DAQA

I have been going to GDC since 1999, with everything DAQA has going on, this is the most excited about the event I have been since pre-covid. GDC is my favorite trade event, despite its’ need to evolve, it still has massive relevance and value for the business you’re able to get done there and to see so many industry friends. Devin Seto and I will be attending, we’ll be there to discuss - TestMod - Tools For Games Testers By Games Testers. - Proven KPI’s for meaningful QA operational efficiencies and significantly increased bug closure rates. - If you want a first look at our tester augmentation platform to achieve these, we’ll be doing private demo’s. Executive Counsel - Analyze and identify the right fit strategy for your studio’s operational needs. - Between Devin and I, we have 55 years of experience in Game Quality and Global Production Operations, that’s without the experience of the rest of our amazing team. - DAQA have advised many studios on how to set-up and structure Game Operations Departments, manage external partnerships, optimize QA teams’ focus and everything in-between. Dev QA & Live Quality Ops - DAQA’s core operational area of excellence. - Wonder why your QA budget looks like a black hole, using “cheap” functional test body-shops with questionable ROI, want to find a better way?  - One of the hardest things to identify, implement and execute, DAQA deploy QA teams for how modern games and studios operate. Player Insights & Usability – Bolstered by our play test community and proprietary tools. - Is it eye-wateringly expensive to read 3 pages of why the grass is “too green” in your game, or getting very low-quality feedback from marketing lists of your “target audience”? - DAQA works with our clients to help them clearly understand, analyze and qualify the voice of their players across any genre. We’re Ambassadors for Game Quality - Advocating for the craft of Games QA. - Find a place for your voice with a peer-based industry network, talk to us about becoming part of the movement, membership and both the Qualicon and GQ Leaders events. Our passion is Games QA, if you need free actionable advice and guidance which we do for many independent studios, we’re here to share, no charge! DAQA are advisors and true partners, the Concierge of Quality for games, your secret weapon, find out why we’re trusted by so many long-term clients and hit us up if you want to meet.

It was a great honor for me when Robert Denton Bryant asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of Games Testing All In One. I received my copy on NYE, reading through the foreword I remembered that I wrote about the most essential resource we have, our teams, the people we work with and the duty we have to them. This is why one of the murals we have in the DAQA New Orleans office, simply says “believe in YOUR power to level up”. The book is invaluable as a starting point, a guide to our craft and a reminder of our most critical asset to nurture, our people. A very abridged version of my foreword is below. “With the challenges that Games QA faces today, to put it bluntly, we are long past the point where simply adding more people to our test teams for coverage is the answer. Then why do we need this book if simply adding more people isn’t the answer? Well, we still need people, many more people, it’s just that the requirements of the role are changing. Games QA is still one of the best proving grounds for growing the future leaders of tomorrow’s game studios that I know. More so now than ever it is a standalone discipline within game production. Yet many studios continue to underestimate its criticality to not just development, publishing, and launch but also to the key metric of player retention. The discipline of Games QA is becoming ever more complex and the ways in which we work increasingly more sophisticated. It is now its own career path within the game production ecosystem. The current challenges we face as Games QA are manifold but can be broken down into two clear areas. The first of these is the volume of content and code that is now generated at an increasingly accelerated pace and the sheer complexity of the titles that are released. More so now than ever “finding the fun” is a critical part of the Quality role. Finding exploits is critical, escaped defects and exploits are the costliest bugs a studio can let slip through, with not just revenue implications but also reputational damage and impact to the latest production schedules. The second challenge is the very nature of “live service” games themselves and the size of the player communities we now serve. At this juncture we should consider what is the role of Games QA, how has this changed? Does the QA role go beyond prevention and is it about listening to what our players want, what brings them joy and what detracts from their experience? I don’t have all the answers to these questions. My conclusion though is that it is probably more about listening to the voice of everyone in our communities, analyzing where that data is pointing us and making informed quality decisions based on that. The roles and responsibilities of QA have developed exponentially over the past two decades, the complexities of the games we deal with require many more roles and responsibilities. The basics of game testing, however, have not.” DAQA

One of my resolutions for 2025 is more insightful posts. Just before the holidays people were asking about predictions for this year and beyond. Here was mine - “The rise of the Boutique Studio that we've seen over past 18 to 24 months or so continues. These are either game developers or external partners. Razor focused on what they're specialized in and best at, not expanding outside of what they do, eschewing massive growth to avoid distractions. Most likely with an experienced team, displaced from elsewhere or who have chosen to move, focused on what they're most passionate about, predominantly with some form of platform angle or technology differentiator. These will become the stories of some of the breakout successes of 2025 and 2026. Not your GTA type level breakouts but they will define and then become the ecosystem that supports independent development and the larger game studio networks.” Thinking about all of this over the holiday break, I truly believe this is where we’re heading. When I started DAQA in 2017, in the business plan which surprisingly still stands up very well today and we’re on course with, I wrote - “We will never take projects on for the sake of building our top line revenue or headcount, we do not believe that the number of employees is a measure of our success, our success will be measured on the success of our clients, the quality of the work we do, plus the happiness and career progression of those individuals with whom we work in our teams.” The Rise of the Boutique Studio will be the hybrid games version of how movie and TV production models operate. This is not to say that this the end of large game service companies, they are one part of the market that is already very well served and saturated. Eschewing the old, homogenized, multi-service for games models of large scale, “low cost” and questionable ROI, these are well-worn, tired even and clients are looking for more. There are many very successful Boutique Studios already out there today, both service and tech focused, or a compelling mix of both. I will not name any here as that would be an investor shopping list. Suffice to say that we will continue to see Boutique Studios define how game production works in our immediate future. Here’s to 2025, wishing you all nothing but success, watch this space and let’s go! DAQA