Exploitative Labor Across Video Game Production Chains

As a brief description, alpha and beta testing in video games are what are referred to as "user acceptance testing," or the testing of computer programs by testers who check for bugs, glitches, unusable interfaces, and the like. In regards to alpha testing, more often than not it is done in-house by the program's development team to check for these issues. The beta test is then sent out to a select portion of the public to test before final release. After these two acceptance tests are completed, reviewed, and used for adjusting the program, the program is ready for release sometime soon after.

I myself have alpha and beta tested several games. I alpha tested MLB The Show 18, and beta tested several other games (as can be expected; alpha tests are usually performed by in-company game testers). The alpha version of MLB The Show 18 was not a good product. Still, the San Diego branch of Sony Interactive Entertainment were constantly reminding the alpha testers this product was disseminated for testing purposes. In other words, don't judge too hard--it's not finished yet. The draw of this test was for players an early access to the game series they loved. I myself am a big fan, so when I got the invite to alpha test, I was excited to get started. Sony reminded players once more that they were looking for feedback on any issue the players ran into. Because of the success of the alpha test, the players became the testing force for both stages of user acceptance testing.

There was no pay structure for these testers. In-company testers are paid employees, but outsourcing the alpha and beta tests for games is a much more cost effective strategy and exposes the game to criticism from fans who will continue to criticize (sometimes constructively) even after final release. It is a decent strategy for engaging the fans and gleaning from a diverse audience. Yet, it brings into question the business practices of some larger game development studios who ask their fans to do labor for them with basically no incentives. Sure, the players get access to their favorite games early, but these early products are sometimes so broken it is no longer an enjoyable experience. My own alpha test with MLB 18 caused me to not buy the game this year.

Another unpaid labor force of the game testing industry is the hacker/speedrunner/modder classes who try to break video games in interesting ways. Speedrunners and hackers have a long history of diving deep into the codes and mechanics of a game to find new ways to play (See Summoning Salt on YouTube for speed running histories). Moreover, hackers and modders find exploits in the code and mechanics to modify games in creative ways. Skyrim and GTA V are two games that come to mind that are popular locations of modification for players. In fact, there are online lobbies where you can play in specifically modified versions of the game, especially in GTA V where players can edit the world to make cooperative or competitive game modes to play with others. Speedrunning, hacking, and modding are all deeply ingrained into the culture of video games, but these again are unpaid laborers. These creative players code, decode, recode, exploit, and advertise games for no pay from the companies they work accidentally for. Many of these players take their gameplays online through Twitch or YouTube in order to monetize their labor, but they are hardly ever paid by there companies who profit from these creative acts.

In the last year, stories surfaces about the less-than-savory business practices of such game studios as Rockstar Games and TellTale Games. In short, both of these companies made their employees work entirely too hard to meet deadlines the business-oriented officers of the companies set for themselves. Red Dead Redemption 2 recently released, but not after Rockstar had bragged openly about their 'dedicated' workers putting in sometimes 100 hour weeks to finish the game, all to make their pre-Black Friday release date. The last few weeks of the TellTale Games studio are even darker. The employees worked long hours, often without sufficient overtime pay. At the end of the week of their deadline, the company gathered together. They were told that the company would cease to exist, leaving the workforce suddenly unemployed, benefit-less, and angered.

As is apparent from this broad overview of video game testing, playing, and development, the business is hardly the fun-loving Google campus, happy-go-lucky, nerd paradise some might think it to be. As Nick Dyer-Witheford notes in Cyberproletariat, the mining for coltan is used for game platforms some of the previously mentioned games are played on (Dyer-Witheford, 105). All this is to say, from the beginning of the games development process, labor is exploited in order to provide entertainment somewhere down the road. It's something all video game players should be aware of. We are playing on consoles made from a blood mineral and are asked to test broken games for no real income from studios who work their employees ragged to meet capitalistic deadlines like Black Friday. It's a troubling idea for those of us who study games for a living. The alpha and beta testing that is more often being outsourced to fans who will not be reimbursed for their labor is a relatively mild offense in comparison to these other forms of exploitative labor. We, as players, should hold our favorite game development studios to a higher standard. Refuse to test without reimbursement; help game developers build a stronger union; demand reimbursement structures for modding laborers; expose video game corporations for exploitative mining and development practices. There are solutions to these issues, but if our critiques of video game development start and stop at the testing phases of these games, or even just critique of the final product, we openly refuse to take seriously the exploited people across the chain of production.