Software Testing Blog

Salon writer Ray Bradbury once remarked that, “Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do.” To which rapper Ice-T retorted, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Turns out that both observations were horribly wrong. People love the game – video games, that is – and they’re not just for men with nothing else to do, but also for women and children. And software testers.

This got us thinking (and arguing) internally about which games are best.  So we asked our tester community and our Facebook fans to tell us what genre of video game is their favorite as part of our weekly ‘What Do uThink’ polls. Here are the results from the the professional testers in the uTest Forums:

• Sports (ex. Madden Football, NBA Live, World Cup) – 26%
• Strategy(ex. Suduko, Poker) – 21%
• Action (ex. Call of Duty, Halo) – 14%
• Social Media (ex. Farmville, Mafia Wars) – 10%
• Adventure (ex. Mario, Zelda) - 10%
• Other - 7%
• Music (ex. Guitar Hero, Tap Tap Revenge) - 5%
• Role Playing (ex. The SIMS, Second Life) – 5%
• I don’t play video games…they’re for children – 2%

This blogger is very much in the camp of sports games, having broken shattered virtually every NFL record with Drew Bledsoe and the Pats in Madden 97 for PS1. You want some of this? I didn’t think so.

Our Facebook poll results differed slightly, as Action came in first with 33% of the vote. Rounding out the totals were Sports (19%); Role Playing (14%); Strategy (10%) and Social Media (5%). Interestingly, 10% fell into the ‘I don’t play video games, they are for children” crowd. Maybe Ice and Ray had a point after all.

Anyway, what is your favorite genre of video game? And while I’m at it, will social media continue to make inroads in the gaming space? Will adventure and role playing games find their way back into the spotlight (don’t call it a comeback)? Will Mario and Wario just agree to disagree and bury the hatchet once and for all?

What do you think?