QAuDHD Weekly

One week down... This week I'm covering a topic I never thought in a million years I would have to cover: why autism is not "an excuse". I also cover the subject of making mistakes and how to handle it in a professional manner. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. #videogames #qa #gamequality #autism #adhd #audhd #qaud...

Good Monday, everyone! This week is admittedly a bit of a rant about the hypocrisy of social etiquette, while also covering my views on bug reporting etiquette. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. #videogames #qa #gamequality #autism #adhd #audhd #qaudhd https://gamequality.org/memberships/

The first QAuDHD of the year is here! Welcome to 2025 everyone - and what a year it's shaping up to be... for better or worse. I started the year with a lovely holiday that left me with an awful cold, so I will mostly be complaining about that. But I'll ALSO be covering some Accessibility best practices that fall under the "Motor" category. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know...

The last QAuDHD of the year is here! This week I talk about "Gamergate 2", representation and unconscious bias in what I hope doesn't come off as too much of a rant... If it does, I can just make "rant less" one of my New Year's resoltuons for 2025! Thank you all so much for reading and listening to QAuDHD over the past few months - in a year of highs and lows it has been right up there with the b...

It's CHRIIIIISTMAAAAAAS..... in a couple of days! It has been quite a year, with highs and lows personally and across the industry; yet somehow we manage. Spare a thought for anyone struggling this festive season, and remember that even the ones who seem to be doing well might be struggling in their own way. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for fu...

ALERT! Only one more QAuDHD until Christmas! This week I have a mild heart-attack at work, stay up until the early hours of the morning pushing buttons, and offer my 2c on the best way to make sure your console builds are compliant. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. Thank you for reading/listening! ❤️ #videogames #qa #gamequality...

Two more QAuDHD's until Christmas! I assume that's how you're all counting down the days, right? This week I'll be briefly ranting about why I don't like exams and how tests can be misinterpreted, before following that theme over into how test cases can be misinterpreted, before closing out with some thoughts on familirization and hand-overs when rotating your team. As always: please share, drop i...

Happy first Monday of December! Working from home makes it all-too-easy to just "power through" those days where you're feeling rough, because you figure you can still sift through emails and Slack messages, hold it together enough for a 15 minute meeting, and generally get a few bits done while you relax on the sofa (pretty much my normaly working day anyway). This week I talk about why I'm proud...

Happy Monday, everyone! Last week I confused everyone with my foward thinking reminsicning on looking back at... sorry, I'm doing it again. This time I'll be making things a lot clearer by talking about when you might do Grey Box testing on Grey Box levels and when you might do Gry Box testing on NON-Grey Box levels... or indeed testing with other colour names. Simples! As always: please share, dr...

Good Monday, everyone! Looking forward, I imagine we'll look back on recent events and wonder how far back things went wrong. Yet, looking back, I've realised that I look forward to looking back on things, especially with a view of learning and developing, in order to move forward stronger than before. Anyway, now that's been cleared up, let's get into today's issue! As always: please share, drop...

Last week was... intense, huh? This week, I'm focussing on some bad advice and straight up lies we're told as kids. Then in a less-related-than-I'd-like main topic I'll be giving a brief overview of Compliance in videogames, why it's important and why, despite how important it is, it's often left to the last minute. As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestion...

That title is a quote! Don't hate me... Now then - normal service resumes this week, as I'm finally over that horrible cold (the audio version of last week's episode has been added for anyone who needs it - sorry for the delay!). This week I'm talking about how things can get easily lost in translation, both at work and in general, following a particulalry akward encounter with a member of staff a...

Apologies for the delay in getting this one live! I've been bedridden for the past few days after an intense week, so there's no recorded version (yet) of this week's newsletter - I've also thrown the 500 word rule out the window for this one, but you'll see why. The spicy topic this week is about having a very "problem solving" oriented brain, while the actual topic is (mostly) about close collab...

Happy Monday everoyone! This week I'm talking about some confusing posts I've seen online recently and how my logic-driven brain struggles to process what seems like some pretty illogical arguments. I also talk (and at one point sing) about irony a lot too. The main topic this week is then about the benefits of forming a strong working relationship with game production! As always: please share, dr...

Good Monday everyone! So last week I was feeling a little overwhelmed and ended up having an anxiety attack. Since the point of QAuDHD is to provide my lived experience, I thought I'd share a little bit about what that's like, and follow it up with a quick chat about what can happen when bugs slip through the net and find their way into launched games (something that gives me anxiety by itself). A...

It's QAuDHD Day (aka Monday), I've calmed down a bit this week - which is ironic, because the topics are about overwork and having a busy brain. I even do a (terrible) Bane impression. What more could you want from your weekly dose of spicy-brained videogames/QA chat? As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. Thank you for reading/listen...

Good Monday one and all! This episode is... a bit of a rant. It's not aimed at anyone in particular, and I didn't realise until I'd chosen the topic just how much I felt I needed to get off my chest. Hopefully it's still useful and interesting information, but at the very least, I feel better now! As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions f...

And we're back to the Monday routine! Which is appropriate, because this week's QAuDHD is all about routines and consistency, both in terms of the calming effect they can have on my autistic brain (countered by the boredome felt by my ADHD brain) and their importance when it comes to game quality efforts. I hope you enjoy this week's issue and, as always: please share, drop in comments...

Happy Tuesday everyone! Sorry for the delay (I was ill)... This week's QAuDHD is all about planning, because as Jim always says, it's better to be pre-pre-pre-prepared! I'll be talking about my tendency to plan even mundane interactions ahead of time like I'm writing dialogue trees in an RPG, and the importance of conducting risk analysis as part of your test planning efforts. I ho...

Happy Monday everyone! This week's QAuDHD includes a belated celebration of my own birthday (that's how bad I am at remembering these things), a few thoughts on the importance of finding your "tribe" and a long list of ways in which your game quality teams are probably adding value that you hadn't even realised! I hope you enjoy this week's issue and, as always: please sh...

Good Monday everyone! In this week's QAuDHD I'll be talking about the importance of downing tools taking some time for yourself (and why that's a concept that many of us spicy-brained folk struggle with), and also explaining (because apparently it's still something some people don't understand) why "cruch" is bad! I hope you enjoy this week's issue and, as always:...

This week's QAuDHD is about accessible marketing and game demos. But first, as a newcomer to the games accessibility advocacy space, I wanted to address the upsetting and confusing events that have taken place in the last few days. I won't go into detail on any of it, I just wanted to stress the importance of allyship and support at a time like this. People with disabilities are marginalis...

I've got a new job (don't worry, I'll still be doing QAuDHD)! As part of my onboarding, my manager was asking about how I work best, types of communication that suit me and so on, and it brought me back to a topic I've touched on previously: communication. I've then coupled that with a follow-on from last-weeks section on representation in games, with a quick breakdown of some...

The UK and USA are having a particularly bad time of it at the moment, especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Or at least, people's perception of it. With equal representation of male & female athletes at the Olympics, you might think this is indicative of increasing equity between these two genders, but sadly that's still very much not the case. So called "g...

Given how hot it's been lately, this latest QAuDHD episode feels especially appropriate. The main spicy topic this week is about burn-out and why it hits us harder than most. The other topic (less of a link this time around, sorry everyone) is about some additional considerations that often seemed to get overlooked when test planning.