Just Saying (QA)

I am very good at breaking games. I was born to do quality assurance.  Not everyone is. Game testing isn't just playing games, but I'm going to assume we've reached a point in the general conversation that I don't have to say that, and move on to what I'm talking about.
 
I play a game today, and true to form I break it. In the credits screen I see a list of testers who played it, and I'm sitting there wondering if these people are friends of the producers or something, because it's not exactly a hard thing to break. I'll admit that my attempt at a solution was one of those zombie-like item-combination behaviors people do when we're stuck on a puzzle in and adventure game, but damn it, they broke precedent by actually letting you combine items for the first time, then make it IMPOSSIBLE to combine the items because the values have changed due to an environment I interacted with in the wrong order. The game was stuck, and I was forced to give up.
 
QA is not about playing the game right, trying your best to understand exactly what the designers were thinking, and what they wanted you to do. It's about exploring the program as-is, poking at the corners, shoving the support struts, hugging the bad guy, kicking the kid, and doing everything "wrong."
 
If you don't want people to do things wrong, if you actually want them to recover from their experimentation in your game space without ruining the game, don't allow item combinations that will cause the game to explode, or, if you're a bit bewildered by the possible combinations, let crazy people like me get in there and see what we can do.
 
Many players won't make the mistakes and discoveries I do. Perhaps most of them. I'm cool with that. But don't be afraid of spending a little effort on finding QA folks that are a bit strange. QA isn't there to make you feel good; it's there to see if your building will fall down under stress.
 
Just saying.
 
EDIT: An interesting article about a company with a different QA approach: http://news.yahoo.com/company-hires-adults-autism-test-software-071329975.html