Game Tester
- Thread starter darubio
- Start date
What you think it is: Early access to all the latest games that you get to exclusively play all the way through whilst getting paid a lot to do so.
What it actually is: Doing the same level of Princess Unicorn Fantasy 12 over and over and over in every conceivable way until you start getting nose bleeds for minimum wage, then writing about your exploits in said POS game.
What it actually is: Doing the same level of Princess Unicorn Fantasy 12 over and over and over in every conceivable way until you start getting nose bleeds for minimum wage, then writing about your exploits in said POS game.
Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Nov 2007
- Posts
- 4,360
Whats the pay like?
Yes and it's a soul destroying experience. It is very rare you will be testing anything you would actually want to play, mostly you will be put on something you haven't even heard of before.
Also, playing a game that within 10 minutes you're sick to the back teeth of and are wondering why anyone is even bothering developing the garbage flittering about on your screen, then having to reconcile that you're now going to be playing this 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (if you ditch weekends) for what will feel like an eternity.
Honestly, game testing is for people who want a quick stepping stone into another area of the industry or people who simply don't have gaming as a passtime, as it will destroy your hobby if you do.
Also, playing a game that within 10 minutes you're sick to the back teeth of and are wondering why anyone is even bothering developing the garbage flittering about on your screen, then having to reconcile that you're now going to be playing this 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (if you ditch weekends) for what will feel like an eternity.
Honestly, game testing is for people who want a quick stepping stone into another area of the industry or people who simply don't have gaming as a passtime, as it will destroy your hobby if you do.
It's literally as other people said xD.
I have just coded a feature where you roll when you press the A button on the controller. I need you to roll in practically everything about 100 times each... terrain, buildings, enemies, oh and while you're doing that I need you to press multiple buttons that do other things.
Don't forget that when more features are added or changed, I need you to test it all again because I think the changed feature broke it :<. Sorry! xD Fill the report in with your findings so I can fix anyting that's needed.
I have just coded a feature where you roll when you press the A button on the controller. I need you to roll in practically everything about 100 times each... terrain, buildings, enemies, oh and while you're doing that I need you to press multiple buttons that do other things.
Don't forget that when more features are added or changed, I need you to test it all again because I think the changed feature broke it :<. Sorry! xD Fill the report in with your findings so I can fix anyting that's needed.
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 18 Dec 2005
- Posts
- 1,449
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- Londontown
One of my friends tests the Lego games working directly for Lego, I think he quite enjoys it. Lots of graveyard shifts though.
I did it for 7 months at a local game studio during my last year of uni. It was terrible. It really is tedious and gets boring FAST. The pay is pretty ****, you have do a lot of unpaid overtime. I only stuck it out because I was offered a graduate artist position when I graduated, but the time came and they screwed me over so I quit and moved home. Luckily it worked out for the best as I now have a much better job!
Yeah I think that some people will and do enjoy it, it's probably something you will have to try. Although you got people playing to see if the game is fun and what not, and people testing for bugs. I think most places I know have testers come in very early and test last nights build so that there's plenty of bug reports ready for when the programmers and such come in.
Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Nov 2007
- Posts
- 4,360
What is the pay?
I worked for Sony in Liverpool for about a year... 14-years go. It was pretty dull, play-testing pre-alpha games that I usually had little interest in. There where three different types of testing you could be involved in (at Sony)...
1) A skim test (1 to 5 days) of a game which is basically a release candidate, developed by anyone other than SCEE (Sony). This was probably the best one as you are basically playing a finished game for a short number of days, just reporting on any observations you find.
2) Compliance testing which basically involves checking that a completed game meets all the criteria set by Sony, i.e. checking the button mappings are correct, checking that the game runs on all the different versions of the PlayStation, checking that you can plug-in any peripheral without crashing the game... stuff like that.
3) Regular testing of a game all the way through it's development... this is where you can be on a game for months, from pre-alpha all the way through to release. This is where it gets boring.
... or you could get some weird duty like having to record yourself playing a game from start to finish, in a foreign language, so it can be sent to translators for verification.
At about £8,000 a year, the pay was rubbish... remember, this is 14 years ago.
The only good thing is that it looked good having Sony as the first job on my CV, so it made it easy to move on to something else.
1) A skim test (1 to 5 days) of a game which is basically a release candidate, developed by anyone other than SCEE (Sony). This was probably the best one as you are basically playing a finished game for a short number of days, just reporting on any observations you find.
2) Compliance testing which basically involves checking that a completed game meets all the criteria set by Sony, i.e. checking the button mappings are correct, checking that the game runs on all the different versions of the PlayStation, checking that you can plug-in any peripheral without crashing the game... stuff like that.
3) Regular testing of a game all the way through it's development... this is where you can be on a game for months, from pre-alpha all the way through to release. This is where it gets boring.
... or you could get some weird duty like having to record yourself playing a game from start to finish, in a foreign language, so it can be sent to translators for verification.
At about £8,000 a year, the pay was rubbish... remember, this is 14 years ago.
The only good thing is that it looked good having Sony as the first job on my CV, so it made it easy to move on to something else.
It worked out at around 50 quid a day.
That's what I hope to aim for and it would be nice to have Sony in my cv
someone has to run into every wall /boundary in a game aswell
, also your expecting to hve excellent english language skills so you can spot any spelling/grammar errors acording to what ive seen of games testing at lionhead from some documentaryI did a bit of Pc game testing a few years back, it was horrid. I was sen't small parts of a game that had no real resembelence of the final game and a huge list of things to check for. There was no real playing the game just constant repeating test's designed to find flaws. When you found a flaw you re-did the tests but with slight differences to see how it re-acted.
If you love playing video games do not become a tester as you will soon hate the sight of anything game related. I only did a few months before I could take no more and this was working in my spare time...
If you love playing video games do not become a tester as you will soon hate the sight of anything game related. I only did a few months before I could take no more and this was working in my spare time...