of the costs associated with them. He could hire a bunch of Mexicans to come in knock out the job and then pay his works to go back and fix everything for 1/4 the cost and time a union crew would take to do. Almost never was a job even done under budget or on time.
It's simple: When you are working a job that is replicable (either because of a low skill ceiling or because there are enough potential replacements in the market), you have no mechanism to ask for more then you are making. If you are underpaid, work a ton of extra hours, and march into HR and demand you get paid "fairly", you are handed your papers; someone else will be more then happy to do the work you are currently doing for less.