Job as a video game tester

[JEDI]

http://www.indeed.com/q-Game-tester-jobs.html

The cool thing is that you get to test the games before they’re released. The downside is you have to keep playing the same games over and over and over again until you break them, find a glitch, etc.

Hey, that’s the price you pay to play!


Might look into this when my contract expires in 2012.

 

[Rumpltzer]

Friend is an animator for EA. You should see her workplace; it's a freaking amusement park.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Walked into a testing area at EA LA. A bunch of people testing some game on a cellphone in a rather gloomy, gray room. They looked miserable.

 

[zerocool84]

Unless you have tons of experience it's going to be hard to get into that area right now.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

I think it would kill the enjoyment of video games. Sure it sounds cool at first but if you think about it you are going to have to play the bad games just as much/long as the good ones. I'd also think when the game was finally released you'd be so tired of it you wouldn't play it with friends or enjoy it as much. Granted, it's not a bad way to earn a buck, I just think I would get sick of it eventually.

 

[SandEagle]

i'd die if i had to test xbox360 games. bleh

 

[ponyo]

Working at McDonalds might be better. Getting paid minimum wage to test and log video games all day sounds like toture. Maybe if you were 12 years old this kind of job would sound cool.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I read a story about a guy who worked for a game tester.

He said it was absolute hell. You THINK you're just being paid to play the game, but no.

Basically you do the most mind numbing things over and over. From seeing if the game boots up correctly, to jumping constantly and never stopping. You do this over and over and over, you time it, and every time you see something off, you have to write a full report. He had to turn the system on and off over and over and over to see if there was a problem. You have to walk into every single piece of geometry from every angle possible, and if something is wrong, you have to replay it over and over and over to see what the exact conditions of the bugs are. Then you have to test out the menus over an over and find ways to break it. Also, you're not exactly testing Starcraft 2. Most likely, you'll be stuck with some crappy game like Dora the explorer, a shitty indie game and other low budget shit titles that make up 99% of games being released.

If the thought of running into a wall for hours and other things equally as absolutely meaningless for hours on end appeals to you, go for it.

 

[bfdd]

My brother has worked for Activision and Konami. He says it sucks for the most part.

I on the other hand do QA for a market research company and it's not to bad

 

[zerocool84]

I read a story about a guy who worked for a game tester.

He said it was absolute hell. You THINK you're just being paid to play the game, but no.

Basically you do the most mind numbing things over and over. From seeing if the game boots up correctly, to jumping constantly and never stopping. You do this over and over and over, you time it, and every time you see something off, you have to write a full report. You have to walk into every single piece of geometry from every angle possible, and if something is wrong, you have to replay it over and over and over to see what the exact conditions of the bugs are. Then you have to test out the menus over an over and find ways to break it.

If the thought of running into a wall for hours and other things equally as absolutely meaningless for hours on end appeals to you, go for it.

I do QA but for websites/phone apps and it's exactly the same thing. It's very tedious but depending who you work for, it pays well for the tedious work.

 

[chorb]

Good friend of mine worked for Sony as a PlayStation game tester for a year. Was fun at first, then he said the novelty wore off and it sucked.

Towards the end of the development stage of the game he'd be working 12 hours a day running into walls.

Said he would also rubber-band his thumb to the joy stick and fall asleep in his chair for a few hours a day.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, it's really not that fun. Like any other software, you'll find yourself making huge test plans that encompass every single function of the game. Then you test the hell out of each of those features in monotonous detail and file bug reports for things that don't work right.

Then, when the new build comes out, you test them all over again. Not fun at all. This process continues until enough of the serious bugs are fixed to make the project manager happy.

(This is also why you should always wait until the first patch before installing a new game on your own computers, because you wouldn't believe the shit that QA occasionally misses. Management often decides to ignore some serious issues because they're past their release date as well.)

Oh, and the pay sucks as well. I made $28,000 a year when I worked as a QA tester in California, a place with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Seriously, most grocery store managers in in the area made more than I did, and they worked better hours.

The only real perks are that you get a lot of cool gamer swag (like hats, t-shirts, and yo-yo's), and you get to get to try out games from other projects before they're released. You also get to meet some really cool game developers as well.

Trust me, by the time game you're working on is released, you'll be totally sick of it.

 

[HAL9000]

I think the theory of this job is better than in reality, in theory you get to sit and play all day, but in actual fact you have to meticulously, methodically go through every aspect of the game looking for glitches and bugs, reported each of them as you find them <--DULL!

 

[bfdd]

My brother told me his pay from Konami I was like damn... Pay for non-game testing QA is quite a bit more. I'm currently at 45k a year + health insurance and not shitty kind either. I can work from home once a week, 120 hrs of vacation time. Pretty sweet gig I have going on tbh. A lot less money than what I used to make turning wrenches, but it's kush as all hell.


i think breaking or trying to break something or finding bugs is fun....

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Being someone that designs tests and whatnot would be a sweet job. Being the monkeys they get to run the tests not so much.

 

[bfdd]

Being someone that designs tests and whatnot would be a sweet job. Being the monkeys they get to run the tests not so much.

You're not really worth a damn if you can't design your own tests. I sit in on every code review the guys I work with have. I might not be a coder, but it helps give me an idea of what to test and where things might break.

 

[LumbergTech]

My brother told me his pay from Konami I was like damn... Pay for non-game testing QA is quite a bit more. I'm currently at 45k a year + health insurance and not shitty kind either. I can work from home once a week, 120 hrs of vacation time. Pretty sweet gig I have going on tbh. A lot less money than what I used to make turning wrenches, but it's kush as all hell.


i think breaking or trying to break something or finding bugs is fun....

I did an internship in QA and I found it quite enjoyable. Its fun being creative and trying to break things in ways that they never even thought of. At times it can be incredibly dull such as checking a bunch of numbers to see if they match up, but overall I found it to be relatively painless.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

You're not really worth a damn if you can't design your own tests. I sit in on every code review the guys I work with have. I might not be a coder, but it helps give me an idea of what to test and where things might break.

So? That's really neither here nor there with what I said. I'm responsible for writing and testing my code that doesn't mean there aren't jobs for designing tests for whole systems/projects.

 

[mmntech]

It's one of those jobs that probably isn't as fun as it sounds. You're stuck playing a game all day until it breaks. Log error, rinse, repeat. After a while, I think the enjoyment would be sucked out of it. Of course you could always get a job as a tester for Ubisoft. I assume that's a cake walk given the end condition of some of their games.

A far better job would be a video game producer or developer. It's deeply satisfying to watch something you created come to life. The best moments of my life so far were working on television shows for college. That's my dream job. Hard work but the feeling of accomplishment pays off in spades.

 

[BoomerD]

A friend of my son used to do this for a company in San Diego.

It SOUNDS fun...until they hook you up with Barbie's Little Pony Playhouse for 8 hours a day...for several weeks...

 

[kranky]

Doesn't sound like a great gig to me. Testing does not mean playing like you would at home. And the two people I know who thought it would be a great idea to spend big money for a degree in video game design have found that wasn't a promising career move either.

Video games are fun to play but to work in the industry is still going to be work. Writing code to do things that other people decided the game should do, and tedious, repetitive, drone work doing testing.

 

[jlee]

Yeah, it's really not that fun. Like any other software, you'll find yourself making huge test plans that encompass every single function of the game. Then you test the hell out of each of those features in monotonous detail and file bug reports for things that don't work right.

Then, when the new build comes out, you test them all over again. Not fun at all. This process continues until enough of the serious bugs are fixed to make the project manager happy.

(This is also why you should always wait until the first patch before installing a new game on your own computers, because you wouldn't believe the shit that QA occasionally misses. Management often decides to ignore some serious issues because they're past their release date as well.)

Oh, and the pay sucks as well. I made $28,000 a year when I worked as a QA tester in California, a place with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Seriously, most grocery store managers in in the area made more than I did, and they worked better hours.

The only real perks are that you get a lot of cool gamer swag (like hats, t-shirts, and yo-yo's), and you get to get to try out games from other projects before they're released. You also get to meet some really cool game developers as well.

Trust me, by the time game you're working on is released, you'll be totally sick of it.

Side note...Publix store managers in FL can make six figures. Assistants are $70-80k (and this was six years ago). Obviously this depends on stores/etc, but this was in Gainesville FL..not Orlando/etc.

 

[Q]

Said he would also rubber-band his thumb to the joy stick and fall asleep in his chair for a few hours a day.

 

[ViRGE]

Obligatory Penny Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/25/