artist

senior engineer

software engineer

senior artist

senior software engineer

2K Games

My typical day would involve getting into work, grabbing some type of liquid energy and taking a seat at my desk. I'd then test various games, review open bugs and find new bugs through out the day. I'd get to chat with some of the people near by and eventually got to sit with my friends and joke around with them. Eventually some of the games would be closed for testing and we'd have to test different games for overtime. Finally when that was complete we'd shuffle off, tired and bored back to our homes.

I learned to develop my critical eye for error, communication and writing skills and how to think outside of the box. I had to break the game and that meant to play it in odd and strange ways that don't fit my play style.

Managment felt just right. They weren't over bearing like some companies, but they were always around to help or correct you. They were knowledgeable in their craft and knew how to put you in the right direction.

The coworkers were fun and energetic. They knew the job itself was boring, so they tried to have fun with it. They would challenge each other on finding bugs or just playing the game. They would joke and make the overall experience fun. They were by far the best reason for going to work. you wanted to catch up and enjoy their company. they were friendly, helpful and supportive.

The hardest part of the job was staying awake. The games you play were generally boring and made for a younger audiance, however some of the games were actually big hits. Either way you'd play these games for weeks and months on end. It gets boring and you get tired. 

The best part of the job was the people. Every one there loves video games and wants to see a bright future for games and gamers. It's easy to make friends and connections. Also, at the end of the day, you are playing games. It's not the funnest way to play, but you could be working as a cashier instead.

I worked a few positions at 2K Games, 2 of which were temporary and the last one being full time. 

When moving to a full time employee you get a small raise of 50 cents. 10.50 originally to 11.00. 

There is a lot of overtime in game testing and some in customer service which is usually voluntary. Most of the time 12 hour days for testing.

You can work as hard as you can, more than anyone else on your team and be helping keep things afloat in departments and not get anywhere. You can be given more important tasks and even train others, make training material and teach whole other teams without any advancement if you are not a constant kiss up.

If you cant kiss up and schmooze with the higher ups you basically have no chance of moving up in this company.

They will give you free snacks, and parties once in a while and even a beer friday that way you feel like you have it good and dont want to leave.

It was a good summer gig to make money, but once you are full time the veil falls away. It is also a good place to make friends. 

I enjoyed my departments Managers but it became clear that the corporate structure at 2K is just bad. Similar to that of Microsoft where there is a small select group of people [managers/bosses] on the inside making all the important decisions and everyone else [employees] being out of the loop and not really told the plan and just being strung along.

They also act like you get a bonus at the end of the year but its not really anything, They give you nearly the last 2 weeks of the year off payed.Then PTO throughout the year as a normal full time position would accrue. That is not a bonus, its just the normal money you would make while working. A bonus would be if they allowed people to work those last 2 weeks of the year and then gave them an added bonus. Even in the employee manual its puts it as "you can receive a bonus up to 10% of your yearly income".

This job was a cool way to see how the video game industry works at a Quality Assurance level. Putting in the work of reporting bugs to the game devs and seeing games before they are released to the public is awesome. 

However, as for the company itself, their business ethics do NOT make any sense whatsoever. 2K makes grandeur promises of job security to those who put in the work. That’s not true. In order to keep any sort of employment here, you need to be a kiss up to leads and managers. The environment between employees can be competitive, which when it’s time to crunch, it’s just puts a whole new level of stress on your psyche. 

Also, the bullying that happens to new hires is ridiculous. A lot of people I worked with as new hires had no experience to a job like this and we’re excited to learn about what goes into making a game. But the existing staff (Leads. Not veteran QA employees) doesn’t understand that we really don’t know what we were doing to begin with. They don’t have patience for you. 

In regards to business practices, they don’t like it when you find game breaking bugs and report them. They rather you find nasty visual bugs and report those to the devs. That alone shows that they do not care about the QUALITY of their product. As a former QUALITY ASSURANCE employee, my work there doesn’t seem appreciated. 

The only positive thing I can really say about this position was the full time, Monday through Friday schedule. And the guaranteed breaks. 

This place was one of the most unorganized I've ever been to. The people are alright if a bit high strung which I believe is because no one knows whats going on and even if you're on a sinking ship no one really bothers to read the signs. There was training but it lasted 2.5 days and then if you went on the floor and broke any rules higher up would act disappointed and angry despite the fact that even more experienced people on the floor were unaware of these rules. 

There is also minimal communication between HR, Training, and people on the floor. As in we were told one thing in the interviews, another in training, and another when we got to wherever we were assigned. The floor manager didn't even know when the next group was about to shadow. Also, no one even knew if we were going to leave early for a holiday date despite it being the next day. 

The work itself wasn't great but it was alright. Its pretty easy to pick up. There can be months of nonstop mandatory OT which is great if you have time and terrible if you work 2  jobs or something. I just hated the disorganization of it all among other things.

Good experience with Visual Concepts, makers of the venerable NBA2K, at least to begin with. Interesting work but by being on the same title year after year the fatigue/boredom sets in. People are nice to work with in general but there can be a tendency for things to get clique-y; if you're part of the "in" group then great, otherwise you're a loner. Scheduling is always interesting come crunch time; don't expect to have much of a summer. The top staff always tweak or add new things to the game, often late in production, which can be stressful; not as bad as Telltale, though. Every year they seem to want to deliver the game earlier which adds considerable stress. There are some nice perks for the pain, though: matching 401k, free lunches/snacks/dinners during crunch periods, occasional happy hours and parties, great year end game launch party and holiday party.

Sure! Here’s a more feminine and casually nice rephrasing:

---

Overall, I’ve had a pretty positive experience with my teammates and most of the leadership. The Petaluma office has a reputation for having a challenging culture and management, but I found the environment to be quite enjoyable. The benefits were great, with perks like free meals, and the gamer culture was a lot of fun. I really liked working with my staff members, though some of the management left something to be desired.

Just a heads-up, in CA, they’re an at-will employer, which means management can let you go for almost any reason. It’s definitely a competitive place, despite what they say, and some managers might throw you under the bus to save themselves. Overall, while I had some great aspects to my job, there were definitely challenges with fairness and competition.

Since I remained at the company for 2 years and a few months, I witnessed the complete overhaul of upper management and the move from Westlake Village to Northridge. Both facilities were good, but there was a time when they had packed too many testers onto the test floor in the Northridge facility. This led to sharing computers, cramped spaces, and sometimes loss of personal belongings, which led to extremely unhappy testers, and a bad work environment. Testers were told to care more about quantity over quality of bugs, which I believe forced the testers to write up anything they could, clogging the database with useless bugs (dupe, by design, NAB, WNF) and angering the developers. Management was then blinded by bug counts, and this allowed a tester with less skill to move up the rankings quicker than a tester who paid attention to detail.

2K Games continually stayed current with the trends in technology infrastructure and industry practices. Working for a studio of over 300 on site employees for over four years taught me the skills necessary to work in a fast paced, professional environment with consistently changing needs and requirements. The projects that were required to keep our studio at the cutting edge of business were always changing. A typical day would certainly include tackling dozens of help desk tickets that either halted or impacted the work flow for artists, engineers, marketers and management, setting up hardware for new hires, and working on long term projects such as upgrading our asset tracking system or adding UPS battery backup units to all employees work stations. 

Bug entry and regressions is the most practiced daily task. Reporting issues to management or leads, as necessary when the issue is major. Meeting with a lead or manager goes hand in hand with either reward or in most other cases means the team is in trouble for any number of reasons. The QA testers communicate openly about outside hobbies, events, etc and are always willing to help a fellow tester when able. The hardest part of the job is juggling any private or social life with the frequent overtime. The most enjoyable aspect of the job is when the project ships and when a cool one appears.

Working at 2K Games was both amazing and stressful. Almost everyone that works there is helpful and super cool. It's a pretty laid back environment and you'll really feel at home if you love games, anime, comic and etc. However the stress that you will encounter can be pretty high sometimes. They focus very heavily on the amount of bugs you input. The quality of bugs doesn't really matter as much to them as long as you are putting a lot of bugs in. The pay is descent for what the job is about. They definitely make it known that you are basically dissoluble. Also the office location sucks. In my opinion it would be better if they moved their office to another location.

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