“The QA/Game Tester students can guarantee the quality of what we are doing”
Boden-based Northify is a success story in the quality assurance industry. A significant part of this achievement lies in a thriving exchange with Futuregames and Sweden’s only QA/Game Tester education.
The founders of Northify noticed that Swedish game studios were outsourcing their QA needs to companies abroad. They saw the potential to establish a specialized game QA company in Sweden.
– There was a massive gap in the market there, says Patrick Moloughney, Head of Studio at Northify. You had people producing Swedish quality games – but the quality was assured outside of Sweden. And from that, Northify was born.
Futuregames has been a reliable ”provider” of interns and, consequently, employees for Northify.
– We currently have ten people employed at Northify and they have all come through the QA/Game Tester education at Futuregames, Patrick says. Some of them have multiple backgrounds – a few have come through the Game Design education and then went through the QA/Game Tester education, which gives them an edge when it comes to testing and spotting different things. They bring new perspectives. And a lot of the interns we are bringing in now have all kinds of diverse backgrounds, it can be IT or chopping down trees. They all bring a different skillset, which is what we really are looking for.
“The QA/Game Tester students are up to a certain level”
Patrick points out some fundamental things about why Futuregames QA/Game Tester education fits so well with Northify’s needs:
– One is that the students have that baseline of knowledge that comes from the education. We know that if they come from that education, they are up to a certain level. They can do the job – and that helps us scale very well, because they can guarantee the quality of what we are doing. And the older students with a different background have often made a career change – they made the choice to go into QA, which lets us know they have the passion for it. When it comes to innovation and how we improve our services, that´s when we are really benefitting from their background.
– The way it is run, I think that Futuregames is constantly trying to keep on top of the latest trends. There is always fresh content for the course, it is constantly changing.
What does the future look like for QA – and how should the QA/Game Tester education evolve in line with it?
– Game development has been around a while, but it is an immature industry in lots of ways. It needs a bit of standardization – that´s how you ensure quality. But I think the way this education is adaptable will give it a great advantage as the career path matures. QA needs to become a field instead of just one role: you will have QA engineers, QA analysts, QA researchers, etc., in the future. I think these roles will be carved out, and with the dynamic nature of the education in Boden, it will be ready for that.
“It is the strongest pool of candidates we can hope for”
Patrick envisions how Northify and Futuregames will work even closer together in the future.
– Yes, we would like to get more involved with the education. It may be self-serving – the more we put into it the more we get out of it. But it is a really interesting talent pipeline to have. As we grow and innovate, we can share that knowledge with the education, in the hopes that we put ourselves in the mind of the people that are graduating. It is the strongest pool of candidates we can hope for, really!
