Would you take a job as video game tester?

[skyfire]

You have some of the brands online that pay for the game testing. A lot of indie games on mobile and the PC can be tested. You wont be getting AAA games but small games for you to test. 

[killamch89]

48 minutes ago, skyfire said:

You have some of the brands online that pay for the game testing. A lot of indie games on mobile and the PC can be tested. You wont be getting AAA games but small games for you to test. 

Yeah, I'm aware of a few of them but as I said in my previous post, this is a terrible job to take in general...

[Withywarlock]

It was always my dream to be in the games industry in some form or another from childhood to college. It wasn't until I learned more about game development and a lot of the practices that I eventually gave up on it. Games testing, I'd later learn, is how others have described it here: clinically examining games and having to speak about them from a technical, objective sense.

One of the guys of the Castle Super Beast podcast is (was?) a games tester and has spoken about how he'd enjoyed I think a weapon animation or spell effect, but on the questionnaire he had to fill out he'd couldn't justify suggesting improvements without it being ignored. So intead of saying "this explosion would be cooler if it were bigger", he'd have to say something like "this explosion's radius doesn't match other particle effects". It's not exactly like Early Access, which in fairness to "proper" Games Testing staff has its own faults.

[skyfire]

On 12/23/2020 at 1:50 AM, killamch89 said:

Yeah, I'm aware of a few of them but as I said in my previous post, this is a terrible job to take in general...

Indeed it is purely strainer job. playing it for hours and getting eyes and body damaged. after some time it's not worth it. 

[Empire]

I don't even know how much you get paid to test the games but what makes it worse that the fact that games get released and still full of bugs and errors 😛 

Anyway they don't do that much nowadays since you can join the beta or alpha team like what MSFS2020 did and test/play around with it and report back and you do not get paid for that. 

[Shagger]

It has been said that the last thing a child who loves animals should aspire to be is a vet. Such an individual would have to work very hard throughout school and higher education to finnaly land thier dream job, only to find themselves spending thier working days putting down racehorces because it's no longer ecomincal for thier owners to keep them alive and putting pets to sleep because the family doesn't have adaquate insurance to cover a simple treatment. Video game testing is similar. Nobody who likes video games should want that for a job, you'll just end up with your favourite thing in the world completely ruined for you.

[Kane99]

14 hours ago, Withywarlock said:

It was always my dream to be in the games industry in some form or another from childhood to college. It wasn't until I learned more about game development and a lot of the practices that I eventually gave up on it. Games testing, I'd later learn, is how others have described it here: clinically examining games and having to speak about them from a technical, objective sense.

One of the guys of the Castle Super Beast podcast is (was?) a games tester and has spoken about how he'd enjoyed I think a weapon animation or spell effect, but on the questionnaire he had to fill out he'd couldn't justify suggesting improvements without it being ignored. So intead of saying "this explosion would be cooler if it were bigger", he'd have to say something like "this explosion's radius doesn't match other particle effects". It's not exactly like Early Access, which in fairness to "proper" Games Testing staff has its own faults.

Yeah a few of them were testers. They're part of the Super Best Friends on YouTube. They used to do lets play on YouTube, and a couple of them would talk about testing certain games often in their videos. Mostly talking crap about how awful certain games where lol. I think it would be fun to make friends at a job like that though. 

[Withywarlock]

4 hours ago, Kane99 said:

Yeah a few of them were testers. They're part of the Super Best Friends on YouTube. They used to do lets play on YouTube, and a couple of them would talk about testing certain games often in their videos. Mostly talking crap about how awful certain games where lol. I think it would be fun to make friends at a job like that though. 

Cheers for filling me in on that!

I suppose you'd have to make friends on a job that's as dreary as game design, which is apparently thankless from the studios you work with.

[Syntax]

When I worked as a Software Test Engineer at a previous company, there were tons of game development testers that had lost their job due to the company not doing too well shortly after. The only plus is you see games before they are released. The cons are HUGE including;

Doing every level, multiple times in a row various different ways.
Crunching before the release of games and before patches go out to make sure they are correct.
Trying to play games in ways that they shouldn't be played or trying to bypass areas in open world games.

[Shagger]

17 hours ago, Syntax said:

When I worked as a Software Test Engineer at a previous company, there were tons of game development testers that had lost their job due to the company not doing too well shortly after. The only plus is you see games before they are released. The cons are HUGE including;

Doing every level, multiple times in a row various different ways.
Crunching before the release of games and before patches go out to make sure they are correct.
Trying to play games in ways that they shouldn't be played or trying to bypass areas in open world games.

 

First off, let me welcome you to VGR.

 

It's great to get an insight into this topic from someone who has actually been there. Nothing you have mentioned has really surprised me, it gives me confidence that my perception that fixes testing is nowhere near as appealing as it sounds for a gamer.

[Syntax]

5 hours ago, Shagger said:

 

First off, let me welcome you to VGR.

 

It's great to get an insight into this topic from someone who has actually been there. Nothing you have mentioned has really surprised me, it gives me confidence that my perception that fixes testing is nowhere near as appealing as it sounds for a gamer.

 

Thank you!

 

And 100%. It was bad to the point where when it was a few months before release many of them would sleep at the job and wake up to continue working. I guess it sounds cool at first, but makes many not really want to play games anymore since it's a different mindset on playing vs. trying to find a bug, or make sure every level works correctly, etc. Plus, if the game doesn't do too well, it's always the testers fault since they should have had more feedback. The biggest thing they told me was that there are 3 levels of bugs, and some of them never get fixed (so every game always will ship even on gold before patches with issues) because it's not worth their time to recolor something, or redo an aspect.

I remember they said when the Kinect was a thing, they had to even test if using wigs, or different cloths, or even costumes would pick things up correctly and how it would interpret them in the game since it was such new technology (before it became more common).

[Patrik]

I personally wouldn't, as a gamer, i love experiencing the game in its final release without any spoilers or beta gameplay, i might participate as a volunteer in some game i'm not interested in so i can't spoil it for me

[Peterlight]

You took the topic out of my head, I won't mind working for free and testing new games cos that have been my dreams for a while now.

[Shole]

One of my friends did that and he told me it's really crazy though or something. I dunno he said it's harder than it seems as you are obligated to find a certain amounts of bugs or something.

[Heatman]

On 11/21/2020 at 4:39 PM, Alexander. said:

Will you ever take a job as a tester for a video game? Do you think you have what it takes? Is there anybody actually here that works in this profession? Around the time I was a kid, I initially wanted to be a game tester.

From the little I know about their pay for game testers, it's not something that would be able to cover for my expenses, so it's not really a job that's worth getting into.