A big part of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy’s fantastic script was not made by A-listers that guarantee a hit. But rather by a group of wordsmiths who were formerly under the quality assurance department.
When we think of games that were scripted so masterfully, we would often think of those who are already experts in the field. Or those who had simply spent a lot of time and energy honing their craft through actual work. Which does makes sense, considering that experience does play a major role in bringing out the best of talents. Often, as an amalgamation between failures and success. Anything that is contrary to this belief, therefore, is an outlier and may be as a result of beginner’s luck.
“Just QA”
However, despite the strong story and witty dialog, Square Enix’s Marvel title was mostly written by creatives who started in being QA. For most people, this would come as a surprise considering the nature of a quality assurance’s job. Which, typically, involves people playing games and spotting any error or issue for fixing during development, even post-launch. Meaning, anyone can be part of the QA team, so long as they have an eye for such mistakes and an interest about gaming in general.
Fantastic script writing
But, as it appears, that notion is wrong. In a tweet, writer Jocelyn Baxter made a shoutout to game developers by highlighting the large role that her team played in it.
“80% of GotG game was written by former testers”.
80 percent of anything is a large portion out of a complete 100 percent. This only suggests that much of the heavy lifting in GotG’s creation were carried by the talented writers who’ve yet to make names for themselves in the business.
Writers originally
But while creative writers being also gamers is hardly surprising, establishing a career in it via the QA route is. However, as per Baxter’s eventual revelation, she claims that prior to holding the job as a QA at Eidos Montreal, they were already writers. That is including a colleague, @Selestrielle, whom she tagged in her tweet and described as “phenomenal”. Apparently, the same individual who would be given credit for giving GotG its engaging voice and humor.
Okay wow. I'm going to use this to call attention to my phenomenal colleague @Selestrielle While yes, a lot our writing team has a QA/LOC origin story, we were already writers. GotG is Stef's first credit. I can't imagine our game without her talented voice and sense of humor. https://t.co/4M2HSeRAAP
— Jocelyn Baxter ~ GOTG (@Sizigyy) November 3, 2021
Getting the attention of developers, many have responded, including Bungie’s present test engineer, Eric John Euchler. In his response, he reinterpreted the original’s tweet as to suggest giving QAs the “respect”. More particularly, “because you never know if they’ll be a different role that actually deserves respect” eventually.
Image used courtesy of Marvel Entertainment/YouTube Screenshot