The inaugural Game Quality Awards 2024 has concluded with a spectacular celebration of talent, innovation, and dedication in the game quality craft. Held at Qualicon 2024, the awards honored individuals and teams who have made remarkable contributions to the discipline.
In this interview series, we will speak to our winners for 2024 kicking off with Chloe Mills, QA Tester at Media Molecule, and winner of the DE& Champion category.
Game Quality: Congratulations on your win for DE&I Champion at the first-ever Game Quality Awards! How do you feel about winning?
Chloe Mills: It was such a lovely surprise! I think the last thing I won was a raffle, but to get something in recognition of work I’ve done really meant something and was very much appreciated.
GQ: Can you tell us a little bit about what your current role is and how you got there?
CM: My current role is a QA tester at Media Molecule where I’m also a member of our accessibility champions program. My work can include creating documentation, testing content, liaising with devs, co-ordinating with the QA team and offsite testers, and writing and running test plans.
I’ve been here for over three years now, and during my time I’ve helped look after the seasonal releases for Dreams such as our DreamsCom and Halloween events, where we gave the community templates to create from and incorporated them into a creation of our own making. I also helped look after the game releases we’ve done in Dreams such as Ancient Dangers and Tren, which was our biggest release in Dreams.
As for how I got here, I applied for a job at Media Molecule after less than a year in the industry and was so grateful to be given the opportunity to work here. While I had all my testing experiences in my CV, my cover letter went into my life experiences as a musician and what I’d seen and done. That combined with coming into the interviews with a nice issue I’d found researching Dreams maybe helped put me over the line and I’ve been here ever since.
GQ: What made you want to get into the game quality profession?
CM: When 2020 hit and everything shut down, I was working as a musician on board a cruise ship that had just left Australia. I’d been a professional saxophonist for a few decades at that point, and on the month-long journey back home, I saw on socials my musician friends setting up online teaching and recording studios in their homes. With the time it was going to take to get back, plus having been on ships for the past few years and not currently having any pupils, I felt rather than playing catch-up I’d use the opportunity to try a different career and see how it worked out.
I’m passionate about music and gaming, and gaming seemed like a good avenue to try. I was lucky enough to get a role at an offsite testing office down the road from where I was staying, and having some success there I realised there’s actually a lot of transferable skills going from music to QA and I would be very happy doing QA from now on. My passion for music is still there, it’s just nice to do it now purely because I enjoy it.
GQ: You’re clearly very passionate about all things diversity, equity and inclusion. Can you tell us more about what sparked this dedication to go above and beyond to do your part to make everyone feel welcome and included?
CM: Besides my own experiences in appreciating feeling welcome and included as a child, thinking back I’ve a strong memory from when I was teaching music in schools in my 20s. I’d go into schools and teach woodwind, and at one school I was given a pupil who was blind. Having had no training on how to approach this, and with their wish to work through music grades, I ended up coming up with a system that worked for them, a combination of learning by ear and custom play along tapes.
I spent hours and hours after work writing tunes and piano accompaniments into music programs so I could select either one, set them at various speeds without changing the pitch, and extracting them onto CDs so the pupil could practice at home. I was so proud of them when they passed those grades, and happy I was able to contribute somewhat to that achievement. That’s one of my favourite memories from teaching music, and the lesson I learned was there will always be barriers for someone, but working together we can help break those barriers down one at a time.
GQ: What are some key tips you would give someone who’s looking to progress their career in game quality?
- Think outside the box. We all approach testing based on our own experiences and knowledge but putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can broaden your findings during testing. For example I like using personas – a speed runner will approach the game differently to a streamer, a trophy hunter will play differently to a first-time gamer.
- Don’t forget the accessibility pillars such as visual, audio, motor and cognitive – reporting issues in those pillars can go towards making the game better for everyone.
- Keep doing things and learning outside of gaming. You never know when that tour you did, or that documentary you watched, that book you read or even that theme park you visited could filter back into your testing.
GQ: What piece of career advice would you give your younger self with the benefit of hindsight?
CM: It’s ok to say I don’t know and ask for help. When you are part of a team we’re stronger together, so draw on those decades of experience from the people around you.
GQ: What is one achievement that you are most proud of?
CM: For all the difficulties, set-backs and work it took to be a musician, I’m finally comfortable and very happy. It took till my late thirties to get there but I got there in the end.
GQ: Are there any final thoughts like to share with the rest of the Game Quality community?
CM: Nobody else in the entire history of the world has ever had the sum of your experiences, influences or interactions. You are special, unique and valid.
To see the full list of Game Quality Award 2024 winners, visit the awards website here or check out the winners announcement on our blog.
