Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy already got a lot of praise for its exciting story, funny dialogue, and compelling characters. That's why today's revelation that 80 percent of the title was written by former members of the QA team will hopefully make people respect the role more.
Jocelyn Baxter, a current writer at Eidos Montreal (the studio behind Guardians of the Galaxy), shared the statement on Twitter. "To all the game devs out there that undervalue and hold back QA: 80 percent of GotG game was written by former testers," Baxter explained. In her opinion, quality assurance is "absolutely a valid career path" that requires plenty of work and coordination. "Also QA is not the enemy!" the game writer concluded.
Turns out, many writers at Eidos Montreal started in the QA department and later moved on to other positions within the studio. However, Baxter also clarified that while a lot of the studio's writing team has a QA/LOC origin story, they were already writers. At the same time, Guardians of the Galaxy became the first credit for many talented new voices at the studio as well.
The whole QA thread attracted lots of developers to the discussion, many of whom shared their thoughts on the subject. Among other specialists, Eric John Euchler, current test engineer at Bungie, wrote that he appreciates the sentiment, but it is better to say "you should just respect QA."
Many still see QA as a starting position, rather than a valid career. Euchler wrote the original thread implies, "You should respect QA because you never know if they’ll be a different role that actually deserves respect."
Both critics and players seem to be fascinated by many aspects of Guardians of the Galaxy, including its strong story and perfect sense of humor. Marvel fans are even lamenting that the recent project is much better than Marvel's Avengers, which would have benefited from not being a live service project.
Despite all the kind words addressed to the GotG game team, the recent title itself performed almost three times weaker than Marvel's Avengers on Steam, managing to attract slightly above 10,000 concurrent players at launch. The game also failed to dethrone FIFA 22 in the UK boxed chart, securing the second spot in its first week.