Game Testers

They are scams.

Most people don't understand the rigors of what video game testing are. Most serious testing companies, usually owned and operated by the production companies themselves, are highly trained and skilled in finding bugs, describing bugs, knowing code, etc. A lot of people go into it thinking "I get to play video games all day" when there is actually very little "play" involved. Testing is usually done in an Pre or Alpha stage which means the game is constantly crashing, freezing, etc.

hey are scams.

Most people don't understand the rigors of what video game testing are. Most serious testing companies, usually owned and operated by the production companies themselves, are highly trained and skilled in finding bugs, describing bugs, knowing code, etc. A lot of people go into it thinking "I get to play video games all day" when there is actually very little "play" involved. Testing is usually done in an Pre or Alpha stage which means the game is constantly crashing, freezing, etc.

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This is true.

A lot of the bug testers are the actual coders for the game, or some of them, who will fix the game inline as they play. It's super complicated, and calls for stupidly fast thinking, cause you need to go back, work out whats wrong and fix it all in as shorta time as possible.

That being said, if you good at gaming and dont get frustrated easily, and know code well, it might be something to look at.

The only positions I've heard about that dont require the ability to actually FIX the game as you spot broken parts of it are 8 hours a day playing the same level over and over and over and over and over hitting every little thing to test everything on screen or you follow a pre-scripted "to-do" list drawn up by the developers.

It definitely isn't "hey I get to play games all day"

I agree the ones that I have come across too are not Legit. Although I must admit I would enjoy being a Game Tester.
haha reps Steezie for Avatar

Yeah, can't imagine it's too much fun - if you've ever played a newly-released game in clear need of patching - imagine having to do that for a living, but with problems ten times worse and you have to fix them too.

About 10 years ago I knew somebody who was a game tester. It was not a glamorous job at all. He said it was tedious and very thankless. As a game approached launch, and even after launch for games that are huge games that they develop patches for, they were actually there and a team was testing a game all day and night. They stayed on-site, ate on-site, basically gave up their lives. The facilaties were really nice, but they were literally home for weeks on end. And evidentally you have to be a meticulous note taker as you have to be able to direct somebody to the exact spot and recreate the exact issue that caused the problem. He used to love gaming but he hated his job. Statistically if you look at the job satisfaction and employee turnover rate, you'll see it's not a job many enjoy.

And, as I understand it, the real only way to crack into game testing is to be recruited by developers directly. You'd either have to have an "in" already, be discovered on the professional gaming circuit, so on and so on. It's not easy to get into. My friend was discovered as a professional gamer who went out almost every week and competed in something, and as a writer for a gaming magazine and website, and he did this for upwards of 10 years before being discovered.

Interestingly enough, awhile back Game Informer showed that statistically you're actually more likely to become a professional athlete then land a job in the gaming industry as a developer or tester. Interesting stuff to think about.

Sounds like a fun job. Where do I sign up? lol

blazearmstrong said:

Sounds like a fun job. Where do I sign up? lol

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Did you read a single post in this thread?

ooh relevance

contains one instance of bad language

Penny Arcade! - Here's Your Reality Program

Breetai said:

Did you read a single post in this thread?

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I was wondering the same thing.

GI did a big thing about game testers about a year ago. No part of that looks like any kind of fun at all. Valve has a bunch of pictures up all over the place of their gaming areas where the testers are locked in and it looks like the janitor closet office that they used in "The Office" when Micheal went out on his own. When people think of game testing they always think of playing like the new CoD for hours on end and how fun that is. They never think of the countless crap games that flood the market all of which had game testers. But GI is flooded with kids asking how to become game testers. It's like did you not read the article?

8 hours a day playing Mini Desktop Racers on the Wii looking for glitches? Sounds like hell to me.

One of the geniuses I went to high school was recruited by a software developer and he spent hours glitch testing for all of those awful invitation and word processing and other cheapo programs you see at places like Staples. He got rich doing it but holy cow did it sound like a job where you'd want to find the nearest wall to put your head through. They found him through our local technical school with the 2 year certificate programs but I honestly don't remember what he was getting a certificate in.