Game testing job

I'm just out of uni and (being naive and full of hopes and dreams) would love to become a game developer. Having no 'official' experience to back this up, I am thinking I should start off as a game tester to try and get a foot in the industry.

I've been looking around for a couple of weeks now and in all honesty I am struggling to find much. Could anyone point me to someone/somewhere they've found useful in the past?

Another approach which I am leaning towards is finding a job to pay the bills while continuing with game development as a hobby. I've got a few ideas so given a few years I will hopefully have something more substantial to show. When I come to apply for a job further down the line, it'd be great if my potential employers recognise the name of something I've done. Anyone been successful with such an approach?

Anyhoo, as you can see I don't know too much right now and would really be interested in hearing anyones experience/thoughts on the matter. Ta!

These are 1337/luxe jobs, for which millions are fighting to get in to. I've no further suggestions, just this remark that you're not alone in your hopes and dreams, it's a lottery ticket. :P

Game tester is a hard, bad payed and really depressing job ...
Its not like playing game and have fun. what you do is work through check lists, over and over and over and over again.
*i've had the luck to be part of internal testing teams for some commercial projects*

And its most likely no way to get your feets into the game dev sector, unless you are really really very lucky.

and the chances to find intelligent beeings on a different planet is most likely higher ...
if you want to get into game dev, learn something thats needed. AI dev, modelling, zone design, character design, story writter or programmer. I actually do not note designer, as a designer needs to be at least "experienced beginner" in all those sectors

I'm working in a partially IT related job while programming as a hobby. But the dream is one day to develop games professionaly, when that day will is anyone's guess.

My brother did the same thing (testing F1 2000 for the PS1) and would never go back to it because of the above. I think Dreamora's advice is very sound as to how you should proceed!

From experience where I'm working we're finding it difficult to get decent art staff, most candidates have been very poor.

The only people who ever say that, are the ones that haven't actually done it.

I worked in QA and it is absolutely soul-destroying. As Dreamora said, its repetitive, dull work. You won't necessarily like the games you're testing, and even if you do, I guarantee you won't after three months of it.

The absolute worst part of the job, for me (as a PC tester) was controller compatibility. Which basically involved a massive box of joysticks/pads and a lot of plugging stuff in.

The frequent 14-hour days weren't particularly enjoyable, either.

However if its really what you want to do, then, if you speak any foreign languages you can try Rockstar Lincoln - www.rockstarlincoln.com - they're always recruiting for localisation testers.

Some links you might find useful:

http://www.gamestester.com/
http://www.aswift.com/
http://www.change-job.com/

There was another site I used to use, also, but the name escapes me at the moment.

cheers y'all!

I've heard the term 'soul destroying' being thrown around by a few people, but hearing it from people that have actually done it is useful!

Cheers for the links GfK, I wasn't aware of the aswift or change-job ones.

Vorderman: Where do you work, if you dont mind me asking?

Another approach is to enter game programming competitions. The higher the profile, the better. I got a job in game dev after winning a compo, despite having zero qualifications.

Not sure how devcos would view games written in a blitz language, tho. Maybe using c/c++ with the B3D SDK would be better?!

yeah man, I find testing my own games pretty tedious (no not because of the game type) because you have to keep testing certain scenarios in case they are bugged, then if you find a bug and make a fix, guess what, you have to test the whole list again in case you broke anything else.

It reminds me of the fact 'Game Testing' seems like one of them dream jobs.

But since that sentence has the word 'job' in it, you know its gonna suck after a few days when the novelty wears off!

Dabz

Currently I'm working for Midway.

My advice would be to learn as much as you can about 3d modelling and texturing, specifically photo-realistic stuff with bloom and overlay effects, which seem to be the current in-things - you'd be surprised how easily a good CV can get you a job interview and a 3-month probationary position - we interviewed recently and there seemed to be a shortage of decent environment artists around.

A properly paid position as a tester is tough, rather than just someone who comes in for a couple of weeks, or one evening a week for a laugh.

The lead tester at one of the first large developers I worked for did around 10,000 hours on each title. You have to have an iron will and a lot of patience to last more than a couple of weeks. Also there aren't a lot of paid positions, probably why so many games are full of bugs.

A lot of devs leave it to the publisher, who outsources to some low wage country if your lucky. Except for consoles, where QA testing is some of the bread and butter for the console manufacturer at 10's of 1000's a shot.

Game testing is a poorly paid, thankless, exhausting (in terms of the effects of tedium, repetition and fatigue over long sessions of work), and ultimately, as many have already said, soul-destroying job. It is guaranteed to strip you of any and all naive admiration and respect for the game industry that you might have, and quite possibly, you will learn to hate gaming as a whole. You'll be forced to work with delusional wannabes (morons with no skills or talents, but with unrealistic ambitions), honest morons (who at least don't have delusions of grandure), and people with poor social skills (because an obsession for video games generally goes hand in hand with an inability to interact well with others.) You will meet some decent people too, but you will soon grow to hate them after you are forced to work with them, with no respite, for extremely long working periods, day after day. As a game tester, you'll be forced by implied threats to work insane hours, sometimes even for longer than 24 hours at a time without sleep or rest.

A very small percentage of game testers move on to work in development. Most don't. They either remain in the test department or leave the industry. There is little room for advancement in a test department. You might become a lead tester (more work, very little extra money, the pleasure of pressuring your team into working unreasonable overtime) or, eventually, a department head (less work, more money - but still not a decent wage, the pleasure of enhanced bullying opportunities - a tester doesn't want to work all day and night after working seven day weeks for the last three months? Make ominous comments about clauses in his contract and imply that he will be fired; a tester doesn't want to be sent abroad/to some god-forsaken dump in the middle of nowhere at a moment's notice? Make ominous comments about clauses in his contract and imply that he will be fired; loudly humiliate testers in front of their colleagues if they dare refuse to mindlessly obey your unreasonable demands; etc.)

This is the reality of game testing. I seriously and sincerely would not recommend it to anyone.

Should point out for those who might not be aware, JustLuke has worked in QA, too. He had the desk next to mine. [edit] Oh, he just added an extra bit that implies this anyway. :)

I once got in bother because of silly overtime. We were supposed to finish at 5:30pm - not that we did often. At 5:25 we were asked to stay an extra two hours. Shortly before 7:30 we were told we had to wait for a new build of Hardwar, and nobody knew what time it would arrive. Three hours later, around 10:30, the proverbial crap hit the fan. I got up and walked out.

I moved into motion capture soon after.

Guess I was one of the lucky ones who managed to escape.

When GfK worked in QA, I was one of the suckers who would stay behind and work the unreasonable overtime. That soon changed.

My solution to the problem was to give up on the job and coast along. Eventually I refused to work any and all overtime or do anything that wasn't specifically mentioned in my working contract. I avoided getting to know my colleagues as much as I could, to avoid being placed in situations where I would feel pressured into accepting unreasonable demands or to take on an unreasonable workload due to friendship. If other people were dumb enough to work excessive, thankless, poorly paid overtime, then more fool them. This sounds pretty mercenary and selfish, I know.

After the studio closed down, I moved on to bigger and better things. I would never work in the game industry again.

EDIT: I should add that I did work with some decent people in QA - GfK being one of them. He's a great guy who knows his stuff. Sorry if I seemed like an annoying jerk at the time. You know how it was.

Game "Reviewer" is a MUCH better job that tester as you can stop playing if it's crap :-)

haha wow, guess that strikes QA off the list ;) Thanks for the posts everyone. The whole overtime issue would really get to me I think. I've got no real problem with doing it when it's needed but some of that seems like you were made to do overtime because they could make you.

Me thinks I should find a (read: any) job and keep game making as a hobby for now!

Nah, you were a right laugh! I doubt I'd have stuck the job for as long as I did without your wacky banter. :)

Time to give a little brighter experience on this job :)
Not all game companies are like that. I'm a Game Programmer and I rarely get to do any overtime (1 week out of 6 or 8 weeks). QA at the company I work for almost never do any overtime (only end of projects, 2-3 weeks out of 8 to 18 months). 37.5 hours a week, and that's it. Not only that, but testers do get an active part in the game development. Often, designers and level designers will ask help from the QA department for what would be more fun, more convenient to the player, stuff like that.
However, I did heard a lot of horror stories from other big studios in Montreal (EA, Ubisoft) - people working 100hours+ weekly shift for 1 month straight, and then falling back to "regular" hours -- 50-60. Really depends on the company's mentality I guess...

I went for a game tester job with Sony in Liverpool, it was nothing like I expected.

The buildings at Sony were all glass on the outside, so you'd think 'nice & bright working environment'. When I was shown around the tester environment I was very suprised.

All the windows were darkened on the inside so you could see the picture better from the crap 20", flickery, Sony TVs.

The atmosphere was dull & smelly! Lots of young unshaven men with red eyes, soda cans everywhere, think 'the just got out of bed' look.

As for the interview, If you really want a job as a tester, do NOT let them know or even think that you see the job as a 'foot in the door' to better opportunities. I did and it became instantly obvious they want worker drones, no room for ambition with this job.

The end result was a forgone conclusion, and just as well, if you have even a hint of creativity, this may not be the job for you!


To top it off, the position payed minimum wage. In their car park you'll find lots of expensive sports cars, and I guarantee none of them belonged to the testers there :)

Just my experience!
Tom

Darkened windows? You lucky devil. The QA department where I used to work was a windowless basement.

I'm glad I did not pursue a job in game testing.

My advice if you want to do any testing outside of game testing, is look into test automation. You program software to test for you, and it pays very well if you are good at it.

Truly, the best advice is to get a job that had no relation to software development. Get a mindless job like gardening, janitor, president, drug dealer, etc...that way you can think about how to program your games while working. You don't get burned out by sitting at a pc all day, annoying co-workers, mindless managers, and slave driving companies that change their business model on a dime.

I'm very lucky to be specialized in what I do, because no one else understands software automation except me :)

Jason

SEGA racing studio is looking for some testers... 3 months fixed, that would give you an opportunity to try it out...
http://www.sega-europe.com/en/jobs/jobs.html?company=4

I wonder what you studied at university since you would take 'any' job ... surely you must have learned something that qualifies you to do something more specific?

Just a suggestion Raz; but why not use your degree to so something more fullfilling and better paid than game testing and with which you can buy as many games as you like?

Having spent some time looking at and experiementing with game development I've come to the firm conclusion that playing games is far more fun than writing them. Indeed I'd go furhter and say that it's very difficult to find a fun, satisfying job in the games industry for any length of time and certainly as my main activity it's not something I'd choose to do. You'll find whatever you do 90% of any job is just hard work. TBH even pulling together small projects and games is bordering perilously close to "hard work" rather than "fun" at least in my experience anyway.

Unless you've a real burning desire to get into game development (in which case you'd have proably taken steps to get there already) I'd work doing something much more fun and just enjoy games and game dev as a hobby. Overall it's much more fun, has better hours, is better paid and you get more chicks. With the prevalance of information on the internet and sites and discussions available it's pretty easy to keep on top of almost any facet of the business without the responsibility or consequences of being involved in it.

Just a thought.

Darkheart

I can relate to that :D Last summer I was offered a web design job but decided to go with a no brainer working in a warehouse in the end so I could concentrate on working on my game in the evening. Thinking about it now actually, I would say it was a really good idea.

Cheers for the link fredborg :)

fred/dark: I studied multimedia technology and design at uni which is admittedly pretty vague but potentially opens the door to anything from animation to web design. I am in the process of creating a portfolio that will hopefully help when and if the game making 'dream' fails ;)

Taking 'any' job relates very much to what Jason said. If I can't do any game related work professionally, I'd like to avoid anything that could put me off working on games when at home.

I'm really lucky right now, I've got no real commitments or bills that need dealing with (except the student loan... *ahem*) so I've got room to make mistakes. I might get offered a testing job and absolutely hate it. Even if I do, it's no biggie I'll just quit and move on having at least learnt something.

I've seen alot of jobs advertised which require one thing or another I can't offer right now. This isn't to say I wouldn't be able to do it but there is nothing on my CV that would make a potential employer have a second look which could lead to an interview. Maybe if I could at least list a previous employer/role as something relevant the chances of this would improve, I dunno!


Hehe I agree, generally it is more fun to play a game than write one ;) But then again, I'd rather play a game than do any other job. I've been looking around and seen a few games online that in all honesty aren't that great. I don't want to sound big headed but I think I could do better.

Overall I would say I dunno how passionate I am, I have nothing to really compare it to as it's the only thing I've ever really wanted to do (even sent a design for a game to Jim'll Fix It... no reply :/). Again, if I make it then realise I hate it, no big deal, I'll be a footballer or an astronaut instead.