Why Testing Video Games All Day for a Living Is Actually Pretty Brutal

Playing video games for a living is not the plum gig it might seem to be. There are the hours (long). And the tedium (it's not known as "quality assurance" in the industry for nothing). "Pay is the hardest thing to advocate for in quality assurance, because they want to make it seem like you're testing video games, so you should be thankful," says Jessica Gonzalez, a former senior QA analyst at Activision Blizzard who is now helping to organize a union drive of 34 game testers at the company's subsidiary Raven Software. Until recently, those testers were making $15 an hour, less than the cost of living in Madison, Wisconsin, where the unit is based.