Until just before this book went to press, Scott worked full time as a video game “debugger.” He said his job was the perfect union of his ASD traits and his special passion. The following quote was from before he was laid off from that job.
I get to work on broken video games all day long. I’m part of a cycle of people who each have their own important part in making the games a successful product people can enjoy. You’ve got talented creative people who envision the game, then the coder people who make the characters work, and then people like me who identify the parts that are broken. We enter “bug reports” into databases.
We play one game eight hours a day repeatedly and keep an eye out for anything that is broken. So maybe we spot that the hero’s sword has turned into a pineapple! We send it back to the developer because obviously they got the code string mixed up and missed it. And they send it back to us, but now the hair is purple instead of brown! So we spot that and send it back again. It’s an endless cyclic iteration—extremely repetitive, detail-oriented, and immensely routine. All traits that work great for me!
Even though Scott loved his job, he and his family have learned things they think are very important to convey to others on the spectrum. His mom emailed after Scott was laid off, with advice for other parents.
We’ve realized that quality assurance (QA) testing of video games will almost always be a minimum-wage contract-only position, since there are so many people who want to do that job. There is no career ladder here. Many testers would like to get into creating games, but with the advent of so many academic training programs for that field now, testers may be at a disadvantage compared to applicants who have those specific degrees. It’s also a field prone to booms and busts and frequent layoffs, even for game developers. For people on the spectrum, that amount of change can be stressful. That said, it’s still a good job for a young adult to gain basic job skills like responsibility, attention to detail, organization, and interaction. We’re encouraging Scott to articulate the skills he learned and apply for positions in QA in different industries, where there may be more stability. I want parents who read this book and might think video game testing or QA is the perfect job for their spectrum kid to also realize the drawbacks.
Scott agreed with his mom and elaborated in a phone call. He’s now in the process of expanding his career search and has his own advice for his peers.
What Mom said is true—it’s an industry driven by booms and busts, and the vast majority of entry-level positions are six-month contracts. One would have to be very lucky to find one that’s not. I got very lucky and knew it, because before this job I had two that were just shortterm contracts. So I naively (in retrospect) thought I’d have more job security in this non-contract position. But after awhile, I noticed there weren’t many opportunities to move up. Then recently, the company said they were shifting to a “more transparent” system of evaluations and promotions. They said if you showed competencies you’d be a strong candidate to move up to the next tier, but the flip side was that if you weren’t ready, you were let go. My friend was laid off the same day I was.
Scott’s also not sure what to make of some feedback he received in his evaluation. He thought he was doing quite well and that something that had been brought to his attention earlier was no longer an issue.
They said I came across as defensive at work. That was strange to me. I thought that whenever somebody came to me with a question about my work, I’d explain why I did whatever it was. I usually thought I had done what they wanted me to do, so I’d remind them what they’d said to me. That behavior was coming across as overly defensive and they thought I couldn’t take criticism. I got that feedback twice, but I thought I’d done enough to rectify it. At the end of one meeting they even said it was okay and that it could be worked out. I thought it had been fixed. I told them to let me know if anything else is a problem and nothing was said, but in the final meeting they told me I wasn’t ready to move up so they were letting me go, and they also said that five months ago we talked to you about your defensiveness and you didn’t improve. It felt unfair to me and I feel a little bitter.
Scott believes working in video game QA was very good in some ways, and says he learned some essential job skills. But he warns others who are interested in the general field of gaming that there are significant limitations, and he shared some excellent advice he said was passed on to him from a friend.
I don’t know if very many people want to be testing games at age 40, but the fact is it’s a dead end for those with ambitions beyond QA. So now I’m between jobs and looking at more generalized software companies. I found out about a small producer of a global application that sounds interesting and I am in communication with them. My advice to others is to network. The usual advice of “bring passion and your best effort” isn’t enough. That’s necessary for any job. You have to have realistic expectations. And you’ll need to bring independent creativity to the table in this field. Creating games is a very common dream but the reality is somewhat different. My friend had this good advice: “If you want a road to lead you somewhere different you have to change too. If you don’t change where you are going, you will continue going where you are headed.” I think that’s good life path advice.
MARINA, 33
Married and mother of a daughter Diagnosed with Asperger’s
Marina’s mother recalls their pediatrician being confused by her daughter. He told her that her child might be in and out of prison or spend her life locked in a mental institution. He bluntly proclaimed that Marina would never be able to take care of herself.
So I feared for her safety and her future. I was afraid she could never be sympathetic to others and that she’d stay dissociated from people, society, and the basic rules we have to follow in order to succeed in life. Everything was black and white for Marina. There were no grays, no in-betweens, and no middle ground. If something didn’t catch her interest, she would not participate in or care about it. She had no friends and couldn’t read people’s social signals, gestures, or even their words. She didn’t hear complete conversations.
Marina recollects being depressed and anxious for as long as she can remember. As a child she struggled with loud noises and didn’t want to be touched. She would pull away or make a “mean face” if someone unexpectedly touched her. She found most people shallow and felt like they knew hidden “crazy algorithms or secret formulas” that she had no clue about.
School was hard for Marina. She was afraid of both kids and teachers. Her mother set out to build her confidence and academic skills at the same time.
We would do spelling drills and I expected her to get A’s because I knew she could. But at first she would spell the word as though she was asking a question. I told her if she said it in a “question voice,” I’d mark it wrong. I wanted her to learn to spell but also to learn to speak with confidence!
I thought it was important for her to analyze, not just obey. I wanted her to develop more than one way of perceiving the world. So I would have close her eyes and pretend she was blind. Then I would hand her something —like an apple—and have her describe it many different ways, asking, “How do you know it is an apple?” She learned to use all her senses and to figure things out on her own.
I also wanted her to learn to analyze people. I told her that her teachers were smart, but they were just people, and all people make mistakes. I told her to obey them (and me, and Sunday school teachers) when they asked her to do good things. But I also told her to think for herself. She started analyzing her teachers without realizing it.
Later, when she was older, she and her sisters used to take really long walks through different neighborhoods. This was after her father and I divorced, and for a time we were actually homeless. We lived in an old van, usually by a public park. The girls would walk to upscale neighborhoods and look in the windows, and they started interacting with the people who lived there. Marina would come back and