what I was going to do. Then one evening my Dad took me to a dinner party. Believe me, I would have rather stayed home playing video games! So at dinner this guy turns to me and says, “Figure out what you really love to do. Then find someone who will pay you to do it.” Well, you already know playing video games is what I loved to do. But for the first time it occurred to me that video games are a “product.” And that somebody has to make them. And I asked myself, “Who are the people who make these games?”
Once Scott saw the potential of putting his special interest to good use, he needed guidance to make it a reality.
I talked to my parents. My mom scoured classified ads and finally spotted one for a video game tester. I didn’t even have a resume at that point, but I wrote up everything I could about what I knew about video games and I got an interview! And that resulted in getting a gig each year from the time school let out until it started up again in the fall. For three years I worked summers at a game publisher doing quality assurance.
After high school, Scott started college. Because English had been his easiest high school subject, that’s what he automatically majored in. But he had no idea what to do with it. And more importantly, he almost lost sight of pursuing his special interest. Fortunately, he again listened to someone else’s input.
I had a college roommate who was a fellow gamer. He was from Austin, Texas, and told me “Hey, there are lots of gamers back there!” He told me Silicon Valley, where we were, was big on software but wasn’t the center of the gaming universe. He said Austin was where I should relocate and find a job. He was moving back there himself, so I agreed. Having him there turned out to be critical for both my personal and professional success. I needed a landing pad and a safe, comfortable place to come home to. And the gaming community in Austin is insular. Everybody knows everybody. That was really helpful. But if I hadn’t paid my dues with the summer jobs, I probably wouldn’t have been competitive.
Until just before this book went to press, Scott worked full time as a video game “debugger.” He said his job was the perfect union of his ASD traits and his special passion. The following quote was from before he was laid off from that job.
I get to work on broken video games all day long. I’m part of a cycle of people who each have their own important part in making the games a successful product people can enjoy. You’ve got talented creative people who envision the game, then the coder people who make the characters work, and then people like me who identify the parts that are broken. We enter “bug reports” into databases.
We play one game eight hours a day repeatedly and keep an eye out for anything that is broken. So maybe we spot that the hero’s sword has turned into a pineapple! We send it back to the developer because obviously they got the code string mixed up and missed it. And they send it back to us, but now the hair is purple instead of brown! So we spot that and send it back again. It’s an endless cyclic iteration—extremely repetitive, detail-oriented, and immensely routine. All traits that work great for me!
Even though Scott loved his job, he and his family have learned things they think are very important to convey to others on the spectrum. His mom emailed after Scott was laid off, with advice for other parents.
We’ve realized that quality assurance (QA) testing of video games will almost always be a minimum-wage contract-only position, since there are so many people who want to do that job. There is no career ladder here. Many testers would like to get into creating games, but with the advent of so many academic training programs for that field now, testers may be at a disadvantage compared to applicants who have those specific degrees. It’s also a field prone to booms and busts and frequent layoffs, even for game developers. For people on the spectrum, that amount of change can be stressful. That said, it’s still a good job for a young adult to gain basic job skills like responsibility, attention to detail, organization, and interaction. We’re encouraging Scott to articulate the skills he learned and apply for positions in QA in different industries, where there may be more stability. I want parents who read this book and might think video game testing or QA is the perfect job for their spectrum kid to also realize the drawbacks.
Scott agreed with his mom and elaborated in a phone call. He’s now in the process of expanding his career search and has his own advice for his peers.
What Mom said is true—it’s an industry driven by booms and busts, and the vast majority of entry-level positions are six-month contracts. One would have to be very lucky to find one that’s not. I got very lucky and knew it, because before this job I had two that were just shortterm contracts. So I naively (in retrospect) thought I’d have more job security in this non-contract position. But after awhile, I noticed there weren’t many opportunities to move up. Then recently, the company said they were shifting to a “more transparent” system of evaluations and promotions. They said if you showed competencies you’d be a strong candidate to move up to the next tier, but the flip side was that if you weren’t ready, you were let go. My friend was laid off the same day I was.
Scott’s also not sure what to make of some feedback he received in his evaluation. He thought he was doing quite well and that something that had been brought to his attention earlier was no longer an issue.
They said I came across as defensive at work. That was strange to me. I thought that whenever somebody came to me with a question about my work, I’d explain why I did whatever it was. I usually thought I had done what they wanted me to do, so I’d remind them what they’d said to me. That behavior was coming across as overly defensive and they thought I couldn’t take criticism. I got that feedback twice, but I thought I’d done enough to rectify it. At the end of one meeting they even said it was okay and that it could be worked out. I thought it had been fixed. I told them to let me know if anything else is a problem and nothing was said, but in the final meeting they told me I wasn’t ready to move up so they were letting me go, and they also said that five months ago we talked to you about your defensiveness and you didn’t improve. It felt unfair to me and I feel a little bitter.
Scott believes working in video game QA was very good in some ways, and says he learned some essential job skills. But he warns others who are interested in the general field of gaming that there are significant limitations, and he shared some excellent advice he said was passed on to him from a friend.
I don’t know if very many people want to be testing games at age 40, but the fact is it’s a dead end for those with ambitions beyond QA. So now I’m between jobs and looking at more generalized software companies. I found out about a small producer of a global application that sounds interesting and I am in communication with them. My advice to others is to network. The usual advice of “bring passion and your best effort” isn’t enough. That’s necessary for any job. You have to have realistic expectations. And you’ll need to bring independent creativity to the table in this field. Creating games is a very common dream but the reality is somewhat different. My friend had this good advice: “If you want a road to lead you somewhere different you have to change too. If you don’t change where you are going, you will continue going where you are headed.” I think that’s good life path advice.
MARINA, 33
Married and mother of a daughter Diagnosed with Asperger’s
Marina’s mother recalls their pediatrician being confused by her daughter. He told her that her child might be in and out of prison or spend her life locked in a mental institution. He bluntly proclaimed that Marina would never be able to take care of herself.
So I feared for her safety and her future. I was afraid she could never be sympathetic to others and that she’d stay dissociated from people, society, and the basic rules we have to follow in order to succeed in life. Everything was black and white for Marina. There were no grays, no in-betweens, and no middle ground. If something didn’t
