Video Game testing, the holy grail of all dream jobs for many gamers. Just imagine, getting paid to play games all day, not like those suckers, the game programmers, spending their days slaving over petty problems. Or is it? This insider report from Journalist Karla Starr shows us a glimpse of the dark world that is game testing. A snip from the article:

“People were there because they thought it was going to be this great job,” says Sean Day, referring to his time as a tester, “but you were always threatened with the prospect of losing your job at any minute. There was a guy, we were testing and sitting there, it was 10:30 in the morning, and just out of nowhere, this security guard comes up, and a supervisor comes up after him and says, ‘Grab your things.’ I’ve seen that several times. At all three jobs,” says Day, who counts these inexplicable firings among the more unsavory aspects of his time in QA.

A bunch of people reduced to mere junkies, wasting away in front of screens just for a dose of the dream.

[Seattle Weekly]