Over at our sister education site Game Career Guide, the ever-handy Alistair Wallis has taken a look at a once-fabled path into the game industry, in a new feature called 'The Acid Test: QA as a Bridge to a Game Career'.

As he notes in the intro: "It's certainly a common idea within the games industry that those who start in quality assurance are headed for a career well past that one post; possibly even a career in a popular field like design or production. But can QA staff and testers make their way up the ladder in the way people think?"

There are mixed responses, of course, from professionals at studios ranging from Toys For Bob (Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam) through Evolution (MotorStorm), but it's true that QA can be a good leg up if you're in the right place at the right time - something many of the respondents do acknowledge.

Zachary Slater of the Game QA Blog has likely some of the more depressing feedback in the piece - at least for those who care about game testing for game testing's sake: "QA could be a worthwhile career path for console and computer games if only it were treated and respected as such It isn't... and probably won't be. Game developers and publishers seem to regard QA as an unfortunate expense required in the development process. It is a problem for anyone who wants to actually focus on it that they won't be respected for doing so."