At Home Games Testing

Kosmiche

Kosmiche

Kosmiche

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North Wales
I was just looking at games tester jobs, I would like to get into the games biz and thought this would be a ideal entry point.

But the jobs aren't near where I live, so I wondered, why can't we games test at home?

We already have public beta tests for the latest pc games, why can't we download a pre beta version of the game for private testing?

Is it to do with piracy and the code being leaked, is there no way around this?

I suppose that's why this will never happen :(
 
Don't do it.

No money.

No prospects.

The laughing stock of the production team.

Kids will do it for free, so why pay anyone any decent wages EVER?

And you have to play JUST level 3, time and time and time again, trying to break it by jumping over every single part of every single immovable barrier for hours, rather than playing the game 'properly' for fun.


Don't do it!
 
How good are your descriptive abilities? A common complaint I've heard from games programmers is that the testers failed to give sufficient information in their bug reports - either in what went wrong or in how to replicate the problem, often both. This is an annoyance when you're dealing with people in the same physical location and can go up to them and ask what on Earth they're talking about - when they're working from home it becomes a major issue.

You'd probably need to be able to assure the games company that you'll have a connection that will be reliable 99.99% of the time as that's how they'll be communicating with you mostly. There's the question of security of the IP, that's easier to ensure when there's a physical location that people have to go to, if you're sending the code out then it becomes more difficult to ensure.

Basically if you really want to get into games testing (and from what I know of it then it's often not much fun) then I'd suggest moving to somewhere close to games companies and see what they have on offer. It's usually not very well paid though as many people see it as a way into the industry. It might be an advantage to have some programming experience as many games testers if you're trying to get into the industry although it will depend on the company whether they appreciate this or not.
 
if you want to get into the industry start writing reviews or analytical articles on the industry - or alternatively make funny youtube videos based on games like 'hey ash watcha playin?'
 
Changes to games happen daily, with new versions of the game being put on the dev consoles every half day or so. You're able to call up current stable and test versions with various options enabled and disabled. Considering the dev consoles pull everything off a server in the building, there would be no scope for you ever being able to do this at home really as it would require you downloading pretty much the entire game twice daily and having a dev console at your house. Ain't gonna happen.
 
You wont test from home, it will be on site.

Unless you have a degree or skills in other areas applicable to the industry then I wouldnt bother unless it is for easy cash or you want to be a team lead on 20k ish for the rest of your life. Testers will probably get around 14 to 16k, there will be a lot of over time which you WILL be expected to do and a permenant contract is usually rare.
 
I've got a friend who used to play test Playstation games. Not sure whether it was PS2 or early PS3. Anyway. He said it was the most horrible work. As said above, it's about trying to break the game, so you have a list of stupid tasks that you have to do over and over again just to see what happens and to see whether, say, firing your shotgun 50 times vertically into the open sky makes the game crash, or whatever.
 
I'm a tester for a flight sim developer, it's totally voluntary with no payment apart from a free copy of the games as they are released and the odd little free gift here and there. I love it, however I would never in a million years do it for full time employment.

It can be very boring, and at times frustrating, and this is spending time playing games which I love and would be playing for hours anyway. I can't imagine for a second testing a game I have no real interest in.

Proper testing work is nothing like the public beta (essentially early releases) programs we've seen recently with the likes of Bad Company etc. There is very little time spent actually playing the games, most of your time is spent checking 3d model x or ensuring AI behaviour Y is working as intended as so on.
 
Gah, I did a few months' game testing after finishing my undergrad degree in the late 90s.

Never again.

The team I was working with were pretty cool, and we had a good atmosphere in the office (small developer), great lunchtimes in the pub, etc. But the work itself? Tedious doesn't even begin to describe it.

As others have said, unless you want a short-term easy position in between other things, why on earth would you go for this kind of job?
 
I'm in the industry and can shed a bit of light on this.

There are three types of jobs as testers, or rather 3 types of companies.

1st party (M$ and Sony) and working from home will never happen period. Ever. Never. M$ would fire you on the spot for actually touching the disk. The 360 was locked away You would get a new game every couple of weeks.

Publishers, like EA, Activision etc, also very rare to happen. This is where you would get a new game every month or 3. You would be doing very repetitive stuff compared to 1st party.

Developers like treyarch, Blizzard, Respawn. I work for one, and on a couple of occasions I have been able to work from home, but not on the game, except once. You get new games every couple of years.

I am the manager of the QA team, and I have been able to do it once, so the likely hood that you would get to as any kind of entry position is basically zero.

There are many reasons for this, but the main reason is security. How does the developer know you wont just upload the code to the pirate bay? How, possibly more importantly, does the publisher who is funding this know you wont either. You would be signing an NDA which means they could sue you into oblivion.

Then there is bandwidth. I would say I download upwards of 100GB a day during a work day. Does your BT broadband support that etc?

Of all the jobs I have done in 10 years in the games industry, testing is what I like the most, but it is a job like any other, and can include testing the same level for 2 years. It will not even be a very good game possibly.

Penny arcade made a great comic about it.

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/770836278_VG7Cr-L.jpg

This sums up the testing side at 1st party places.

Developers are the way, you may even get your ideas implemented, if you have any.

Also read this.

http://www.becomeagamestester.blogspot.com/
 
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