5 Tips to Becoming a Video Game Tester and Getting Paid to Play Video Games

Do you want to know how to get paid to play games? As in get paid to play video games? Well you've come to the right place if the answer to that question was "yes". The way that people that get paid to play video games make money is by becoming video game testers and working for game companies to make sure game releases are top notch. But how can you become a video game tester and actually make money by at home video game testing? Here are five simple tips that will keep you on the right track:

Work your way up from lower companies, like indie developers and online Flash game makers, to the big dogs like Insomniac or Bandai. It'll take a while, for sure, but you should just keep trucking away until you're fairly well respected. And after you're well respected you will really be raking in!

Don't expect a big payday right away- you can certainly earn $30 per hour when you get the hang of it, but initially you'll be working for lower rates at about $10-$15 per hour. That may not sound too exciting, but what other job lets you sit back and relax doing something you enjoy to make money like being a video game tester? What other job will let you get paid to play games? Video game testers definitely have it made when you look at it from this light, no?

You might also want to expand your resume in another way. Work a little elsewhere in the field. By this I mean simply try your luck at learning C++ or another programming language. Having the skills of a game developer will give you a better shot at getting hired to get paid to play games.

Be well prepared for rejection. The simple fact is that game developers don't particularly have a need for beta game testers and at home video game testing is so scarce because of this. But if you are really persistent and keep heading out there to find the jobs instead of waiting for them to come to you, then you will almost certainly be getting paid to play games in no time!

Do it for the love of the game. Sounds lame or cliche, but the truth is you really do need to have a passion, a great passion, for all thing gaming before you seriously consider becoming a game tester who will get paid to play games.

Those tips are what got many people started in successful video game tester careers. For more information on becoming a game tester, who gets paid to play games, you should check out some of the resources at the Get Paid to Play Games. This site is written by an experienced professional in the video game industry (even though he's only 19) so you can bet it's a pretty useful resource. Check it out if you have the time and really want to become a beta games tester and get paid to play games!

Click here to visit the site now!

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Game Testing Jobs - Becoming a Top-Gun Video Game Tester by Learning Software Testing Fundamentals

An important step towards getting hired for all the game testing jobs you want is to become a really a great video game tester - the star of the team, or at least co-star. Achieving that level of competency involves moving beyond the what - finding bugs - to the how. How, exactly does one uncover flaws in the game? Ultimately, most bugs will fall into two categories - either design and game play bugs, or code bugs.

Understanding that you aren't simply testing a video game, but rather, are testing software, will help a great deal in finding and isolating bugs to hand off to the developers to fix. There are universal principles to the discipline of testing software, and when applied to testing video games, understanding these fundamentals will skyrocket your bug count - and your salary. You will then find employers begging to hire you, and will have all the game testing jobs you could possibly want.

Software testing is ALL about finding bugs - the more the merrier, the earlier, the better. "File bugs early and often" is a great philosophy to bring to the table, as the earlier the bugs are filed in the development process, the easier and cheaper it is to fix them. But as with so many things, what is easy in theory is more difficult in practice - it isn't until all the code is hooked together, "integrated", that end-to-end testing of the game and game play is possible. So most game testing jobs are advertised in the alpha and beta release cycles - but the closer one starts in the alpha phase, the better.

At this stage in the game (pun intended), it really pays off to perform what is called integration testing. Do all the major elements of the game integrate well together? Or is sound out-of-sync with video? Does player speech sync with mouth movements? Are sound effects in sync with player action? Does the game save to disk, if designed to? Is the game compatible with all supported operating systems? These are just a few of the high-level areas one will want to investigate.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, one should design a matrix that covers all major elements of the game and integration, then break each of those areas down further. As an example, consider item storage. What are the various means of acquiring items? Buying, finding, looting, and trading are the major ones; don't forget quest rewards. Once acquired, do they stay in storage upon exiting the game and then returning? Can you trade with other players? If you drop it, does it stay dropped? Can you sell items that you found? Made? Traded? Stole? As you can see, the possibilities are truly endless.

Game testing jobs consist of considering these details and possibilities. The strategy to deal with such a huge number of possibilities is to build a test case matrix based on how often a given scenario or test case is likely to happen. One then categorizes the individual test cases and scenarios based on priority: P0, P1, P2, etc. So obviously, buying and selling an item and ensuring it stays in storage are pretty essential functions to the game - these would be P0. Being able to sell a quest item you stole from a looted corpse, less so - say, a P1.

These are just a few examples of applying basic principles of software testing to video game testing. Applying these principles will drastically explode your bug count, making you stand head and shoulders above your typical video game testing peers. Adopt these principles, and learn the fundamentals of software testing, and the number of game testing jobs you can get hired for will simply explode.

John Halston has been testing video games for a living for almost 12 years. After starting out doing contract video game tester gigs, he soon became a full-time Software Design Engineer in Test at a World Class Software Company, and still tests and plays games every chance he has. He is dedicated towards helping others get started in the career that has been so rewarding for him, and delights in seeing others achieve their dreams. To learn more about how you too can get hired for video game tester jobs, as well as starting a game testing career, visit http://hot-game-tester-jobs.com today!

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.