Tester job in the Games Industry - advice needed

RaMDOM

RaMDOM

RaMDOM

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Firstly this is not for me; I have been happily employed for years now. This is for my cousin who just graduated from Uni.

Basically he has not done as well as he thought he would and I think it will be hard for him to get into the sector he wished to work in. I asked him the other day 'what does he like doing' and he answered what many of us would answer - 'playing games'.

That got me thinking that maybe he could work as a games tester. I have had a quick trawl on the internet and nothing obvious came up or was apparent. So I thought I would put this out to the advanced collective intelligence that is the OcUK forumites!

So guys; anyone know where he could start? Where such jobs could be found and what he would need to do? He lives at home and dare I say, could work for free for the experience if needs be. However a pay cheque, no matter how small at this stage would be welcome. He is based in the West Midlands so I guess at this stage any opportunities would have to be there.

Okay - over to you guys! Your help would be most appreciated.
 
From what I've heard it's really not a fun job to have. Could your cousin not do some extra work experience/education for a year to improve his chances at getting into his chosen profession?
 
Buy Edge magazine, always lots of game studio jobs in that. Be prepaired for mind numbing boredom, thankless long hours and losing interest in playing games while you're at it :0
 
I've done a lot of games testing over the last 10+ years for small mod teams-Ea games.

Its not the fun most people expect as early builds are ugly and very buggy, until it gets near the retail build its not fun at all as its not play testing, pay isnt great either.
It could be a good stepping stone helping him on the way to a games development job which is what I used it for.
 
d_brennen said:
Buy Edge magazine, always lots of game studio jobs in that. Be prepaired for mind numbing boredom, thankless long hours and losing interest in playing games while you're at it :0
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Quoted for truth.

My friend worked as a games tester for a number of years, he finally quit after having to complete some **** harry potter games on the PS3 25 times in a row. From what I have heard, avoid testing like the plague.

If he is interested in the computer games industry I also agree edge magazine is good, also keep up to date with websites like kotaku as they sometimes have interesting info
 
I have done it in the past, worked for Lionhead for a bit, it was not really fun repetitive, but the company was amazing...

Stelly
 
Could it be, and this is just a wild stab in the dark you understand, that his not doing as well as he thought he would in uni is somehow connected to his games playing?
 
Hang on.

So Person A finishes his education and does not get the grades or results he wanted.

Then it is decided that he should look into entering one of the most contested fields with the one of the worst pay to effort and time ratios in the civilised world?

If you want to make a good career in video gaming, you have to be really clever, really lucky or really persistent. For a good job you need ridiculous amounts of each. The whole business is still very much in its fledgling state, which means that attractive jobs are few and far between because so, so many people 'want to be in the industry'. In effect, you have a huge supply of people who are satisfied earning next to nothing doing seriously repetitive and boring stuff for the chance that one day, that promotion will come or someone will realise their talent and hire them for something better than playtesting.

I am not saying that he should not give it a go, but having any real aspirations of doing anything else than what likely over time becomes just slightly more interesting than being a grocery store cashier might be a stretch.
 
Cheers for the initial responses guys. I have heard about being a tester and I am under no illusion that it would be a pretty boring job, which is why I would never do it. In all possibility it may destroy his yearn for games. I don't think it lead to his degree mark as he knows himself and did not take his PC to Uni.

I am thinking down this route as he pretty much has no clear career direction at the moment. I suggested an apprenticeship in something like electrician or plumber as it would keep ones mind more occupied that say, stacking a shelf, and he did not seem interested

Basically a tester job would be doing something in an industry which he is interested in. He has done a bit ofprogramming and so may be it would give him the drive he needs and it may lead to something else.

Will pick up EDGE and see what is there. I thought something would have been on the web though.
 
Spils said:
I've done a lot of games testing over the last 10+ years for small mod teams-Ea games.

Its not the fun most people expect as early builds are ugly and very buggy, until it gets near the retail build its not fun at all as its not play testing, pay isnt great either.
It could be a good stepping stone helping him on the way to a games development job which is what I used it for.
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Porcelina said:
If you want to make a good career in video gaming, you have to be really clever, really lucky or really persistent. For a good job you need ridiculous amounts of each. The whole business is still very much in its fledgling state, which means that attractive jobs are few and far between because so, so many people 'want to be in the industry'. In effect, you have a huge supply of people who are satisfied earning next to nothing doing seriously repetitive and boring stuff for the chance that one day, that promotion will come or someone will realise their talent and hire them for something better than playtesting.

I am not saying that he should not give it a go, but having any real aspirations of doing anything else than what likely over time becomes just slightly more interesting than being a grocery store cashier might be a stretch.
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I'm going through uni doing computer games programming, currently on placement at a non games programming company, I was unable to even get a placement (some of the bigger UK companies don't even do them!). I hope to go through the testing route if I don't quite do as well in the programming side of things. But that's only because I've done this degree. Like many have said it is repetitive stuff, but then I suppose you don't really know what it's like til you try!
 
I worked for a company that Microsoft outsource their quality testing of Xbox games to during my off time at uni.

It's fine as a one off for a summer job, but you wouldn't want to do it for a living, especially not as a long term career move. Testing games is a very long way from playing them. You'll spend most your time writing up long bug reports, and covering the same tiny section of a game. I was around when Halo 3 was being tested. I must have played the first level 80+ times. :(

The hours are long, and the pay is low, it's also not necessarily a stable job. You tend to test when there's games ready to test. Even where I used to work, where every Xbox game came through one branch or another at some point, we'd still have days with no work.

Honestly, it just sounds like a bit of a pipe dream your feeding him. Tell him to go back to working hard to get into the sector he wants to be in. If he can't get motivated to do that, being a tester wont do it for him.
 
Out of interest, what sector did he want to work in?

Many years ago I was a games-tester at Sony's main PlayStation test-center in Liverpool (I think it's still there... in an unmarked building that not many know about). I worked there for about 18-months and got to work on around 20 or so different games. I originally got-in first asking Psygnosis (Liverpool-based dev-house, who made Wipeout etc) if they would take me on a work placement while I was at Uni, they said "no" but put me in-touch with this main Sony place that was just across the road from them... they then gave me a 2-week placement. After I'd finished Uni I was invited back there full-time. I only really went back as it was a decent opportunity to get some work and also a reputable company-name on my CV.

The pay (at least when I did it) was garbage, mainly because it's a relatively under-skilled job and there are always a tonne of people wanting to do it.

There are many facets to it, but they are generally all very boring. People think they'll be sat playing MW2 or FIFA all day for fun, but it's not like that at all. You could be doing things like compliance testing, which is basically things like testing all the different controllers to make sure they all work with the game, checking the button assignments conform to standards, checking the game can be paused at different times, checking the menus, string-translations, etc, etc, etc. Or you could wind-up on an really early version of a game which is only 10% complete and as buggy as hell.

Also, unless you've just done a degree in games-design, software-engineering, mathematics or something else that's relative, then I wouldn't look at games-testing as some sort of stepping stone towards becoming a games-developer etc. In the 18-months I was at Sony I only know of one bloke who managed to get a development job out of it... he had a masters in mathematics and a Dad who was also a developer, he taught himself C, made a basic space-invaders game, took it to an interview and got lucky.

If your mate really wanted to get into it still, then he'd probably need to do two things... 1) draft a decent cv and cover letter and sent it to as many suitable dev-houses you can find, and 2) try to find some agencies that specialize-in (or are involved with) games companies, then basically call and register with them (i.e. some companies will have preferred-suppliers/agencies, so going to the company direct in that case would be a waste of time).
 
Quick word of advice, if your cousin is looking at getting into the games industry then they will need to look outside of the West Midlands. From my personnel experience, they are hardly any game companies round that area. A few have come and gone, one of Sega's studio's which opened in Solihull didn't last for very long before the office was shut down.

As for the games testing job itself, my friend was a games tester for Rage (before they also shut down) and he loved it but probably because it was his first job when he was young. The hours were long, 14hr shift he worked at one point to get a PS1 game released on time but for this name to be acknowledged in the credits was worth it to him.
 
I've never done it but I can imagine it's very boring. I'd imagine you spend less time playing the game and more time trying to fall through walls etc. Even if you did play through the game, as mentioned above, it's going to be over and over. As much as I love games, there are far more games I'd never want to play than ones I choose to play so the chances are, he won't have an interest in what's being given to him.
 
I was a games tester for about 6 months, contracting for an X-BOX testing arm.

I did not actually find it that boring as I was interested in the mechanics of the games etc. However, I was only there 6 months after 6 years it may be different. There was a high turnover (think that's why they went with the odd contractor) of staff.

Need an eye for detail, an 'ability' to repeat mundane tasks, some understanding of game mechanics (coding not really necessary) and not be willing to work hard for little pay.

Game Development is even harder to get into, this was were I wanted to be before I went into contracting and now I am an IT Contractor/Manager.
 
malachi said:
Quick word of advice, if your cousin is looking at getting into the games industry then they will need to look outside of the West Midlands. From my personnel experience, they are hardly any game companies round that area. A few have come and gone, one of Sega's studio's which opened in Solihull didn't last for very long before the office was shut down.

As for the games testing job itself, my friend was a games tester for Rage (before they also shut down) and he loved it but probably because it was his first job when he was young. The hours were long, 14hr shift he worked at one point to get a PS1 game released on time but for this name to be acknowledged in the credits was worth it to him.
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actually theres a ton of gaming studios around the midlands. The problem is most of them are small and not heard of.

so finding them can be a challenge, and even when u do find them, because they are small, most dont have any jobs available anyways.

games development is not an easy profession to get into, if is something u really want to do, u just have to keep at it and never give up
 
the one i was going for was at derby i also applied at activision many years ago but got a better offer at the time.

most of time boring as hell doing repetitive stuff.
 
After speaking to a few friends in the industry for a few big names, they say that the testing is very boring for the actual tester if they are no involved in the development. For example, to make a change to a game as a designer/programmer/artist etc and then play the game with that change is far more enjoyable then just pure testing and being told what has changed. There is no gratification out of it.

I am in the last year of Uni doing a computer games design course and the last project I worked on was with 11 people (8 designers and 3 programmers) and I loved play testing because it was something we could actually say "We made this happen" about.

If you he wants to actually go into the industry, he needs to really put himself out there and get his skills up. Most companys will want you to have the skills they need before employment, however, if they use something like "3Dmax" but you are excellent on "Maya" they will help you cross over.

As a general rule: There are no jobs in the industry. If you want to be employed you must sell yourself to the company and tell them why they want you and how you can make their company better, they are not going to pick anyone up who says "I can do that".
 
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