11 replies to this topic

[kab012345]

How would you like to make big bucks testing Video Games for a living?
I think it would be pretty cool to get free games and consoles in the mail, and play them on the couch and then just fill out a simple survey and send it back or take it to a Local Testing Facility..

Edited by kab012345, 21 September 2007 - 12:35 AM.

[dre]

That would be intensely boring, I'd rather work in the game design team instead, where I would make complex bug and gameplay reports rather than saying "Yeah dude sweet game" or the equivalent. But who knows, a lot of people would love to sit in front of the TV/PC all day long.

[GamerGlitch]

Testing Video Games would be amazing. Since I already play video games (Microsoft Xbox 360- Gears of War) so much it would fit into my current life style. Unless the surveyed were really difficult and time taking then the job would be pretty fun and relaxing. However, some one told me, as a I was interested in this career, that the pay was sub par and Game Testing was a dead end job (Once you become a game tester there is no better job with higher pay in the field). However, if I was single, even if the pay wasn't so good I would take the job for the free games, and just the idea of getting paid to play sounds wonderful. I guess it would suck if you had to test a really poorly created game, though.

[delivi]

Man I would work there even without anything.

This is one of my favorite jobs that i would do any thing

Just think about a job where we you get paid just for playing games, usually i get scolded in my home for playing games for several hours.

Just thinking that mother-lick should favor me, that I can land in such a job.

[abminara]

Playing games is totally a waste of time and health. You will soon get close to blind if you stare at the screen for too long. In the end... dude, why don't you consider some real job for yourself?

[arnz]

While it may sound like a 'cool' job. It would be something I would not be sticking around in, especially when it comes to staring at the screen most of the time. Yes, office workers, those in IT may also be staring at a screen as well, but in their cases some of the tasks may be for clients or important tasks (eg deadlines for accounting reports). Getting back to this job here, It may or may not be repetitive, depending if the testing co-ordinators decided to put on different video games in periods, if its on a pattern, or its the same game most of the game, yes it can get a bit 'boring'.

[rayzoredge]

I could probably do it.

I usually am rather nit-picky with games anyway and like to review things for the benefit of others, since I usually read reviews from like-minded gamers to determine whether it's worth the $50 for that new video game or not.

It would be an all-right job, just because of the fact that not every game that you will test will be something you'd be interested in. This is how we come up with "bad" games...

[benzkids]

it would be pretty good but you would really get over it VERY quickly. playing games all day would be VERY boring

[galexcd]

I agree with abminara, and I personally would hate this job. I only play games occasionally when it was a rough day at school or just have to empty my mind, I couldn't stand too much more than that. I think if you want to play games for a living however, there are better ways of doing it rather than being a game tester. If you reviewed games and posted your reviews on a website and it got popular you would probably get more money than being a beta tester. Beta testers as GamerGlitch said, are payed very minimal and theres no real promotion you can get.

All in all this job is for losers who didn't go to college and have no real skills to get a real job and think that games are the reason to live.

[androomidaa]

if something like that comes up, ill just agree to play occasionally. i dont have enough time to waste on that. i have a blog to continue and my plans to work on . so u know theres not much time to play games. id rather start another blog and start playing games and post reviews. if im good at blogging i know im going to get enough buzz with my blog and make some money down the road. i guess thats the better idea.

[tyrvek]

I think being a game tester could be interesting at fist, but after aweek or so it would get very dull. As it is most games are extremley repetative. You either race, complete puzzels, kill things or do any combination of the three. Designing the games would be far more intersting. You avtually get a say in what happens, how it looks and all that.

[TikiPrincess]

My brother started out as a game tester and worked his way up to an Associate Producer for Vivendi Games, the parent company of Sierra and Blizzard, so I'll give you my second-hand experience of what it really means to be a game tester.
Sounds like a sweet deal - you get paid to play games! You got pretty decent pay: $12/hr for entry level work, which is better than what you'd usually get, even at most office jobs. But there are drawbacks. For one thing, you have to go to them. For him, that meant driving about 30-40 minutes away. Vivendi's LA base is near the airport, Activision and EA are nearby as well, though I believe that EA's base is in Northern California and they do most of their hiring from that office. And that's without traffic because his hours were really funky: 10PM-7AM or 8AM. He'd work the graveyard shift because they have people testing games pretty much 24/7.
Then there's the actual testing. You have to play the same level over and over. You're not playing for fun, and you're not playing the finished product.You have to look for glitches and bugs, which means you have to do the same thing on every level several times to make sure that it does what it's supposed to every time. And then you have to do something else the same time, every time. You're doing Alpha testing on rough cuts, which could be anything from Half-Life to Barbie's latest adventure. One of the lead testers had a list on a whiteboard. If you pissed him off for some reason, you got Barbie.
Then there's the crunch, working overtime and late hours to do Beta testing out a game as much as possible before it's released. It's a little more bearable because they're supposed to have worked out all the glitches and cleaned up the graphics. But every glitch you find has to be documented exactly so that they know where the coding is messed up, and you cringe every time that you find one because you don't want to be the sorry bastard that brings it up since it could be something that takes seconds or months to fix.
Of course, the question of job security always looms overhead because if you mess up bad enough, there are hundreds of eager gamers out there that believe testing would be a dream job. And when they're done with that game, they may not have another one for you to test until the end of the next quarter. You might be just a contractor that comes in for the Beta testing.
Luckily, my brother had a degree in Psychology with a minor in Computer Science. He was able to move up from testing into Q & A, Lead, and now into the production aspect. But he works long hours and often 7 days a week, especially with his latest project TimeShift. As I wrote about in that thread, the game has been pushed back and completely overhauled several times in the last few years. I believe he's been on it for about 2-3 years straight. After the game's released, the company will give him anywhere from a week to 3 months to recoup, having him support other stuff that's nearly ready to be released, before sticking him on another developing game.
So there's a second-hand account of what life is like as a game tester. I think I'd rather be a reviewer than a tester or designer. I'd wanna work for IGN or GameSpot and play games that are already finished, or nearly so. I'm sure if I could get in good with the editor, then I would only have to review the games that I want to and stick the noobs with the crappy ones.