Yet again its been a decent amount of time since I have given an update. So as with much of life, their are plenty of highs and plenty of lows. I was hired by Jackbox Games to be a contract QA Tester to help them finish out development on The Jackbox Party Pack 6.

It was a super awesome experience to be able to have had. The team welcomed another contractor and I into the team with open arms. I felt integrated into the team almost right away. Jackbox was different from EA, apart from the obvious that EA is huge when compared in terms of size, the team their was super inclusive. They use an open dev floor format so communication amongst team members was smooth. Needless to say we worked our butts off and put out an awesome pack of games. Not to mention that it’s been said that this pack has also been the most stable that Jackbox has ever released.

But just as fast as I was hired, Party Pack 6 was released the work scaled waaaay down, enough so that both us contractors had to be let go a little sooner (I guess we worked too hard). What was supposed to be a 3-6 month contract with a possibility of an extenstion became barely a 3 month contract. Im not salty, only a little bummed that I have to leave a team that I felt that I meshed really well with. But thats not the Game Industry is, especially when your a contractor. Contract work is great to get your foot in the door and to build up your resume, but in terms of stability its definitely an aquired taste to say the least.

Having said that, since then I have had several interviews with a couple companies. The first company to reach out was Scientific Games. They make casino type games, actual casino cabinets, make various casino tools and equipment, and work with lotteries across the world. I interviewed for their Software Quality Assurance Engineer position. Which seems like a logical move seeing that I was literally just working a QA poition. The interview process on the whole for SG was pretty lengthy. I had 2 preliminary type interview phonecalls. Then had an onsite, what im calling guantlet interview. Originally I was supposed to have 5 back to back to back interviews but due to a scheduling mishap I only talked to 2 people. I thought the interview went really well, when I asked how he thought I did, he replied and said that he thought I would be happier in a design role of sorts. This seemed mildly strange to me because throughout the interview he talked about how he was looking for testers that had a sort of design background. Needless to say after several days and hours worth of interviews later I was sent a rather informal email rejection only 2 days after the interview.

Which brings all my efforts down to one last place that I interviewed at, and surprisingly enough its High Voltage Software. The very same company that only a few months ago completely ghosted me on what I think is even the same position just in a different state. This time I was at least able to do the onsite interview which is where the trail went cold the last time I talked to them. I even brought that experience up during the interview and it seemed like it was kind of brushed off but then again the guy that was interviewing me was not the same guy I talked to the last time so I didnt really press him on the issue, just merely brought it up. Honestly, out of the 2 companies I interviewed with High Voltage seems like it would definitely be the better fit. Again, the interview seemed to go well. The interviewer even mentioned that he was impressed with what I had to say. My only fear is that yet again I am going to get ghosted. I was told that in a few days someone would reach out by email. I guess we will keep grinding and keep our fingers crossed and pray for the best.