Game Tester

darubio

darubio

darubio

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Any here ever worked or working as a game tester? Just wondering what is it like, the environment, stuff that you actually do as a tester (obviously involves playing games but what else?) the hours, wage..everything else really? lol and How did you find it working as a game tester?
 
Tediously dull.

You know that vision every kid has of what it's like to work in a chocolate factory, where there would be chocolate fountains everywhere, and you could eat as much as you want, and there would be unicorns that excreted gold everywhere, and just generally be awesome?

Yet when you visited Cadbury world, it was full of disgruntled Brummies on minimum wage trying to resist the urge to spit in every 10th Crunchie bar.

That's what it's like.
 
On the surface it does sound like the dream job but this question has been asked a lot of times on here and has received some very negative responses.

From what I've gathered, its not all its cracked up to be.

Hours/days of sitting playing the same hour of game over and over, poor wages etc.
 
It's the best job ever, you get to play any game you want while strippers stuff money down your pants. No wait, it's the worst job ever, you get to test tedious half finished games in threadbare pants because you are so poor and end up stripping to subsidise your income and never, ever want to play a game again.
 
Spunkey said:
Tediously dull.

You know that vision every kid has of what it's like to work in a chocolate factory, where there would be chocolate fountains everywhere, and you could eat as much as you want, and there would be unicorns that excreted gold everywhere, and just generally be awesome?

Yet when you visited Cadbury world, it was full of disgruntled Brummies on minimum wage trying to resist the urge to spit in every 10th Crunchie bar.

That's what it's like.
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haha ok thats cool :) Thanks for the tip lol

wish me luck on my interview for it then next week :P haha
 
I worked for a year on a AAA game in the development studio itself as an "Embedded QA tester", i was on £7.50 an hour, working a minimum of 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Where i was working there was a general rule of if your asked to do over-time or weekends its expected that you'll do it. We got no extra pay for overtime (still £7.50) and more often than i liked we stayed till 1/2am working on a build. The crunch period is very bad for over time as you would expect, i was averaging between 64-70 hours a week at one point.

The team i worked with was great, we spent a small time testing the game and then we would categorise the issues and enter them into a database or speak to a specific developer. We would also perform performance tests, network tests, stress test and any other tests the developers around us wished to see, collecting crashes, logs, stacks etc. As mentioned it can get tedious for example; we would also sit looking at the real specific features of the game i.e testing every gun in every position/situation possible.

We also did a lot of the PR work with journalists and did quite a bit of the running around for the trailers. I enjoyed my year and had a great team but the hours are long and the work really does begin to grind on you after a while so got quite lucky with the team i had.
 
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Know a guy that gets contracted to do this occasionally. He finds it extremely dull - basically you just have to learn the common ways you can break gameplay / graphics rendering / etc and attempt them in as many scenarios as possible. Over. And over.

I'd avoid it.
 
Game testing is not that bad a job. Especially if you can get a role as a tester employed by an actual development company rather than a publisher or outsourcing unit.

However, you need to understand what the job is. You're not "playing games" all day. It is not a great route into developing games (although some designers do come up that way). What you're doing is patiently and diligently testing something, and then explaining clearly to the developers what is wrong, why it is wrong and how to reproduce the problem.

If you have an organised personality, are observant and can think logically and express yourself clearly then you'll (a) make a good tester and (b) quite probably enjoy it.

If you want to play games all day, then you're in for a rude shock.

As for hours, wages, working environment etc. - testing is usually the lowest paid job in the games industry, expect similar wages to an office monkey - i.e. not great. You can command a bit more if you're fluent in one or more foreign languages. Hours and working environment vary a lot and like most games industry jobs there are plenty of companies out there that will treat you terribly but an increasing number are much better on that front and nowadays there are plenty of places that work sensible hours (35-40/week) with only the occasional late nights. Prospects wise: it's like any other job you can get promotions to team leader, management, etc. in the usual kind of way and there is some chance of a move into level design, or game design proper - I've worked with a number of designers and a couple of artists who came into the industry that way - but the vast majority of games testers won't make any such move.

So, in summary, it's an okay job if you understand what it is. The pay isn't great, but if you lack any particularly marketable skills it doesn't compare that badly to your alternative options.
 
A friend of a friend done game testing and thought he would be testing the latest FPS games and having lots of fun. The first game he was given to test was a Barbie game which obviously he had no interest in. He had to play certain parts to see if there were any bugs. If a bug was found then he had to start again to see if the same bug occurred. Over and over again to verify the exact point.

Doesn't that sound fun :p
 
Damien. said:
You'd be happier wiping old peoples arses.
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haha :P I doubt it.

Mr Jack said:
Game testing is not that bad a job. Especially if you can get a role as a tester employed by an actual development company rather than a publisher or outsourcing unit.

However, you need to understand what the job is. You're not "playing games" all day. It is not a great route into developing games (although some designers do come up that way). What you're doing is patiently and diligently testing something, and then explaining clearly to the developers what is wrong, why it is wrong and how to reproduce the problem.

If you have an organised personality, are observant and can think logically and express yourself clearly then you'll (a) make a good tester and (b) quite probably enjoy it.

If you want to play games all day, then you're in for a rude shock.

As for hours, wages, working environment etc. - testing is usually the lowest paid job in the games industry, expect similar wages to an office monkey - i.e. not great. You can command a bit more if you're fluent in one or more foreign languages. Hours and working environment vary a lot and like most games industry jobs there are plenty of companies out there that will treat you terribly but an increasing number are much better on that front and nowadays there are plenty of places that work sensible hours (35-40/week) with only the occasional late nights. Prospects wise: it's like any other job you can get promotions to team leader, management, etc. in the usual kind of way and there is some chance of a move into level design, or game design proper - I've worked with a number of designers and a couple of artists who came into the industry that way - but the vast majority of games testers won't make any such move.

So, in summary, it's an okay job if you understand what it is. The pay isn't great, but if you lack any particularly marketable skills it doesn't compare that badly to your alternative options.
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You're absolutely right, and I truly understand what everyone saying about the job but I probably would look at this as an opportunity rather than label it as a really awful job to have. Also if I do get it I hope to gain me some new contacts within the company that could potentially help me out if I ever want to choose a different career path after. Anyway my interview is for a temporary position and I really want to do well and experience it for myself.

Its good to hear other peoples opinion too :) Cos if I do get it and if I feel like how you lot are saying about the job at the end then i would take it as my fault :P But im sure it'll be great ;) I'l make it great!! haha
 
Most of it isn't exactly what you'd describe as "playing" a game.

If you're really lucky, and you're assigned as a tester on the latest COD (or whatever), you're not actually going to be playing the game as such.

You might get assigned a task (eg, testing collision meshes) and you spend your whole day in a level, bumping into objects and then writing down the results when something unexpected happens.

If you're unlucky, you won't even get near the game itself. You'll be given pages of code, and you've got to go through them all and check them all for any little mistakes.

I've done a similar job. One that involved "watching TV all day", and it was the most mind-numbingly boring experience of my life.
 
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