Women who are gainfully employed in the games industry are becoming more and more common. The assumption that video games are a man's domain is finally becoming outdated. Women are playing and working with video games in astounding numbers. According to the ESA, 39% of game players are women. While the percentage of women working in the industry is still small, these women are paving the way for equality in this environment as well. More and more young women are going to technical schools and getting hired by game developers who see the value of a female perspective when creating video games.

So, how did these women get started and why do they do it? Those are the questions I want answers to, so I ask. This will be a continuing series of profiles of the women who have broken stereotypes and taken jobs in the video game industry.

Michelle Williams is the Q&A Lead on Pirates of the Burning Sea for Flying Lab Software. How did she get started and what does she do? Read on to find out.

Name: Michelle Williams

Title: QA Lead
Company: Flying Lab Software

What's your earliest memory of video games?

My cousin got Pong for Christmas when we were kids. I was so jealous! Later, when he was tired of it, he let me have it. I was so thrilled! I’m definitely not a hardcore gamer, though. Now that we’ve established that I’m an old curmudgeon… I married a gamer, though, and he’s talked me into playing silly, fun things like Super Bomber Man and Dance Dance Revolution.

What kind of education do you have and has it prepared you well for this industry?

I graduated in 1988 with a B.S. in Math with a minor in Computer Science. No, it really didn’t prepare me for this industry. The computer industry as a whole changes so much so quickly. I don’t want to pan college but if I had it to do again, I would have learned programming at a technical college and gotten internships to gain real-world experience.

What type of work did you do before you got into the industry and what jobs in the industry have you held?

I’ve been in the computer industry since college and I’ve been involved in almost all aspects of application creation: writing specs, coding, testing, writing documentation, technical support, and training. I worked on mission-critical business applications such as accounting and inventory control software for the restaurant industry, email, version control, and bug tracking software.

Was your entry into working with video games planned or chance? What initiated your interest in working in this industry? How did you get started in the industry?

My husband and his best friend left Microsoft to start their own software game company. Thus Flying Lab Software was born. Later, I “retired” from Microsoft a bit burned out. FLS had no QA department for the majority of the development of Rails Across America, depending entirely on developer testing and company-wide play-tests for finding the important bugs to fix. As they neared completion and started needing more formalized testing, I was realizing that retirement was boring me to tears and Rusty talked me into becoming their QA department. I didn’t really want to – I was burned out and thought I was unqualified for games testing. Testing games is different from testing business applications and it’s anything but boring! I’m proud of the level of quality Rails shipped with.

How long have you been working in the industry?

I came to work at FLS in 2001.

What does your job entail? What is an average day like?

“Average day” Ha! There’s not really any such thing. We’re a small company so we all help out wherever we can. As far as QA goes, my team and I are responsible for testing each build to determine whether the rest of the company should use it, testing each new feature or piece of content (missions, ships, towns, etc.) as it comes online, helping troubleshoot problems non-technical folks (like the artists) run into, recording performance data, and load testing. On top of that, I’m in charge of tracking our progress against the schedule and also for running the Beta. Preparation for Beta has involved creating a knowledge base and configuring the software our beta testers will use for reporting issues. I also helped design the process for accepting and processing Beta applications and I’m sifting through those in my “spare time.” I’ll also train our customer service reps.

Tell us about the most interesting or exciting moment for you in your job.

I forgot to mention that I also run our internal play-tests. For a long time, this was a thorn in my side. Getting 10-20 people into a game and getting them to follow directions is like herding cats. Add stability issues to that – I was never sure whether Bob was ignoring my instructions because he wasn’t paying attention or because the game had crashed. In the past few months, though, tests have been quite fun and the discussion meetings afterward have been almost as fun. Folks get excited: “So then I saw Bob coming at me in his dreadnought and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to damage him enough for Joe to finish him off before he got me lined up for the broadside that would sink me!” It’s rewarding to me to have set up a fun scenario or picked a portion of the game to test that they might not have seen yet.

What is your least favorite thing about working in the industry?

Designing “fun” into a game is quite the hit-or-miss process. We’ve gone through multiple cycles of realizing what we’re doing isn’t going to be particularly compelling and deciding to do something else. From a QA perspective, this leads to periods of having almost nothing to test because the few bits that are actually working well enough to be tested are getting ready to be ripped out and replaced. As a tester, I rate the happiness of my day by how many bugs I’ve logged. If it’s not worth your time to log any bugs, you wonder why you even came to work today. Luckily, we’re in the “polish the fun” phase currently – we’ve built the fun, now we’re adding more fun, and any bug we log is likely to be fixed. Right now, I’m having a blast!

What is the one misconception you feel people have about working in the industry in your type of position?

The most common refrain I hear is, “You get to play games all day?! I want your job!” Well, it’s not that simple. Games, unlike business applications, often have many random elements to them. So you find a bug: You go from point A to point B in ship C and, once there, fire cannon D and the game crashes. Woot! Except then you try again going from A to B sailing C and firing D and it all works fine. So where’s the bug? Did it have to do with what the AIs were doing at the time? With how much damage was done by the shot? With the angle the ships were facing when they fired? So you try again. And again. And again. Trust me when I say the 12th try is less fun than the first one was.

Do you feel you are advantaged or disadvantaged as a female in an industry so dominated by men? Do you have any examples of situations where you feel you had an advantage because you were female? Any where you think being a woman played against you? Any anecdotal stories where being female played a part?

For a while there, the women’s room was always free but there might be a line for the men’s room. However, now both restrooms are unisex so it’s no longer an advantage to be one of the few females here. :P

Do you consider yourself a hardcore gamer?

No, I’m not a hardcore gamer.

What settings and genres do you enjoy most? Least?

When I do play games, I’m most likely to play games like Tetris and Mahjong. My current favorite is Bounce Out which I play on Yahoo! Games. I use games as a way to give my conscious mind something to do while my unconscious mind ponders some difficult issue. Do you know what I mean? Do you find “sleeping on it” can give you solutions? Sometimes, I don’t have time to “sleep on it” or I can’t get my conscious mind to let go enough to sleep. So I play a game.

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

If you want to attract more women like me to play your game, make a game where I get a sense of accomplishment from a few minutes of play. Some games have this already with crafting and stuff, although I never really tried them because they’re advertised as being epic adventures that will entertain you for hours on end. My husband (avid gamer) will allocate 2 – 4 hours in a night to playing a particular game, often with the goal of finishing a level or doing a mission arc with a group of friends. I always have something better to do with my time than sit down for 2 hours to play a game – laundry needs doing, we need groceries, whatever. This doesn’t mean I’ve never played a game for 2 hours straight. I’ve often played a game for 2 hours straight – lost track of time trying to beat my high score, for example. But I never go into it thinking I’m going to spend that time. So if I think a game is going to be a fun 15-minute diversion, I’ll play it, often for hours at a time over the course of months. But if I think a game is going to be a huge time-sink, I won’t even start it.

If you can talk about it, can you tell us some about the project you are currently working on?

Pirates of the Burning Sea is an MMORPG based in the Age of Sail. Customize your avatar and choose a nationality and career then set sail for swashbuckling adventures in the Caribbean. If you like having the biggest, baddest weapon available in a game and causing the biggest explosions, go into the Navy and work your way up the ranks to sail the largest ships with the biggest cannons. If you prefer to zip stealthily around, be a Pirate wreaking havoc on the navies and shipping lanes of the major powers. If you prefer less violent means to your ends, be an Adventurer and participate in political intrigue via missions or change the balance of power by trading in some ports and boycotting others. We’re going to Beta very soon and should ship this winter.

Do you have any advice for anyone who would like to get into the industry?

When I interview candidates for our company, I look for good testers who understand some of the differences between applications testing and games. If you have QA experience but want to test games, sign up to Beta test multiple games and then actually report problems and help the developers track them down; don’t just play for free. Be prepared to discuss ideas for protecting test cases against the random elements in a game and ideas for using the random elements to help *find* problems. If you want to test multiplayer games, learn what you can about testing client/server applications and networking. Be prepared to discuss ideas for protecting the server from hacked clients. Where can you get ideas on these topics? Read, read, read. There are a million books and web sites out there by folks trying to address these issues themselves.

What are your favorite games? Favorite movies? Favorite Authors? Inspirations? What do you like doing in your free time?

“Free time”? What is this “free time”? Did I mention I work at a small company where I wear three hats and that we’re going to Beta any minute now?