What Video Game Testers Actually Do For Their Job

Video game testers are often perceived as not having to endure the normal work requirements found in most jobs - that they are not required to work on a regular basis in an office or company workspace; that they get to make a great deal of money while playing games and telling people that they are having fun while doing so. The truth isn't quite so idealistic or glamorous. However, for those that are willing to work hard and put in the effort to develop their career, becoming a video game tester can be the best decision they ever made.

Game testers have jobs that enable them to make an excellent living - top testers earn up to 80k to 100k a year once they have racked up several years of experience and have advanced in their testing and technical expertise. Though entry level wages are closer to 15-20 and hour, for those that stick with it and make a serious effort at building a career as a professional video game tester, the rewards are great.

While video game testers have great jobs, and while they are not like most of your typical 9-5 workers, they do in fact have to get up each day, go to the office or testing lab and work on whatever projects have been assigned to them by their test leads - and projects almost always entail tight deadlines, particularly in the game and software industry. Game testers must exercise and test games rather than simply play them, and demonstrate that as professionals, they can go through a set test of test cases and scenarios, following specific configurations and processes, to test the game thoroughly and expose as many bugs as possible.

This process makes video game testers one of the most critical roles in the gaming industry. Video game testers contribute directly to the process and success of creating a game that is fun, playable, and functions precisely as it was designed to function.

For anyone interested in becoming a full time video game tester, the process starts by making sure they are ready for everything the career asks of them. Video game testers essentially learn to analyze something that is supposed to be entertainment. Video game testers work closely with various different builds of a game, writing down every bug that you encounter as you play the game and preparing various reports that will tell the other people involved in the creation of the game what you have encountered.

Game testers follow close protocols for how to test and report bugs and then repeat the process whenever a new build is released. Then may spend hours working on one menu or days on one level and when the deadlines get tight, they are often expected to work long hours.

However, what draws so many people to becoming a game tester is that they will often get to work in the same offices as the people behind the biggest and best new games on the market. They will be able to learn from the best testers and programmers in the industry. In due time, video game testers gain valuable experience and, if they choose, are able to establish a long-term career for themselves that moves beyond testing into roles such as game design, programming, QA management, graphic arts, or even the producer.

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 game testing jobs, as well as starting a video game testing career, visit http://hot-game-tester-jobs.com today!

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What Do Video Game Testers Really Do?

Play Video Games and Get Paid! With today's constantly booming video games industry, it's become more possible for anyone to work as a video games tester.

Many people think that game testing is all fun and games but there is a reason why game companies pay you to play games! It's to test their games before it goes out to public or to further enhance existing games. This can sometimes take the fun out of playing because you are required to focus on finding bugs, which means there will be times where game testers have to play the same section of a game over and over again.

Here are the most common types of video game testing for game testers:

Unit Testing - Code related testing to test if the game works at a basic level.

Localisation Testing - Making sure the language, spelling, grammar and punctuation in the game is correct.

Beta Game Testing - Testing the game during the beta stage of development. This type of testing could be done from home.

Quality Assessment Testing - This is generally a trained job where you work full time testing various games from different developers.

Regression Testing - This is often part of QA testers, where you check games after found bugs have been fixed, to make sure that it has been fixed or to see if there were other things that were affected by the fix.

Load Testing - This requires a lot of people or the use of software that fakes heavy activities for the purpose of testing the limits of a system, whether for network traffic or the number of players on an MMO server.

Soak Testing - This involves testing the game to see whether it performs well during long periods of time. There may be bugs that crash the computer after an hour of game playing. This type of testing is often automated or done with software which will make the game seem active so it doesn't go to sleep.

Compatibility Testing - This is more related to hardware. Games are tested on several different machines using various video cards, RAM, operating systems, processors and other hardware to check.

These are the common types of testing available for video game testers. As a freelance video game tester, you will start off playing games the game companies send you, then fill out a form and report to them any bugs you may have found. Many people get paid to do this on a daily basis and if you're interested in this type of work and think you can fulfill some of the types of testing mentioned here, then you're ready to be a games tester and can start applying for this position in various video game companies.

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