To be a game tester

ANTVGM64

Howdy, so, this is sort of an odd request, but I'm curious what a person would want to do to become a game tester. First, let me say that I've read a lot about what it entails: countless hours playing buggy games, more hours spent typing up reports of said buggy games, doldrums, tedium, and ultimately feeling a bit insignificant to the game development process.

That said, it sounds, frankly, right up my alley. I'm a born trouble-shooter (I think), and the idea of writing up an impressions and glitch report for a given title actual seems pretty interesting. I know I could be completely wrong, but it's worth a shot to explore, and considering the numerous intelligent, well-spoken, and frankly sexy members of this message board, I'd figured I'd ask what the best way to do this sort of thing, would be.

Some notes, caveats, general questions:

1. Ideally getting paid for this work would be great.
2. Working from home would be great, too, but obviously that's a pie-in-the-sky sort of dream, there.
3. How are the hours? I currently have a 4-day-a-week job that takes weekends and Monday/Tuesday, but I have three free days in which to test and report, and so on - is there such a thing as a part time game tester?
4. I don't have a game development degree. My degree is in Writing and Producing video - So I'm not sure how big of a deal breaker that is.
5. Are game testing gigs typically farmed out to some company, or are there in-house testers for studios? What about for IOS devs?
6. What are the keys to getting hired for this sort of gig?
7. Every time I see an ad for such things, they seem scammy and stupid, so I'm very trepidations about what resources to trust - where's the best resource for looking into this sort of thing?


Thanks!

Hahnsoo1

Unfortunately, I think it mostly boils down to location, location, location. No matter what degree you have (or lack thereof, although having a degree of any kind will probably improve your odds), if you don't live near a place that does game testing, you won't get the tester job. If you have a job currently, you probably won't be able to keep that job. Expect long hours and full-time work, but also expect contract work (so at the end of the contract, you are out of a job). Your best bet is making connections with people who already do this type of work... find people who are already testers, in other words.

It would probably be best to say where you live currently (or approximate area of commute), so people can tell you what jobs are available in your area.

I have known exactly one person who was able to do game testing at his home, and that was a short 3 month contract job for a start-up MMO that ultimately failed (but he got paid *shrugs*). He had something like 5 years of testing experience to land that gig.

CelestialBadger

Just find out what game dev companies exist in your area and apply to them. It's not a high-skilled job so you shouldn't need qualifications, but it doesn't pay much. Don't neglect smaller companies (eg cellphone games, advergaming) because they are more flexible in hiring than large companies who might only hire when ramping up on big projects.

If there aren't any, but you still want to test games, you could get an ordinary job and test games for fun in your spare time. Indie game developers often run unpaid free betas that you can join by being in their community. It's probably good experience to do so anyway if you want to stand out from the crowd applying to real testing jobs.

Also you can get jobs testing non-game software which may end up more of a valid career option in the long run.

a5ehren

CelestialBadger wrote: »

Just find out what game dev companies exist in your area and apply to them. It's not a high-skilled job so you shouldn't need qualifications, but it doesn't pay much. Don't neglect smaller companies (eg cellphone games, advergaming) because they are more flexible in hiring than large companies who might only hire when ramping up on big projects.

If there aren't any, but you still want to test games, you could get an ordinary job and test games for fun in your spare time. Indie game developers often run unpaid free betas that you can join by being in their community. It's probably good experience to do so anyway if you want to stand out from the crowd applying to real testing jobs.

Also you can get jobs testing non-game software which may end up more of a valid career option in the long run.

Yeah, #1 rule of games industry jobs is that you can almost always do the same job for more money and better hours at a non-game software company.

That said, all of this advice sounds spot-on.

Rye

• There are 3rd party testing houses that hire people to test without being the developer themselves. It's easier to get into one of those houses because they don't shoulder the risks of having a buggy product.
• Find game developers near you: www.gamedevmap.com, and chat them up
• Learn some testing software like Selenium. Automated testing is the absolute hottest shit in QA right now, and even without pounds of experience, you might be able to land an entry level job if you know how to do some automation.
• Active beta testing can qualify as experience. If you're one of those dudes that gets into a beta and REALLY submits bug reports and detailed (non-balance related) feedback, you should mention that in an interview.

Voro

My experience is a little dated, but I'll answer based on some game testing I did at a company in Redwood Shores.

ANTVGM64 wrote: »

1. Ideally getting paid for this work would be great.

Definitely make sure you're getting a steady paycheck, but expect the bare minimum. Oh, and you'll probably be temporary / contract so they don't have to give you any healthcare benefits.

2. Working from home would be great, too, but obviously that's a pie-in-the-sky sort of dream, there.

Not going to happen. Your single most important duty will be build security. The cost of a build getting out is worth more than the sum of your paychecks for the duration of the testing.

3. How are the hours? I currently have a 4-day-a-week job that takes weekends and Monday/Tuesday, but I have three free days in which to test and report, and so on - is there such a thing as a part time game tester?

They'll tell you when you're working. If you don't make it in, your badge probably won't work the next day. During crunch time, it's not unusual to work 13 days in a row and have one day off. On the upside, you probably won't work late unless they're willing to pay for your superiors to be there.

4. I don't have a game development degree. My degree is in Writing and Producing video - So I'm not sure how big of a deal breaker that is.

Your degree won't matter for such a low level position. They'll care about your attention to detail and ability to find bugs while playing a game.

5. Are game testing gigs typically farmed out to some company, or are there in-house testers for studios? What about for IOS devs?

Not sure, but the company I was working for didn't really farm things out. There were third parties occasionally conducting tests, but those were for focus groups.

6. What are the keys to getting hired for this sort of gig?

It really isn't difficult to get hired. The difficult part is moving up within the system.

7. Every time I see an ad for such things, they seem scammy and stupid, so I'm very trepidations about what resources to trust - where's the best resource for looking into this sort of thing?

Check the company's official job listings. That's where I found mine.

pacbowl

I live in LA and almost became a game tester for Activision about 10 years ago when I was between jobs. I saw their ad at monster.com or something about being a game tester. Well being a gamer I thought this was right up my alley. I applied online and got a response a few days later to come in for an interview. So I drove down to Santa Monica to their HQ, went through the interview process, which was a short interview with the heads for different departments. They asked me what kinds of games/platforms I liked, how often I played, blah blah. They told me it was almost like a seasonal job. That it wasn't a steady paycheck. I could work on a game for a few weeks to a few months, then not work for 2 months until they called me in again. When they had a lot of games in the pipe, testers would be busier. When it was slow, not so much. Things went good and they wanted to hire me. Unfortunately so did another company who was more local and paid quite a bit more. So it came down to a choice of either a decent paying phone support job at a company 10 minutes away, or a game tester job at Activision for minimum wage at their HQ 30 minutes away (an hour with morning traffic). Driving to SM every day while being paid minimum wage would have covered just the gas to get there and home so I opted for the more responsible job of the local phone support. That's my story of how I almost became a game tester for Activision.

TheKoolEagle

As someone who worked for Activision for 4 years as a game tester I feel I have a little knowledge on the subject.

1. Ideally getting paid for this work would be great.

This is location based obviously, I worked out of Activision's Minnesota office and made a bit more than minimum wage, anywhere you go you will probably make minimum wage or maybe up to $4/hr above minimum.

2. Working from home would be great, too, but obviously that's a pie-in-the-sky sort of dream, there.

They won't allow you to bring home builds of games, plus you can get several builds in a day, and they want to make sure you aren't just sleeping at your console, this is extremely common with people new to the testing environment.

3. How are the hours? I currently have a 4-day-a-week job that takes weekends and Monday/Tuesday, but I have three free days in which to test and report, and so on - is there such a thing as a part time game tester?

Generally you have to commit yourself full time for any company doing testing. Why would they hire you if you can only work 3 days a week when they have plenty of other applicants who will work every day? Usually you end up doing crunch time for 2-3 months, and regular full time hours for 3-4 months, after that your contract has ended for the year and if you did a good job, they will rehire you in 6 months.

Crunch Time generally was 12 hour days for 13 days in a row, then a day of rest. You literally have no time to do anything else, and I ended up gaining about 40 lbs from eating fast food for lunch and dinner every day to work those hours. Of course that was also my fault because I didn't bring prepared lunches.

4. I don't have a game development degree. My degree is in Writing and Producing video - So I'm not sure how big of a deal breaker that is.

It is a starting level position, I have a degree in programming but I worked with others who didn't even go to college.

5. Are game testing gigs typically farmed out to some company, or are there in-house testers for studios? What about for IOS devs?

This depends who you work for. Developers usually have a few testers on staff to do internal testing, but producers also have big groups (this is where I worked.) I believe we also did have third party testers entering bugs, but usually those testers did not read already-written bugs or give clear concise instruction on how to reproduce bugs.

6. What are the keys to getting hired for this sort of gig?

Again it depends on your location, I interned at Activision for 6 months unpaid doing tech support, that gave me a huge boost when I got out of school and applied for testing, your best bet is to try to maybe get an internship first and apply when you can commit 100% to the company

7. Every time I see an ad for such things, they seem scammy and stupid, so I'm very trepidations about what resources to trust - where's the best resource for looking into this sort of thing?

Any tradeschool or ads you see for game testing are complete lies and should not be trusted. Your best bet if you want to really dig into something like this is going to community or state college and take classes in programming. Honestly though everything I did was not technical at all, you don't generally write crash reports in the way you would think, all you do is write down the steps to make the game crash, and try to get it as close to 100% crash rate as possible, then send it off to the developer, they will send a new build and a list of the bugs they fixed, then you try to recreate the bug.

I absolutely loved the people I worked with, but it wasn't worth idolizing the field, I only know a handful of the people I worked with who are still there, most of them have moved onto other testing gigs for digital media and other things, I went into IT work and it has been so much better than my 4 year stint in the industry. The job is in such high demand and has such low requirements the industry doesn't have to ever worry about replacing you. I recommend reading stories from The Trenches web comic, they will give you an idea on what the industry is like.

ANTVGM64

Cool, thanks for all the advice everyone, alas it looks like my full-time gig is a little too sweet to pass up to look into this passion! But i've learned a lot and I appreciate the no-nonsense manner in which my questions were answered!

Thanks!

Bursar

I've been a game tester for a few years (Obsidian, the Collective, Activision, Atlus), then a QA lead, then essentially got bumped out of it when my non-QA workload overshadowed testing. I'll just answer your questions here, and forgive me if I'm a little blunt.

ANTVGM64 wrote: »

1. Ideally getting paid for this work would be great.

Most testing is paid. Some companies don't hire themselves, but get their QA staff through hiring agencies.

2. Working from home would be great, too, but obviously that's a pie-in-the-sky sort of dream, there.

Never gonna happen. You'll be signing an NDA anyway, and no company would allow you to take materials on a project under development out the door. If you're working on a console game, you'll be testing on development/debug console units, which run several thousands of dollars each. If you're on a PC, they'll want it to be run on a controlled environment. Others have mentioned the time it takes to download/install new builds as well as the simple human factor of being at your desk.

3. How are the hours? I currently have a 4-day-a-week job that takes weekends and Monday/Tuesday, but I have three free days in which to test and report, and so on - is there such a thing as a part time game tester?

I can't say such a thing is impossible, but generally there are more than enough people willing to work full-time that there's no real point in hiring someone on for that limited amount of time.

4. I don't have a game development degree. My degree is in Writing and Producing video - So I'm not sure how big of a deal breaker that is.

Truthfully? A "Game Development" degree doesn't really matter. What it does is provide you with a set of skills to do things with, and seeing what you've done and what skills you have is more important than how you got them. What was I saying...? Oh, right. Writing is good! It's a sign that you can actually describe what's happening. Those Trenches stories about bug reports that simply say "Observe" are real things, and they're absolutely maddening.

5. Are game testing gigs typically farmed out to some company, or are there in-house testers for studios? What about for IOS devs?

From what I've seen:
Studios will have a "core" QA team that they keep in-house, and add additional temp testers as projects and time demand. This core isn't necessarily a permanent position, but more a bunch of go-to folks. As I mentioned before, if there are staffing agencies you can submit a resume to, mention game studios to them and they may have contacts.

6. What are the keys to getting hired for this sort of gig?

Timing, and knowing a guy.
A game set for a holiday release (that is, that wants to release by Black Friday) will begin ramping up QA around the beginning of summer.

7. Every time I see an ad for such things, they seem scammy and stupid, so I'm very trepidations about what resources to trust - where's the best resource for looking into this sort of thing?

Yes, if you ever see ads promising to "get paid for playing video games," they're full of crap. Company web sites are usually the way to go. If a company's hiring, they'll say so, and if it's not hiring, your resume will just get placed in a folder somewhere.