Career Chances As A Games Tester: The Perfect Position For Geeks
Written by Admin on June 21st, 2010So you enjoy playing computer and video games? So do I. From when I was a kid, I have enjoyed games, starting on my dad’s Amiga system with games recorded on floppy disks. From there I advanced onto the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis for the US) and since then I’ve been hooked. Most of my free time was spent playing games and I had always dreamed of finding Careers creating games. As time went on that dream faded, sadly I realised I wasn’t going to achieve this goal, developing games requires a lot of mathematical work, and although I was a high scorer at math, I didn’t particularly like it. So I don’t make games, but still play them religiously but there are still Career Choices available to me that permit me to take my passion further, and that is games testing.
Someone who doesn’t play games may consider Careers as a games tester is ridiculous, or not feasible. In reality though, games testing is an incredibly important part of games development and quality assurance and for anyone with a passion for gaming and searching for New Careers, this option is perfect as there are no strict qualifications required. Basic qualifications such as GCSE or A-Level are fine, the important skills that are required are things like an eye for detail and strong communication skills. Although the pay can often be fairly low for these Careers, the job itself can be quite a satisfying experience and for those with the necessary skills, the job may provide new Career Choices by progressing within the studio and development team.
If you’re interested in searching for New Careers in games testing, you may be questioning what exactly is involved. From what has been stated so far, it’s surely a dream career for geeks. Rest assured, it’s not all fun and games and there is a lot of challenging work involved. Certainly, the job starts with you having to play through a given game, now consider here, the game is not of your choice, sometimes you will be asked to test games of genres you would not usually play, it all depends on what the studio is currently developing. You will be required to play the game over numerous times, normally for many hours of the day. Your goal here is to detect any flaws and bugs in the game and then create a detailed report of the problem, how you found the issue, details of reproducing the issue and the frequency of occurrence. You are also tasked with making sure the game plays OK, and point out any tweaks that can be made, after all, the developers may plan the game to be played one way, but actual customers may go about it in a different way.
Games testing definitely isn’t a walk in the park, deadlines are tough and playing the same game over and over can get a bit tedious, particularly if it’s of a genre you typically wouldn’t play. That being said, as far as Career Choices go, you couldn’t ask for anything greater as a gamer. There are devoted websites setup to help people get into Careers in games development and testing, so check them out if you’re interested.

