In a tragic event that unfolded last Tuesday, Melissa Batten, a 36 year old employee at Microsoft working on Xbox 360 projects, was slain by her husband in a murder-suicide. You can learn more about her on Wikipedia. Here is an old post from the Women in Game Development mailing list when she first introduced herself:
Hi there all!
I'm Melissa and I've completely lurked here for about a year. I have been working at Microsoft Games Studios for the past 2 years in test, and have been at Microsoft itself for 4 years. I came to my interest in gaming relatively late in the game so to speak, when my husband turned me onto gaming. He introduced me to Everquest...and it was all over for me after that. Prior to that experience, I was totally the wife who did not understand the need for a second computer, to now being the wife who pushes for the latest in technology, who builds her own PC from scratch, and can hold my own in any game.
Course, at the time he introduced me to gaming, I was not in technology and in fact was a lawyer. I have a law degree from Harvard, and practiced law for 5 years, before deciding that I wanted to be a part of the gaming industry. My husband worked for MS, so he was extremely supportive of me and helped me become somewhat technical by tutoring me and getting me up to speed on our weekends and evenings. Long story short, I ended up getting a job at MS, though not in MGS. It took me about 2 years before I could get a job in MGS, but since then, it's been awesome. I just finished up on Gears of War, where I actually spent 2 months onsite in North Carolina during the final ship cycle (completely voluntary on my part to go) and had an amazing experience being a part of such a hugely successful game. I got a taste for working on blockbuster titles, so am now onsite yet again at the developer (though closer to home this time) and am working at Bungie.
I have been reading with interest a lot of the communication on QA and test, and I do have to say that being a blue badge in test at Microsoft, whether in games, or any other software, is not a monkey job. It requires coding skill, technical aptitude (and the ability to work quickly with many different technologies due to the wide variety of technologies the developers use), organizational skill, leadership ability, problem solving skills, communication skills, diplomacy skills, and advocacy skills to name a few. We do have many contract testers who do pure execution on the test cases and matrices that the blue badges write, but the full time MS tester is a technical powerhouse in his/her own right. Many people ask me how was the transition from being an attorney to test, and I have to honestly say that aside from having to learn some technical skills, I find that many of the soft skills are transferable across both professions.
Well, now that I've broken the ice and introduced myself so to speak, you folks will probably start to hear more from me!
-Melissa
Rest in peace Melissa.
