Both usability research and QA are equally vital – but different – parts of game development.
It’s hard for developers to look at their own games objectively, so that’s where usability research comes in. We need usability testers to try our games and tell us what they do and don’t enjoy, so that we can improve them before release. That way players can get the best experience possible.
On the other hand, QA (or Quality Assurance) is specialised work undertaken by our talented QA team. Their focus is finding bugs and defects in the game’s software, a task which requires patience and persistence.