video game tester?

wow thanks for the response to the post , I’ve been looking and some require coding and some don’t & maths degrees and whatnot I was merely looking for a 2nd job as it were that i could do at home and as i play / buy games a lot i though that i might as well test them etc. But it appears more hassle than it’s worth.

Does anyone here work from home? ... maybe stepping away from the topic there...
 
Mp4 said:
wow thanks for the response to the post , I’ve been looking and some require coding and some don’t & maths degrees and whatnot I was merely looking for a 2nd job as it were that i could do at home and as i play / buy games a lot i though that i might as well test them etc. But it appears more hassle than it’s worth.

Does anyone here work from home? ... maybe stepping away from the topic there...
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That's beta testing really though, and no shortage of people willing to do that for free.
 
I worked as a "tester" before, but not for games, in the DTV sector. In the end ended up developing an automated testing system for the company. Suspect games testing will be similar where you would have to write scripts to test certain features several times over and over again. Because games are very visual, you would have to keep watching it to make sure there would not be any defects, but if latest games are anything to go by, they don't do enough testing anyway :)

I would suspect that you would not be able to do this from home, as chances are you'd need to have access to latest builds, scripting software, ect. Doubt that in big development houses you would "play" the said game. And with beta testing most of that I believe is free anyway.
 
Moley said:
How are your maths skills? Programming games nowadays can be heavily maths intensive. Remember Pythagoras's theorem? Wolfenstein relied heavily on it. Who'd have thought that boring stuff from school would actually be of use?!!?!?
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I used to do 3d programming (C++) and that was largely vector mathematics (which is eqiv to degree level maths), and uless you love that kind of thing - it's difficult and not particulalry exciting :p.
 
If you want a job in QA theres a really easy and almost guarenteed way to get in to it. Send your CV to codemasters and ask for a QA position. You dont need to know programming at all, just your basic GCSES and thats it. If you apply yourself you can progress through the company from this point.
If however you do have programming experience then you may even be able to get a programming position.

BE WARNED: This may destroy your love for games as you WILL be playing a title repetitively for months on end. You will also find yourself picking out flaws in almost any game you play.
 
D0nk3y said:
If you want a job in QA theres a really easy and almost guarenteed way to get in to it. Send your CV to codemasters and ask for a QA position. You dont need to know programming at all, just your basic GCSES and thats it. If you apply yourself you can progress through the company from this point.
If however you do have programming experience then you may even be able to get a programming position.

BE WARNED: This may destroy your love for games as you WILL be playing a title repetitively for months on end. You will also find yourself picking out flaws in almost any game you play.
Click to expand...

Yup, Codies take on quite a few QA staff - unfortunately I don't think they are hiring right now. If you're looking to progress into development while working at Codies, you have to take into consideration that there are about 150 other testers who all want to break into development as well, so it can be quite competitive :).

Good luck anyways!
 
I did QA with a company in Glasgow for a couple of years. It was a good laugh, as the people I was working with were all pretty likeminded. The work itself was pretty boring though, and even if you get to test a game you think you'll enjoy, you will absolutely despise it after a few weeks of testing it.

I'm not sure about qualifications tbh, but the majority of people working here do have a degree/qualification in something computer related. The pay sucks, and you will find that a lot of test work is casual contract only. So you only work/get paid when there are games to be tested.
 
I have spent about 4 years doing software testing in a previous job ( not games mind u)

It was Ok , you do get a fair amount of variety ( also I had to write test code to
test the production code - interesting stuff trying to read 5 other peoples
source and work out how to validate it )

Iam currently trying to get back into testing stuff again for the challenge of it.

There is an ESIB certification course you can do on software testing ( my company paid for mine)
 
That's ISEB btw. Foundation course in software testing. That will give you some grounding.

I work as a software tester, great job, i work in the financial sector, pays ok, although i plan to go contracting when the market settles down a bit.
 
All fun and games till your companys big project is a Bus driving simulator and you have to play it 5 hours a day ;). I went for a QA possition at Acclaim in Cheltenham as a summer job while I was at uni but didnt hear back, I assume they are absolutely snowed under with applications. They went Bankrupt though so that'll teach them for not accepting me :D
 
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I monitor network security at night some time and play computer games all night to eat away the time. Does that count as getting paid to play games? Sure as hell feels like it and the pay is nice lol
 
I recently graduated from a games course and it's more difficult than I anticipated to find a suitable role in the industry. I did have an interview recently where I enquired as to whether one could realistically work their way up from a tester position and they told me that they generally don't do that because testers don't posses the right skills. Take that with however many pinches of salt you like.
 
Too lazy to read all the comments :P


Being a Games tester is something I often contemplated but now I know better :P My flatmate is a games tester and heres a list of problems Ive identified from him :P


Can be crappy hours depending who you work for!

Often get crap games to test on crap platforms ( even mobile phone games get tested! )

Crap pay!

a lot of the work is contracted so it can be difficult to get a permanent job.





Of course depending on the job and who youre working for, there can be some perks :P but overall the testers are at the bottom of the ladder and dont require a huge amount of training and get treated accordingly :/

Maybe other people have had a different experience but thats how Ive seen it :P
 
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