So let’s try to clear up any confusion about the difference between UX testing and playtesting and give you an inside peek into what playtesting looks like at All in! Games.

What is UX?

UX stands for User Experience. It refers to all aspects of how end-users interact with a given product. In the case of game development, UX designers focus on how to design a game that will give the best possible experience to the player. 

UX is quite heavily based in cognitive psychology so an understanding of the principles of psychology is very helpful in creating good games. UX researchers use that knowledge to share insights and help game designers try to tap into the player’s psyche and predict how the player will react to a certain scenario, command, or piece of information as well as modify game design around those behaviors to make the game as accessible and fun to play as possible.

Playtesting and QA testing—what’s the difference?

Playtesting and QA testing are similar enough to often get confused. They are, however, quite different roles. In a nutshell, playtesting is more about observing player reactions to a game, while QA testing is a more technical walk through the game to see how the software behaves when used.

Playtesting focuses more on the enjoyability of the game and if the player’s reactions to the game are the same ones that the game developer had envisioned the user having. Playtesters play the game and share how convenient it is for them to interact with the game and its elements, such as the user interface, gaming controls, tutorials and quest guides, as well as the overall enjoyability and clarity of the game.

Playtesters are rarely actual employees of a company. Instead, gamers are pulled out of the game’s target audience based on various sets of criteria. They can be asked to play or they can volunteer themselves and register in a playtesting candidate pool. 

QA testing is more detailed, in-depth, and technical. It’s focused more on finding bugs, testing gameplay functionality and game balance. When QA game testers find something wrong with the game, they write detailed technical reports that they then send back to the developer for fixing. QA testers are often employees of a company and work closely with game developers.

Interested in becoming a QA tester? Check out this article to learn more: Is the Video Game Testing the Job for You?

Playtesting at All in! Games

If you want to become a playtester or have just joined our playtester ranks, there are a few things you should know about the role.

There are two main types of playtesting at All in! Games:

• A regular 1-on-1 playtest session: Here you’ll get an inside look at a game/product and be able to play and talk through your experience directly with one of our UX researchers. They’ll ask you some research questions about your experience, preferences, and other areas of interest connected with the tested game/product in order to better understand how you interacted and perceived the game. These sessions typically last between 30 and 60 minutes, and may happen online or in person depending on your location.

• An extended playtest session: This session is similar to a regular playtest session, but with more of a focus on collecting feedback and learning how you interact with a game/product over an extended period of time. These sessions can take from a week to multiple weeks, and typically take place online.

But playtesting isn’t only about playing through a game and there are other parts of the playtesting process you might take part in.

There are different types of things that playtesters might be asked to take part in (such as playtester surveys and interviews), depending on what kind of data UX researchers need to collect. One example is a FGI (focus group interview) where a group of players are gathered together to talk about specific game-related topics, surveys, etc.

Another is called an IDI or in-depth interview and it doesn’t even have to be connected with the tested game and can include a really wide variety of questions. A UX researcher might want to talk with you about why you like playing games, which genres you prefer, how you interact with storefronts, how you like to play a game, what you look for when searching for new titles, and how you interact with the gaming community.

The great thing to keep in mind is that there are no right or wrong answers! This is all about gathering up feedback about your personal experience and reaction to a game. Plus, you get to play games and who doesn’t like that?

If you want to get into playtesting for All in! Games, then head on over to our site where you can register, learn about some cool benefits, and get more details:

We hope to see you playtesting for us soon!

Do you have any more questions about the difference between UX and playtesting? Do you have a fun playtesting experience you’d like to share? Let us know on our Discord!

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The post Everything You Need to Know About Playtesting appeared first on Allingames.

But when it comes to QA video game jobs, there’s more to them than meets the eye. To shed more light on what it’s really like to be a game tester we talked to our QA Coordinator Marcin, some of the most common questions asked about being a gaming QA tester. 

What do QA video game testers do?

To put it simply, QA testers in game dev look for issues a player might encounter when playing a game. They report the issue and the developers, now aware of it, can fix it. After verifying the fix, the tester will then close the issue or reopen it if necessary. It sounds simple, but the job involves playing the same game over and over again, and trying out lots of different strategies to reveal bugs until a game is ready for release. Testing also involves the verification of technical requirements, performance, and the overall usability of a game, as well as sometimes even the game’s security.

Now let’s delve into coordinator Marcin’s and QA tester Bartek’s insider knowhow.

~

Bartek: My experience in game dev started at a vocational school, when I attended a local IT event that had been organized by the school. I met the CEO of Teyon there, a video game publisher, and I asked them for an internship—they gave me one! That internship was my first job as a QA game tester. After that, I moved on to a few other companies and even created games in Unity for the Multimedia Center in Wawel Castle (Poland) as well, so I’ve built quite a portfolio.

I’m also currently a student majoring in IT and econometrics, with a specialization in computer game design, at the College of Economics and Computer Science in Kraków.

What do QA video game testers do?

Bartek: For my job at All in! Games, I test video games for PC and consoles. We test their functionality, so FQAs (functional quality assurance) and CQAs (compliance testing, meaning verifying if a game is compliant with the technical requirements of platform holders before it lands on a console)

Is a video game QA tester a real job?

Bartek: Yes, it’s definitely a real job. 😉 Don’t get discouraged by people telling you otherwise!

What skills do I need to become a video game QA Tester?

Marcin: Ideally you need to have an interest in games, a solid and communicative level of English, a knowledge of PCs and consoles, and the ability to think in a logical way. Knowing how to use the Microsoft Office suite is a plus, but it’s not always required and can be learned later.

Am I good enough to be a QA video game tester?

Bartek: If you want to check if you’d be good at this job, I have a way for you to test the job out. Head to a shop with books, movies, video games, etc. When you’re in the section that has what interests you, close your eyes and pick up the first thing you touch. Don’t look at it. Buy it and check it only after you’ve returned home. 

If you’re able to watch, read, or play it 8 hours a day, everyday then… you’re a robot. Everyone gets tired after a while. If you’re not able to do that, that’s okay, you’re just a human. Both results mean you can be a good tester. 

Just trying out this simulation means you’re willing to test yourself and shows that you’re determined. Anyone can be a good QA video game tester as long as they’re patient and thorough. 

How should I  prepare for a QA tester interview?

Marcin: A QA tester interview does not differ much from any other interviews, other than the fact that test tasks may be more focused on your ability to think logically, spot details, and be patient. Keep in mind the ‘ideal skills’ that were mentioned in the job posting and you will know what to expect.

What’s a typical day as a QA tester like?

Marcin: That really depends a lot on the kind of game you’re testing and what the profile of the company is (publisher, developer, outsourcing company, etc.). Generally, you can expect to test a game according to documents you get, search for issues, and investigate patterns of improper behavior, followed by documenting what you find as bug reports and sending them to the devs. You can also expect to give feedback on the games you’re testing, plan the amount of testing needed for a particular game, and to retest old issues after they are fixed by the devs.

What’s a potential future career of a QA video game tester?

Bartek: There are many possibilities depending on your area of expertise. Some testers focus more on manual testing, usually exploratory based, which works great in complex games where a creative approach is key.

Game testers can also focus on compliance tests for platform holders, which require more technical knowledge. QA testers who want to learn a bit of programming can move to automation testing, which usually works best for websites and smaller applications in general, and can also open a path to being a developer.

Many QA testers take on the role of a game designer or developer almost right away while others move on to management roles in either test coordination or project coordination as a whole.

A job as a QA tester is also a great stepping stone into the video game industry in general. It’s an entry-level position that gives you opportunities to advance in many directions later on and experience some of the arcane knowledge of how game dev works first-hand.

What are some good and bad things about being a video game QA tester?

Marcin: The pros of this job are that it’s a great way to enter the game industry and learn a lot about the process of how the games are developed. This allows you to switch to other positions later, more related with programming, game design, or management. Also, this kind of job teaches you to think in a structured and logical way as well as how to be patient. 

Other than that, testing can be really creative when it comes to finding potential exploits or complex problems. Still, it is worth mentioning that at times the job can get pretty repetitive. 

In addition, the pressure of being the “quality gate” of the company can be discouraging, as there will always be situations when a crucial bug is not found, which results in problems and user complaints. But that just happens, so you need to remember that no one and nothing is perfect, and that’s why testing will always exist.

What if I get bored with video games?

Bartek: Do you know how many QA video game testers say “I don’t play video games in my free time anymore”? Many of them no longer find video games enjoyable. Let’s be honest, after playing video games for 8 hours at work you just don’t feel like doing it at home. There’s a limit to how many hours you can spend in front of a screen. It’s not that you hate video games, but playing them isn’t as fun as it used to be. What can you do to change that?

You need to differentiate between testing and playing. When you’re testing a game, you’re responsible for a crowd of other people. You go through the game’s features methodically and often against the rules when you do exploratory testing. When you’re actually playing, it’s for your own pleasure and usually according to the game’s rules. The difference may seem huge, but it’s often hard to tell the two approaches apart in practice. 

Protip: Play with your friends. 

Even the worst movie is great when you watch it with friends and it’s the same with video games. I played multiplayer games with my friends after work and it was more than just playing a video game, it was also spending time with other people. Remotely, but still. 

If you want to play solo, there are a few things you can do to help yourself differentiate work and fun. Try to do something else for a change, like watching a movie, before you go back to playing. Another tip that works for me is playing a game from my childhood, Kao the Kangaroo 2. In my mind, this game is perfect and enjoyable, so I don’t need to find bugs in it. I play it a bit to ‘reset’ my brain to ‘fun mode’ and then change to a different game. 

There are as many ways to enjoy playing games as there are testers. 

~

Are you interested in a career as a QA tester for games? Or are you a newbie QA video game tester looking for advice? Check out another article of ours here to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the job based on our QA testers’ experiences. You’ll find tons of useful QA tips you can use at work and in your downtime.

Are you interested in an inside look at other game dev jobs? Check out our articles:

• What’s it like to be an Influencer Marketing Specialist?
• How to become a Release Manager in game development?
• How to become a Community Manager in game development?

Are you considering a career in game development? Check out our current job openings at All in! Games here:

If not, no worries. Follow All in! Games and stay up to date with our latest recruitment updates—we’re always growing!

Did something surprise you about QA video game testers? Do you want to share your own experience with us? Join the discussion on our Discord.

The post How to Test Games—Is Video Game Testing the Job for You? appeared first on Allingames.

Are you interested in an inside look at an Influencer Marketing Specialist, Community Manager, or Release Manager’s job? Check out our other articles:

• What’s it like to be an Influencer Marketing Specialist?
• How to become a Community Manager in game development?
• How to become a Release Manager in game development?

Are you considering a career in game development? Check out our current job openings at All in! Games here:

Without further ado, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of Bartek’s insider knowhow for newbie QA video game testers looking for advice.

My experience in game dev started at a vocational school, when I attended a local IT event that had been organized by the school. I met the CEO of Teyon there, a video game publisher, and I asked them for an internship—they gave me one! That internship was my first job as a QA game tester. After that, I moved on to a few other companies and even created games in Unity for the Multimedia Center in Wawel Castle (Poland) as well, so I’ve built quite a portfolio.

I’m also currently a student majoring in IT and econometrics, with a specialization in computer game design, at the College of Economics and Computer Science in Kraków.

For my job at All in! Games, I test video games for PC and consoles. We test their functionality, so FQAs (functional quality assurance) and CQAs (compliance testing, meaning verifying if a game is compliant with the technical requirements of platform holders before it lands on a console). 

10 Tips for QA video game testers

How to become a great QA game tester? Here are 10 rules of testing I follow and recommend.

1) Create a good repro

A repro, or reproduction, is recreating the steps that cause a certain issue. For example, the second level doesn’t start after finishing the first one. So we need to launch the build that has this issue, finish the first level, and make a note that the second level doesn’t start—those are our repro steps for this issue. Sometimes issues are so complicated they take more than ten steps to recreate. It’s important to find the direct cause of the issue, which  may not be as obvious as we think; that’s why a thorough investigation is crucial.

At All in! Games, there are many QA video game testers and we change the games we test quite often. When you work for a developer, you test one game or just a few. When working for a video game publisher, you get information about what you’re going to test the morning of. From my experience, I know that playing one game over and over is exhausting, every day it’s the same thing, but with a video game publisher, the projects change. This means that other testers, not to mention the developers, may not be able to reproduce some of the bugs you did. A clear repro is necessary and will help anyone else quickly replicate and find the problem.

2) If something worked before, that doesn’t mean it will work now

QA testers often succumb to confirmation bias. This happens when you assume that something worked in the previous build, so it must work now, no need to double check. That’s a mistake. Major mechanics like to clash with other major mechanics. If a new build introduces something new, enables a new mechanic, it often creates new bugs for the earlier mechanic we had already checked, so regression testing is needed to see how new changes affect the previous elements of the game. When you get a new build, I recommend testing all the most recent changes and the areas they affect from a previous build. 

3) If you don’t know something, just ask

When you’re a new employee, you’re not familiar with how a project works yet. New things you notice in games are often either a bug or a feature. If you’re not sure which is which, don’t hesitate to ask other employees or the developers—they have knowledge to share. 

If something isn’t included in a game’s documentation, you have to ask about it. Don’t be afraid of asking questions—if you don’t ask, it’s a dead end and you’re pretty much a Schrödinger’s tester. 

4) Record everything and look for patterns

I’ve come up with this rule after some not-so-good reproductions. Recording is useful because you’ll already have both a video of the bugs and all the repro steps for other people to see. After watching the recording, you can reproduce the steps, look for patterns, check alternative scenarios, and congratulations! You found a bug! Okay, maybe it’s not a reason to celebrate, but it’s still better than having the players find it.

You don’t have free space on your drive? Make space—it’s very much worth it. It’s best to record everything and check for a bug a few times—and I recommend checking several times, since some bugs aren’t 100% reproducible for various reasons. That’s why it’s important to investigate and narrow the possibilities down to the actual reason why a bug occured. Recording will help you with that process. In addition, recording may allow you to check what you can skip—maybe there’s no need to reach the same checkpoint 10 times. It’s also worth mentioning that recordings and screenshots are useful to include in bug reports, so you should be collecting them along the way anyway.

5) Test with different peripheral devices

Let me share a little story with you: Once there was a game that didn’t work with a gamepad. I started reporting it as a bug, but, just in case, I asked my coworkers to try it out on their devices. They said it worked. It turned out my gamepad was broken.

You should test programs with different devices, on different screens, in different display resolutions and other settings, because sometimes a bug may appear only in very specific conditions. It’s better to find the bug yourself than have the developers or players find it instead.

6) Be patient

Many testers quit due to lack of patience. The job is repetitive, you play the same game 6 times a day, maybe 50 times in a month, and you need to be focused the whole time. Let’s say you need to check if a certain level works, but you don’t have the developer’s console, so there’s no skipping parts of the game to get to a certain level—you need to play them all. It can sometimes be a monotonous routine, so you need to be patient and cool-headed. 

7) Report a bug as soon as you confirm it

You’ve found a critical bug, but you’re leaving work in 5 minutes and you’re super tired. In addition, it’s Friday and you’re already thinking about your plans for the weekend. “Whatever,” you think to yourself, “the developers will surely fix it. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. Why not take care of it on Monday instead?”. Wrong!

Always report bugs as soon as you confirm them. Find the cause and put it in the database, even if it takes you some time. You may forget about something later, even if it’s recorded and on your drive, out of sight and out of mind. These forgotten bugs often reappear after the release, so don’t wait.

8) Read a game’s documentation!

Some projects don’t have any documentation and don’t require it. But if there’s documentation available, read it!

Let’s say we have a game you can play for many hours and each milestone build adds new locations or levels to it. There can be new NPCs, a new map, new quests—if it’s all listed in the documentation, you can keep track of it much easier and make sure it all works as expected. You’ll also go into the game knowing what to expect 

If developers don’t see something as a mistake, you can always refer to documentation and show them the very line the issue is mentioned on. It should solve the issue by serving as a reminder or it may turn out that the files need updating, which will help everyone in the future.

In addition, documentation is very helpful when it comes to testing the requirements of platform holders. If a platform holder points out a discrepancy between a game’s documentation and the way the game behaves, you’ll have to test it all again, with a new build. 

9) Unconventional thinking is your best friend

When you play a game for the first time, you’ll play it in your own particular way. But that’s your way. Let’s say a million people buy the game—all of them will have their own ways to play and you need to test those too. A great tester should be able to leave their preferences behind and get into the minds of many players.

For example, if a game is a RTS, there will be many ways to develop your city. You can focus on the economy, you can have one town or more, but someone else may focus on the military—you need to check all potential strategies. Before you can consider your job done, you need to verify as many factors and combinations as is technically possible, and use unusual approaches to play a game, checking different extremes (boundary values).

10) Don’t forget about all the players out there

The idea of testing is to assess the quality of a game and report any issues so that developers can address them—you must check everything. Testers exist so that players can have the best possible experience of playing a game, so that they can play the game the developers wanted them to play. You experience the bugs so that they don’t have to. To an extent, part of the responsibility of players enjoying a game is on your shoulders as a tester. If you approve an unfinished game or don’t do everything you can to find bugs, you’re not being fair towards the players, and you’re a player yourself. 

Sometimes an unfinished game is released. Does it mean you failed as a tester? Not really.  This happens when somebody purposely lets a game pass testing. QA game testers know about all the bugs but, in spite of that, a final decision may be made to not address some of the less important issues. Management, the producer, or the main developer may decide that a game is good enough for release for one reason or another. It’s something that needs to be clearly communicated and agreed upon with other parties, but if you know you did everything you could to improve a game, then at least you can rest easy that you did your part for the players.

These tips have really helped me in my career and I hope you’ll find them useful as well.

See if your dream position is available at All in! Games:

If not, no worries. Follow All in! Games and stay up to date with our latest recruitment updates—we’re always growing!

Did something surprise you about the work of aQA video game tester? Do you want to share your own experience with us? Join the discussion on our Discord.

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The post How to Test Games—10 Tips for QA Video Game Testers appeared first on Allingames.

Release management is a job in the video game industry which mainly requires soft skills and a talent for planning. And no, you don’t need to know programming for this one or even have a specialized degree! Sounds incredibly easy to start, doesn’t it?

We  spoke with our Release Coordinator, Aneta Zagórska, to get an inside and in-depth view of what it’s like to be a Release Manager in game dev and share it with you. Who knows, maybe this is the job you’ve been looking for!

Are you interested in a career in game development? Check out our current job openings at All in! Games here:

If you’re interested in other positions in the game dev industry, check out this interview with our Influencer Marketing Specialist:

• What’s it like to be an Influencer Marketing Specialist?

How to become a Release Manager?

The easiest way to start your journey to becoming a Release Manager is to participate in an internship. Here at All in! Games we often have at least one, if not more, interns beginning their careers in game dev with us. As a Release Intern you don’t need to have any prior experience in the position or in the video game industry. If you already have experience in the industry, you can begin as a Junior Release Manager or transfer from a similar position, such as a job as a QA Tester or as a Producer. In this case you would probably already be familiar with the publishing process which would give you a jump start, although a Junior Release Manager still has a lot to master.

If you already have a job in the industry and are looking to change positions, QA is a good area to switch from. We value attention to detail, planning, and organization, which are often also the qualities of a good QA tester. You could also easily become a Release Manager if you’ve previously worked as a Producer. The jobs are similar, but instead of the communication being between a Producer and developers, it’s between a Release Manager and a platform holder.

It’s important to remember however, that release management isn’t creative, there’s no coming up with new things. We work within a strict framework. If you like improvising, the job isn’t for you—there’s a lot of planning, planning, and more planning.

What are a Release Manager’s skills?

You don’t need to have a specialized degree, it’s enough to be a video game enthusiast. We’re not involved in the creation of any assets or content ourselves. Our role is to coordinate and manage a smooth flow of such materials.

In this position, it’s soft skills that are crucial: communicativeness, responsibility, teamwork, being well organized, and attention to detail. So having experience in any position that helps you develop and hone those skills is welcome, whether it’s in the video game industry or outside of it.

In addition, it’s essential to be able to speak English fluently. A Release Manager contacts platform holders every day and uses developer portals that are in English—these portals are necessary to register a game, to allow the platform holder to review and certify a game, and to receive support from the platform holder. In addition, the work environment at All in! Games and at many publishers is international; the developers we work with come from around the world, so we communicate in English.

Japanese isn’t obligatory, the company can hire an external translator, but the perfect scenario is to have someone who speaks the language in the team. Such a person should read and write in Japanese fluently, especially messages, so that needs at least an intermediate language level. Despite that, you don’t need to talk in Japanese as we solve all the issues in writing, there are no face-to-face calls or meetings with Japanese people.

Although you do get bonus points if you can read and write in Japanese. Why? While platform holders usually provide documentation in English, working with organizations and companies in Japan is sometimes the exception.

What does a Release Manager do every day?

It’s hard to describe a typical day because we mainly work on the tasks which are necessary at a given time. What we work on depends on the needs of other departments or game projects. We help other departments by gathering information and sharing it, we make publishing plans and estimate their risk, set deadlines, and we carry out certification processes.

The most difficult and most important part of our job is putting all the puzzle pieces of our work together. Our release department takes care of the whole All in! Games’ portfolio, not just specific titles—so there are already-published titles, those coming soon, and those which are still in early development. Each game needs a different degree of attention from us.

It’s important to have set priorities in order, properly estimate task time, and share information about a game’s status. We need to look at our portfolio as a whole and organize our job accordingly. To make our job more efficient, we’re always working on internal documentation and templates as well.

We grow attached to our games, even though we usually only take care of them for a short period of time. If we sign a game that is already almost ready, we may spend as little as three to four months with it. Sometimes however, we work with a game for a much longer time, depending on how much work is required from us. For example, we spent a lot of time on Paradise Lost as we signed it pretty early in its development and because it touches on some controversial topics such as war, Nazis, and trauma. The game needed extra attention to make sure that it would be granted the proper age rating as well as to ensure it would be allowed in different countries. In the case of Paradise Lost, special permissions were required from the USK, the German Age Rating Board, which then helped pave the way to get the game approved in other countries. It was also necessary to make some changes to the text in order for the game to be permitted in Japan. Our work sometimes really depends on the game itself!

Besides growing attached to our games, we also grow attached to each other as a team, so working in the office is enjoyable for us. All in! Games’ office is great and there’s even a slide! We often eat lunch together and sometimes we organize baking contests to brighten our day, so being in the office is worthwhile for this extra activity too.

How do you prepare a game for release?

Preparing a game for release consists of the same elements for each platform. We need to register the game with the platform holder, fill in the technical documentation, carry out the certification, and prepare a digital store website. The process can start as soon as we know the final title of the game, often many months before the release.

First, we make a work plan together with other departments and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Even though the release process is always the same, each project is different, so we have to be able to accomodate our plans to changing conditions. We also publish other things besides full titles such as demos, DLCs, soundtracks, new trailers, etc. All of these additional assets need to be planned along with the full title schedule. The most intense time is 3 months before a game’s launch, especially for a sim launch (a simultaneous launch on multiple platforms) which is more challenging—we need to make a lot of different elements work together.

What does a release day look like?

It’s not much different from a usual day. It’s more stressful, but in general the game is ready to be published two or three weeks before it’s actual release. There could still be marketing problems or issues with review codes for the press though, so you never know.

If something isn’t done at this point, there’s no way to change it from our side. Two weeks before a release is simply not enough time to apply any significant changes. Some small modifications can generally still be made though. The actual release day is about waiting, seeing if all the data is correct and if all the products are visible. If yes, we celebrate. If not, we work on fixing the issue.

The time it takes to fix a problem differs; it depends on the importance of the issue. While Platform Holders don’t release games with critical issues, even seemingly small issues and bugs can be a big problem for us.

Even after publishing, a game will still need our attention. There could be new builds, changes to the game’s page, discounts, and DLCs. For example, releasing the Tools Up! DLCs in a Season Pass turned out to be a complicated process—it was a simultaneous launch and we had to take into account different regions too. There were around 40 products that needed certification in total and the bundles were especially hard.

Do you celebrate a game’s launch?

Of course! We usually stay in the office after a release we worked hard on—that is, if there’s no problem in the digital stores. We make a toast, sometimes we invite people from other departments that also worked on the game, and we reminisce about the release process. Sometimes the project is simply too small for a celebration though; it depends on how we feel.

What platforms do you work with? What does the cooperation look like?

We currently work with Valve (Steam), Sony (PlayStation), Microsoft (Xbox), and Nintendo (Nintendo Switch). In addition, there are smaller platform holders, like GOG, the Epic Games Store, and Xsolla.

Cooperation with them is all about using their developer portals. There we can access documentation and support and information for us and for other departments. Each portal is a bit different. While console developer portals are similar, those for PCs are not. Each platform holder also has different forms of contact, sometimes it’s email, sometimes it’s support tickets or message boards. We have to be able to use all the developer portals efficiently and maintain good relationships with each platform holder.

Which platform holder is the most challenging to work with?

It’s hard to say which one is the most challenging, but Steam stands out in this context. It’s actually the least demanding platform. The requirements for developers and publishers are less complicated than on consoles when it comes to the quality of games and later changes to a game’s page. For example, Steam only certifies your game once and then you can modify the description and screenshots as you wish, while on consoles every small change, even fixing a typo, requires a long approval process. Of course, it’s a different story if you break Steam’s rules.

In addition, console platform holders have long, detailed guidelines about a game’s requirements to be published and we need to know them well. An example of a guideline can be something like “a loading screen can’t be up for longer than 20 seconds”. In comparison, Steam has rather easy requirements—the game must work and marketing assets must be true to the game’s content.

What are the possibilities for growth or promotion as a Release Manager?

Here at All in! Games you can be promoted according to your experience, so you can go from an intern to a junior, specialist, senior, and expert. Sometimes you can also become a team leader if there isn’t one. On rare occasions there’s a horizontal promotion to other teams, but the truth is that there’s a lot to learn in the release team and the process takes time, so obviously we want to keep our teammates.

Do you get many ASAP tasks?

In my opinion there are many tasks which must be done as soon as possible, but it’s more of a “within the next few days” thing than “yesterday”. Sometimes a task may seem to be ASAP to other departments, but not to us—we have an overview of the whole portfolio, so from our perspective another game may need ASAP attention more.

We plan our priorities by the day or week, we know what we should work on, so if there are some external things needed ASAP it may mean that something was wrong with our plan or there wasn’t enough information about the task. In our case, “I need this yesterday” tasks shouldn’t happen and as a team, we have an impact on that as well. If they do happen though, of course, we get them done.

Do you have time to play video games?

Yes, we do! We need to get age ratings approved so we have to know the games in our portfolio well enough to list the elements which influence them—in theory, that means playing and finishing the whole game. In addition, releasing games can be easier if you know some details about the game like its length or if it has a multiplayer option.

We also play games outside of the All in! Games’ portfolio on Fridays, for an hour or two, to improve our industry knowledge. We want to know what other games are on the market, what their quality is, and if they are similar to the games we’re releasing. In addition, developers send us demo versions of their games when they’re looking for a publisher, so we often play those to evaluate a potential game’s impact on our portfolio. It’s not a big part of the job, and we don’t need to know the games completely, but we do our best—and it’s fun!

What values are important to you in your daily work?

Improving communication between departments is important to us; we want to know we did our part well. Clear, transparent, and professional communication is essential. We also have respect for the projects we work on—for us the project may be a short task, but we know that other people, such as developers, Producers, and Marketing Managers, have worked on the game for a long time, sometimes for years, so we do our best to have that all pay off with a successful release.

Are there some Release Manager benefits?

Benefits usually depend on the company you work for. All in! Games subsidizes English courses and the purchase of glasses. They also offer private medical care, a friend referral system, and access to the MultiSport program. An added benefit we have is flexible working hours, so you can choose when to start working as long as you’re present during core hours.

What are the best things about being a Release Manager?

One of the pluses of our job is that we can easily see the results of our work. For some other departments, it’s not so simple. A producer may only feel gratification after a few years, while in our case, if a game is published, we’re happy, and sometimes that happens every few weeks.

It’s also nice to be able to oversee the work on our portfolio from a big picture perspective. We often work on many projects simultaneously, basically handling our whole portfolio as opposed to other departments where one person focuses on just one or two games. It’s really cool to be able to look at our efforts as a whole.

Something else that’s interesting is that sometimes we influence company rules a bit as we have access to the requirements of platform holders. It’s a great responsibility, but also satisfying when we manage to make something easier for everyone.

See if your dream position is available at All in! Games:

If not, no worries. Follow All in! Games and stay up to date with our latest recruitment updates—we’re always growing!

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What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing that involves partnering with influencers—people who have influence in their field, enough to encourage potential customers to get a product or service and develop brand awareness. The partnership can take the form of an influencer reviewing a product, featuring the product in their content, or some other kind of social proof.

What is influencer marketing like in game dev?

How does this work in the video game industry? What is an Influencer Marketing Specialist’s job like? What challenges do they face? What is the gaming industry like? Learn the answers to these questions and more in the following AdsTalk interview with All in! Games’ very own Junior Influencer Specialist, Kamil Jastrzębski.

What does All in! Games do?

All in! Games is a video game publishing company that releases games for PC and consoles. We also develop our own titles. The company is based in Kraków and we’ve been in the market since 2018. All in! Games’ portfolio features nearly 20 games in different genres. Our latest title, Paradise Lost, tells the story of 12-year-old Szymon, who enters a post-war bunker. The plot is unusual, as it presents an alternate history in which the Second World War didn’t end in 1945, but lasted for many more years. On his journey, Szymon discovers many secrets of the past hidden and forgotten in the bunker.

What channels do you use to promote video games in Poland and globally?

There are mainly three platforms used for influencer marketing in the game dev industry: YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook Gaming. Each platform differs in presented content and, of course, in the database of creators. One of the most engaging types of content offered by influencers is live streams. They allow viewers to interact with the streamer in real time—it’s a trend that’s gaining popularity with each month. According to a Streamlabs report, the total amount of time that viewers on different platforms (such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, or Mixer) watched content was 15.63 billion hours in 2019. In 2020, that number grew to 27.89 billion. New influencers gained their publicity on those platforms last year. Many of them had been streaming for a long time, but were never so popular.

What is cooperation with influencers like?

We specify a list of deliverables, payment, the publication date, etc. Every detail is important, so we try to make our goals clear before we share them with influencers. Then the influencers begin their work—they record and publish a video, play the game live (e.g. on Twitch) or mention a discount on the game, if there is one, on their social media channels. Everything depends on the scope of deliverables. Of course, we follow and measure the effectiveness of cooperation on an ongoing basis.

We stay in constant touch with the influencers and we nurture our relationships with them, even if we aren’t collaborating on anything at the moment. New games are always appearing in All in! Games’ portfolio but all of them may not match a certain influencer and their audience, but because of that, you never know when a game that does fit the influencer will come along. A long-term relationship is worth maintaining—as a result, we know each other so we know how the influencer works, what we can expect, etc. It makes the job much easier.

You’re an influencer specialist—what are your responsibilities?

In short: I search for influencers, contact them, set the details of our cooperation, coordinate their work during a campaign, measure the effectiveness of their activities, and maintain a relationship with them.

With whom have you cooperated so far?

It’d be hard to name them all! For example, let’s look at Twitch: @Lirik, who has 2.7 million followers and on average 18K viewers per usual live stream. Another popular influencer we cooperated with is @CohhCarrnage. He has 1.5 million followers on his channels and when he streamed our recently released game, Paradise Lost, in the peak viewing time over 16K people were watching the video. Apart from big channels, we also cooperate with hundreds of other influencers, from nano to mid-tier to mega-influencers like the ones I mentioned before.

How long does a stream last?

A typical influencer’s stream is different for each platform. On YouTube streams are shorter; the creator plays part or all of a game. On Twitch streaming culture is so prevalent that streamers have set schedules and their audience knows when to expect specific streams. As for influencer marketing, the length depends on deliverables—it can be a 20-minute-long YouTube video and not necessarily a stream, or a stream that is one hour long or four hours long, if that’s what’s agreed upon with the influencer. Of course, you need to remember that the longer an influencer presents your game, the higher the cost of the cooperation, as you’ll potentially reach a bigger audience.

Is it advisable for an influencer to play a game to the end?

It depends on the game. If we take a six-hour-long, story rich game, we don’t want the streamer to show the whole story. We only want to present part of it to interest the viewers and encourage them to finish the game themselves. We advertise Metamorphosis, one of our titles, this way.

Arboria, another of our games, is a different story. In-game content is procedurally generated and each level is different, so we can expect something new every time we start the game. The same goes for our game, Fort Triumph. If the influencer plays the game for a whole session, let’s say for six hours, we know for sure that neither the influencer or their viewers will see the same level twice. Each playthrough is unique, which has an enormous, positive impact on replayability and, of course, the enjoyment of playing the game.

Do game dev influencers differ from those in other industries?

A game dev influencer is most often a gamer or a person connected to the video game industry. People who work in marketing know the great potential that lies in cooperating with influencers and in influencer marketing itself. In game dev, due to the trend, it’s worth looking for experts—this industry is not an exception. In our case, they can be either popular players or people connected to video games. A popular streamer who invites the audience to watch a stream every evening, a YouTuber who regularly records reviews about the latest video games, or an e-sport team famous for their victory in an important tournament. Whoever is chosen should love video games, have a large audience, and be passionate about what they do.

On what basis do you select influencers to work with?

In the beginning, it’s research. We usually reach influencers via suitable agencies, which gather many talents under their wing, or we contact the influencers directly. When choosing an influencer for a game, we must match their profile with the game. All in! Games is a video game publishing company—we have many titles and our portfolio is diverse when it comes to genres. If I’m preparing a campaign focusing on a family-friendly game, aimed at a younger audience, I will look for channels which record materials with similar content— friendly and easy to approach.

You should also take your budget, usually fixed, into account. Depending on the channel’s size, each influencer has a different price. It can start at five dollars and can go up to more than ten thousand dollars or even a few hundred thousand dollars. There are many factors. For example, there’s the influencer’s engagement rate, which is determined by the audience’s activity, their average number of viewers, the frequency of new videos on their channel, the length of their content, etc. They all combine to create a final assessment of the potential of working with any given influencer.

What does the price depend on?

The price usually depends on the number of viewers they can potentially reach. The number of YouTube subscribers is often looked at to estimate a price, but it’s a bad practice. A person who has half a million subscribers and another influencer with the same number of followers can request different prices for collaborating. The price is also influenced by other factors, such as their nationality, the language they use to communicate with viewers, and obviously, their real number of viewers. It’s better to make a habit of checking average video views rather than be motivated by the number of subscribers.

How do you measure the effectiveness of collaborating with an influencer?

Any campaign that involves influencer collaboration must utilize tracking links. These are links to our games that are unique to a specific influencer, made for them to use on their channels. The links appear in the influencer’s chat window, stream title, and video description. Thanks to access to  data such as visits to a game’s store page, we can measure important KPIs for the campaign, e.g. CTR which translates into sales. 

We check if traffic on a game’s store page increased after an influencer stream using Google Analytics as well as data which are characteristic of the game dev industry such as wishlist numbers. Some stores offer the “Follow” option, so that a user is updated about discounts or other changes. There are even platforms created exclusively for the collaboration of game devs and influencers that generate ready reports. 

Measuring the effectiveness of influencer cooperation is very important, just like in any other marketing campaign.

How do you use the credibility of creators for the benefit of the brand?

The credibility of influencers is very important in the game dev industry. Influencer marketing is about subtle product placement. Part of choosing a credible influencer is making sure that they’re the right fit for a particular game. If we were to choose a person known for playing RPGs to promote a family-friendly co-op, their audience likely wouldn’t be as interested in the content. Their promotion of the game would also seem very obvious rather than a natural recommendation and could take away from their credibility as an influencer. We should also remember that cooperating with credible, famous influencers supports our own brand awareness as well. Authenticity is essential, that’s why the basis for choosing the right influencer is solid research.

This article originally appeared on AdsTalk.pl (in Polish). You can find it here.

Are you interested in a career in game development? Check out current job openings at All in! Games here:

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Being a QA (Quality Assurance) Tester is a dream job for many. In All in! Games’ home country of Poland, where many video game developers and publishers are based, this dream is within reach. The main responsibility of a person in this position is to seek out all of the mistakes that could be present in an unfinished game (so called ‘bugs’ or ‘glitches’) and create situations that developers didn’t predict when making the game.

“Modern video games are very complex and the number of possible interactions our hero can have with in-game objects, other characters, and the entire environment is simply limitless. With so many variables, it’s possible that the developers may have missed something. It’s the QA Testers who are responsible for finding such issues,” explains Paulina Mech, Head of HR & Office Administration at All in! Games.

It’s also important to be able to know how a gamer would play a game and what could cause them problems. To achieve that, someone needs to spend hours playing a given game, level by level, controlling every possible character and using different graphic settings on as many devices as possible. Thanks to testers’ work, publishers can be assured that the product that appears on the market is ready for players and without flaws.

Work and passion

“If someone spends hours of their free time in front of a computer or console, has high agility skills, enjoys playing games, and knows the video game industry really well, then surely QA testing would be the perfect job for them,” adds Paulina Mech. “With this job, there are no ‘bad Mondays’, we combine pleasure with business, and spend time with people who share our interests. It’s hard to think of a more attractive job.”

Of course, passion alone is not enough in this position. A tester should be thorough, a little creative, have analytical and communication skills, as well as be able to handle stress, since in the industry there are often deadlines looming over us. As most games are published in English, usually a strong command of the language is required. Most often, professional training is not necessary.

All aspects of the job

Most of a QA Tester’s usual day is spent actually playing games, although they also have other responsibilities. After testing is finished, a Tester must create a detailed report with documentation of the bugs they encountered with a thorough description of how to reproduce them and any feedback for the developers.

“The position definitely is one of the fascinating ones, although before applying you should consider a few issues. A tester rarely tests a game of their choice. It’s possible that a shooter enthusiast will spend a few weeks playing a family game. You must also remember that analyzing one given aspect of a game may seem monotonous,” says Paulina Mech. All in! Games currently employs 14 testers and is recruiting more.

Chances for employment and a salary

The video game industry is one of the most dynamically developing in the entire economy, so a job in this industry is relatively stable. The global crisis caused by the pandemic seems to not have affected the sector as much as other industries, therefore, recruiting processes in the video game sector didn’t need to be suspended.

“Salaries in the QA Tester position should interest young people just entering the job market, and looking to take their first steps in the video game industry. Working as a QA Tester could be the beginning of a game development career,” summarizes Paulina Mech.

Next to the enjoyable responsibilities, another important argument for applying for the position is a friendly work environment, which characterizes so-called gamedev companies. Employees can count on a modern office, flexible working hours, and a variety of employee benefits.

About All in! Games

All in! Games is a video games publisher based in Krakow, operating in the gaming industry since 2018. The company creates and publishes unique titles for personal computers and consoles, working on Polish and international projects. All in! Games is the publisher of such titles as Ghostrunner (One More Level, co-publisher of 505 Games), Alaloth – Champions of The Four Kingdoms (Gamera Interactive), and Tools Up! (The Knights of Unity). All in! Games is listed on the stock exchange in Warsaw after their merger with Setanta in 2020.

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