Highly Paid Gamers - Testing Games For Cash is Real!

Gamers of every age and walk of life are wishing for the chance to start testing games for cash. After all, if you could get paid to do what you love, wouldn't you jump on the opportunity? Of course you would! And that's precisely why gamers all around the world are looking into the possibility of testing games for cash.

There are plenty of paid gamers out there, but they didn't start that way. In truth, most paid gamers started out just like you -- playing games for fun and nothing more. Unlike you though, those people quickly chose to take their passion for gaming a step further and put their talents to work, for cash!

Why Game Testers are Needed

If you know anything about video games, you know that there are lots of bugs and lots of glitches which can ruin a potentially great game. These bugs & glitches can be so terrible that they could take a revolutionary video game and make it unfit for even a dollar store bin.

This "concept" or "problem", if you will, is why paid game testers are so desperately needed. They play the games, they find the problems, and they tell programmers what needs to be fixed. Without the tester, the gaming industry would be, quite literally, non-existent.

What Do Game Testers Do?

Testing games for cash is about more than just playing a game and having fun. Heck, a child can do that. What a tester does is actually improve the game by finding out whats wrong with it on a larger scale.

He (or she) plays the game for hours on end trying to locate problems and game breaking bugs. He then writes down every problem he comes across (in detail) and passes it on to the programmers. He does this not once, not twice, but again & again & again until the game is thoroughly checked for problems. In fact, if no problems are found in a new game, it's usually because the tester wasn't paying enough attention to his work.

How to Start Testing Games for Cash

If you want to get started in the video game testing world, you have to be active. You can't look in the paper, you can't rely on job search websites, and you can't sit there with your thumb up your rear-end. To truly succeed, you have to go to the game companies and let them know of your gaming experience as well as your willingness to test video games for them. Some aspiring young game testers even offer to test games for FREE -- this happens to be a great way to get your foot in the door of the gaming world.

Don't Go It Alone

If you want to do everything on you're own, that's completely fine. However, don't expect to be testing games for cash by tomorrow if you choose this route. The fastest way to get started with paid game testing is by trusting those who already HAVE started. Listen to their advice, use their guidance, and borrow from their techniques. They know what to do and how to do it, so listen up and listen good!

Testing games for cash is indeed a dream job. But, if you don't take action and stop sitting around, that's all it will ever be -- a dream.

Do you think you've got what it takes to be a paid game tester? Are you ready to test games and not just play them for fun? If you honestly think you're ready, visit http://Gamer-Testing-Ground.com right now and find out how you can get started testing video games today!

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Video Game Testing - Learn How to Test Games Before Your First Interview

Acquiring video game testing experience before you submit your resume and begin interviewing for your first your first paying video game tester job will greatly improve your odds of getting hired, and open many more doors for you. You will find many more job opportunities if you are able to put some authentic video game testing experience on your resume, even if it wasn't paid experience. So then - how does one get experience testing games before getting hired as a video game tester? There are several ways:

o Beta Test for free. Microsoft, EA, Sony and Nintendo all run huge non-paid beta testing programs that will permit you to test their video games and file bugs. This won't be a paid position, but it will allow you to learn the process of playing, testing, finding bugs and filing them. This will be a huge plus on your resume, and will gain you experience and perspective on how to actually test video games.

o Online gaming beta testing. Before any new massive online gaming infrastructure goes live, the beta testing is extensive. There are large amounts of bugs to be found and filed, and represents a great opportunity for you. So sign up for all the online game beta testing programs you can find, and you will gain much in real-world testing and bug-filing experience.

o At-home practice: Simply sit down to your favorite video game and a book covering the Principles and Fundamentals of Software Testing. As you work your way through the book, apply what you read to the game you are testing. Practice creating spreadsheets of Test Scenarios and Test Cases based on the guidelines you can find in any good book on software testing. Create practice test plans for the game you are playing and analyzing. Practice writing bugs using a good bug filing template, which you can also find in good software testing books.

o Getting Experience with Game Development - There are many good resources to pick up a few fundamentals on game design. Learning a few things, even practicing creating a simple game or designing a level, will look great on your resume, and make you a much better video game tester

o Education - One doesn't require a college degree to become video game tester, but if you wish to advance in your new career path, taking some classes on programming, project management, game design, game art, and a number of other related subjects will assist you immensely - and show potential employers that you are serious about becoming a video game tester, and stand out from the crowd.

Being able to put these items onto your resume will be a great advantage for you when you interview. Very few entry-level game testers will have done more than one of these, so if you can put three or more on your resume, you will qualify for many more positions, and may even come in a step above entry level, with a better salary as well!

Jonathon 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 video game testing career, visit http://hot-game-tester-jobs.com today!

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How Beta Video Game Testing Can Fast Track Your Game Testing Career

Many conceive of beta video game testing as simply signing up for free opportunities to play games still under development in the comfort of their own home, writing down any bugs they come across and getting to play the content weeks or even months before the rest of the world. And indeed, much of beta testing consists of just that. More often than not, however, beta testing is performed by people working directly for game design companies, and involves testing the game immediately following what is termed code-complete. Those hired to perform beta testing work off of specific sets of test cases, and will often review specific parts of the game repetitively, composing bug reports to describe whatever issues they may encounter.

However, much beta testing is still done for free, by unpaid volunteers. How can you leverage this into a paid game testing position? The answer is that experience is experience, whether paid or not. By starting off as an unpaid beta tester, you will be building your resume for when you do apply for a paid game testing position. Each game that you beta test becomes one more item to include on your resume - as well as the number of bugs you found and filed.

By investing the time and effort into developing marketable game testing skills by performing unpaid beta game testing, you will be building a firm foundation for a paid game testing career, whether beta testing or any other testing methodology involved in testing video games. Keep in mind that once you are hired for a paid beta game testing position, you may be required to put in long hours of testing, as this stage in the product cycle is often the most intensive.

The investment in time and effort you put into beta video game testing will really pay off in terms of beginning to learn the process of designing and building video games. This will allow you to create a career for yourself in more advanced areas, such as game design, game illustration, or even programming. The opportunities that will open up for you are truly limitless.

Once you have gotten your foot in the door performing paid video game testing, plan on investing a year or two of hard core testing before moving up to the next level. Those who prove themselves by filing a lot of great bugs, as well as expanding their testing and design skill sets, will find that when an opening does come for a higher level position, they will be first in line. Those who are willing to put in the hard work and do well at the tasks assigned to them will sooner or later be given the opportunity to move on to roles with more responsibility.

In short, begin signing up for beta video game testing opportunities today, and you will be on the fast track to a great career as a paid video game tester. You will discover that the more you put into it, like anything worthwhile, the more you will get out of it. Eventually the rewards will come, in terms of being able to get paid doing what many consider to be a dream job.

Jonathon 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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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!

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Where Can I Find a Job For Video Game Testing?

There are varieties of ways you can use to find a job as a video game tester. But before you begin your search for as a video game tester, I need to ask you a question. Do you have the capabilities to conquer a video game testing assignment? Game testing involves some technical-know-how. I have written them down to get you familiar with the works of a video game tester.

Roles of a Video Game Tester

The work of a video game tester is to detect glitches made at various levels of game production. To be frank, video game testing is not an easy task, especially if you don't have any experience about playing games. Video game manufacturers believe that if they send their games into the market without doing any standard testing, it may not be bought by video game players. Due to this, they seek the services of video game testers to enable them detect these bugs, while on their own part they edit it and send it into the market for consumers to exploit.

Compensation

A video game tester could earn over $45,000 working full time in a year, though some video game testing jobs pay hourly. One can earn $20-$150 per hour testing video games. If you are able to detect bugs, you also paid more benefits in addition to the agreed amount for the games you are testing.

Where to find Video Game Testing Jobs

This brings us to the main issue of this article. Let's say you've known the works of a video game tester at this stage. If you've made up your mind to start a career as a game tester, then you could go ahead to discover the sources of video game testing jobs.

One of the ways to find a video game testing job is to find one at video game manufacturer's websites. I guess you know them; they are Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo, Sony, Code Masters and the rest of others. You might be lucky to find opportunities at their websites.

Another way I will, mostly, recommend is to approach video game companies. Tell them your capabilities, the games you own and the ones you've played. Convince them on why you would be able to make a good testing job, once the games are assigned to you. Luckily, you could get one. The games can either be computer games or video games, no matter the kind of games you are assigned to test, take the testing seriously and don't waste time in sending your feedbacks to the company, once you are through with testing.

Final Word

Video game testing is not an easy task but once you get used to them, I assure you that you would get to love the job. There are some ecourses made to get you acquainted with video game testing, they would be helpful in assisting you through the various stages of completing the works of a video game tester successfully. If you are able to practice with this ecourse, it would guard you in your first assignment.

My Recommendation:
GameTestingGround is a membership site that offers all the step-by-step guides you need to know to become a video game tester and to crown all, they also offer listings of video game companies hiring on weekly basis. I highly recommend you to try them out today. Check them out at http://gamertestinggroundreview.blogspot.com

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