EQ2_Bloggers
11-15-2010, 11:03 PM
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Abby works at SOE San Diego as a QA Trainer and Usability Moderator.* She joined SOE in 2009, and made time this week for a short question and answer*session for the G.I.R.L. blog.
[Emily] Give us a summary of your background, and you got into the games industry? I’m originally from Illinois.* I graduated with a degree in Art Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and realized that I didn’t want to teach art at that point in my life and moved to California.* Getting into the games industry was really a happy accident for me.* A friend and I were both job hunting, and he mentioned that he’d love to work for Sony Online Entertainment.* After hearing him talk about it, I thought SOE quality assurance sounded neat and I applied.* I ended up getting hired on as a QA tester for Free Realms in mid 2009, and later that year I moved on to become a QA Trainer and Usability Moderator.
[Emily] Tell us a bit about the area of gaming you’re currently involved in – for example, where are you working, what do you do on a day-to-day basis?
My job is two-fold; I’m both the QA Trainer and Usability Moderator. As the QA Trainer, I teach new hires about QA tools and procedures. All new QA testers go through training with me before joining one of the teams.
As the QA Moderator, I’m involved in planning, executing and reporting our usability tests.* Before the test, I meet with the game product owners to see what we need to test in the game and help write up the test plan.* During the test, I’m in the room to tell our testers what to do and take notes about what they like, dislike and have a hard time doing.* After the test, my team compiles all of the usability issues we’ve found, and I put it all together in a report to send back to the game product owners.
[Emily] How common is it to find women working in your specific area of gaming?
It’s pretty common to find women in both usability and training, though I happen to be the first female QA trainer here at SOE.
[Emily] Do you feel that being a woman helps or hinders you at work, if at all?
If it has any impact, perhaps it is that kids may be more comfortable around me than my male counterparts when we bring them in for usability tests.* Otherwise I don’t feel like it makes much of a difference.
[Emily] What types of games do you enjoy playing?
Recently I’ve been bored with violent shooter games, so now I’m playing mostly casual games.* My genre of the month is seek-and-finds.* In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time with real-time strategies, Sims, MMOs and RPGs. Usually, I’m a PC gamer.
[Emily] What games have you most enjoyed recently?
Like everyone else, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft. I’ve also been playing Clone Wars Adventures, and some seek-and-find games. I’ve also been playing Mario Kart Wii with my dad.* That’s really cool for me, because he lives in Illinois and playing games is a nice way to hang out with him.
[Emily] What gaming work have you done that you are most proud of?
For usability, I’m most proud of the work we did with Clone Wars Adventures. That was my first launch title here. It was really gratifying to see changes in the game based on usability testing. The devs would watch the usability tests, see where kids were having problems, and make changes to the game right away.*
For training, one of my proudest moments was when one of my former trainees said, “Thanks for teaching us how to write bugs the way you did.* I feel like my bugs are way better than other bugs I see.”* That was really nice to hear; I want my testers to be the best.
[Emily] Can you describe any particularly positive or negative experiences working in the industry that you feel are specifically related to your being female?
My gender may have been a consideration for both of the positions I’ve held here—SOE wanted to have some women QA testing Free Realms, and having a female moderator is a slight bonus when we have kids in for usability testing. Of course, my other qualifications were way more important, and I don’t think being a woman affects things very much. I’m just part of the team.
[Emily] Which issues (if any) do you feel are most important to women either working or playing in gaming these days?
I can’t speak for all women; I’m more of a casual gamer right now, and I know lots of women are more hardcore than I am and enjoy different things across the spectrum of game genres.
For me, one important issue is violence in games.* I don’t really think that games are going to turn our kids violent; I just think violence is really uncreative.* It seems like most serious games out there use some kind of violence as the main gameplay mechanic, and I think we can do way more interesting things than that.
[Emily] How do you think that the game industry in general might attract more women, both to work within the industry, and to play more games in general?
We need to change the culture surrounding games.* One thing I’ve learned working with kids is that if a game doesn’t look particularly girly, young girls think it’s a boys’ game.* To get more girl gamers, we need to change that impression.* There are lots of great games out there that girls could enjoy if they realized those games were open to them, too.*
To get more women in the industry, we should make sure women know what their options are.* I’ve been a gamer almost all of my life, with parents supporting that, but I’d never considered a career in gaming until I was out of college.* If someone had said, “Hey Abby, you like games and you’re good with computers; why don’t you make games?” I may have realized that was an option for me.
[Emily] What specific actions (if any) would you encourage women working in gaming to take in order to make the industry more friendly to women?
I’d say that we just need to get out there, be more visible, and let women know this is an awesome place to be.* From my standpoint, the industry itself is already pretty great.
[Emily] Are there any particular blogs, sites, books, twitter feeds, or other sources that you would recommend as particularly relevant or helpful to women in the gaming industry?
I subscribe to the women_dev e-mail list, which is related to the IDGA Women in Games SIG. The e-mail list website is at http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/women_dev.* It’s basically a forum for women in the gaming industry to talk about whatever they want. There have been posts about what kind of mouse to get to reduce wrist stress, how to survive crunch time, and more.
[Emily] Any other thoughts you’d like to share about women, gaming, or what it means to you to be a woman in gaming?
The only other thing I’d really like to mention is my parents.* They’ve both been really supportive of me, both as a gamer and as a professional in the gaming industry.* My mom especially is proud that I’m a woman in a predominantly-male industry, so I just want to give them a shout-out and let them know I appreciate their love.
- Emily “Domino” Taylor
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Abby works at SOE San Diego as a QA Trainer and Usability Moderator.* She joined SOE in 2009, and made time this week for a short question and answer*session for the G.I.R.L. blog.
[Emily] Give us a summary of your background, and you got into the games industry? I’m originally from Illinois.* I graduated with a degree in Art Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and realized that I didn’t want to teach art at that point in my life and moved to California.* Getting into the games industry was really a happy accident for me.* A friend and I were both job hunting, and he mentioned that he’d love to work for Sony Online Entertainment.* After hearing him talk about it, I thought SOE quality assurance sounded neat and I applied.* I ended up getting hired on as a QA tester for Free Realms in mid 2009, and later that year I moved on to become a QA Trainer and Usability Moderator.
[Emily] Tell us a bit about the area of gaming you’re currently involved in – for example, where are you working, what do you do on a day-to-day basis?
My job is two-fold; I’m both the QA Trainer and Usability Moderator. As the QA Trainer, I teach new hires about QA tools and procedures. All new QA testers go through training with me before joining one of the teams.
As the QA Moderator, I’m involved in planning, executing and reporting our usability tests.* Before the test, I meet with the game product owners to see what we need to test in the game and help write up the test plan.* During the test, I’m in the room to tell our testers what to do and take notes about what they like, dislike and have a hard time doing.* After the test, my team compiles all of the usability issues we’ve found, and I put it all together in a report to send back to the game product owners.
[Emily] How common is it to find women working in your specific area of gaming?
It’s pretty common to find women in both usability and training, though I happen to be the first female QA trainer here at SOE.
[Emily] Do you feel that being a woman helps or hinders you at work, if at all?
If it has any impact, perhaps it is that kids may be more comfortable around me than my male counterparts when we bring them in for usability tests.* Otherwise I don’t feel like it makes much of a difference.
[Emily] What types of games do you enjoy playing?
Recently I’ve been bored with violent shooter games, so now I’m playing mostly casual games.* My genre of the month is seek-and-finds.* In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time with real-time strategies, Sims, MMOs and RPGs. Usually, I’m a PC gamer.
[Emily] What games have you most enjoyed recently?
Like everyone else, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft. I’ve also been playing Clone Wars Adventures, and some seek-and-find games. I’ve also been playing Mario Kart Wii with my dad.* That’s really cool for me, because he lives in Illinois and playing games is a nice way to hang out with him.
[Emily] What gaming work have you done that you are most proud of?
For usability, I’m most proud of the work we did with Clone Wars Adventures. That was my first launch title here. It was really gratifying to see changes in the game based on usability testing. The devs would watch the usability tests, see where kids were having problems, and make changes to the game right away.*
For training, one of my proudest moments was when one of my former trainees said, “Thanks for teaching us how to write bugs the way you did.* I feel like my bugs are way better than other bugs I see.”* That was really nice to hear; I want my testers to be the best.
[Emily] Can you describe any particularly positive or negative experiences working in the industry that you feel are specifically related to your being female?
My gender may have been a consideration for both of the positions I’ve held here—SOE wanted to have some women QA testing Free Realms, and having a female moderator is a slight bonus when we have kids in for usability testing. Of course, my other qualifications were way more important, and I don’t think being a woman affects things very much. I’m just part of the team.
[Emily] Which issues (if any) do you feel are most important to women either working or playing in gaming these days?
I can’t speak for all women; I’m more of a casual gamer right now, and I know lots of women are more hardcore than I am and enjoy different things across the spectrum of game genres.
For me, one important issue is violence in games.* I don’t really think that games are going to turn our kids violent; I just think violence is really uncreative.* It seems like most serious games out there use some kind of violence as the main gameplay mechanic, and I think we can do way more interesting things than that.
[Emily] How do you think that the game industry in general might attract more women, both to work within the industry, and to play more games in general?
We need to change the culture surrounding games.* One thing I’ve learned working with kids is that if a game doesn’t look particularly girly, young girls think it’s a boys’ game.* To get more girl gamers, we need to change that impression.* There are lots of great games out there that girls could enjoy if they realized those games were open to them, too.*
To get more women in the industry, we should make sure women know what their options are.* I’ve been a gamer almost all of my life, with parents supporting that, but I’d never considered a career in gaming until I was out of college.* If someone had said, “Hey Abby, you like games and you’re good with computers; why don’t you make games?” I may have realized that was an option for me.
[Emily] What specific actions (if any) would you encourage women working in gaming to take in order to make the industry more friendly to women?
I’d say that we just need to get out there, be more visible, and let women know this is an awesome place to be.* From my standpoint, the industry itself is already pretty great.
[Emily] Are there any particular blogs, sites, books, twitter feeds, or other sources that you would recommend as particularly relevant or helpful to women in the gaming industry?
I subscribe to the women_dev e-mail list, which is related to the IDGA Women in Games SIG. The e-mail list website is at http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/women_dev.* It’s basically a forum for women in the gaming industry to talk about whatever they want. There have been posts about what kind of mouse to get to reduce wrist stress, how to survive crunch time, and more.
[Emily] Any other thoughts you’d like to share about women, gaming, or what it means to you to be a woman in gaming?
The only other thing I’d really like to mention is my parents.* They’ve both been really supportive of me, both as a gamer and as a professional in the gaming industry.* My mom especially is proud that I’m a woman in a predominantly-male industry, so I just want to give them a shout-out and let them know I appreciate their love.
- Emily “Domino” Taylor
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