GAmes Testing.. hmmm

Hi’

I don’t really know about employment but I can link you to a good place to start.

http://beta.microsoft.com/MGSBetas

Yes, there are lots of positions for this job. Yes, its something that’s vital for a game’s release.
No, its not the glamorous job you think it is, no, the money isn’t great either.

You probably are best applying to lots of companies to be honest. Obviously if you know someone in a company, there’s a much easier way in talking to the right people. Some companies have lots of testers, some none. Some hire them as and when needed. Try applying around, you might get lucky.

The company I work for has a lot of in-house testers…most companies in Ireland do localisation testing so you’d need to be fluent in another language.

yea if you want to do proper testing , stay away from those localisation jobs , or you will end up working for a company like *cough* vivendi.

ah nice one.. its jus i’m a big gamer and i’ve a lot of woes and queeves about some games and hopefully somethin from a gamers point of view would be ….. [/quote:db7479c07a] Game testing isn’t about you telling developers how to design games. Game testing is about you playing and replaying and replaying broken/unfinished versions of a game that is in development and reporting back in detail what errors you found and how to duplicate them. Then retesting the next version over and over to see if the errors are fixed (and to find new ones). By the time the game is debugged and ready to ship (IE by the time it is fun to play) you will likely be so sick of it that you won’t want to play it again.

Game Testing is a great way to break into the industry but it isn’t as much fun as you think. There is an awful lot of boring repetition.

And the lingo….

there was a "triangle of corruption" in the textures.

I think i’m gonna try it for a while though

By the time the game is debugged and ready to ship (IE by the time it is fun to play) you will likely be so sick of it that you won’t want to play it again.[/quote:93e7557ae6]

Especially if you’re working on a streaming game. Those bugs are just so much fun testing and tracking down.

Mobile game testing is great fun, I remember playing Rampage for about 8 hours a day, for 2 weeks. *shudder*

Didn’t really help that I didn’t like the game in the first place

Didn’t really help that I didn’t like the game in the first place[/quote:da6b5000fe]

Yea, that can happen, you have to be really able to adapt to the different styles of game and be a good tester even if you hate the game.

I am lucky here in Microsoft , testing games that I like at the moment so that good, and when they are finished I will play them through, properly.
In fact the first thing I worked on here I am still playing.

i remember thinking the first game i was testing , it was fun , i mean there where not too much really wrong with it , but it was just one level. well while waiting for the next levels. i ended up playing that one about 200+ times …….it was not fun anymore …..some times late at night when i close my eyes i can still see that level ! and have a flash back , oh the horror.

but yea like obscure says , game testing is just playing something unfinished till like me you have horriable flash backs , but if you really want to be telling developers stuff from the gamers point of view , thats more focus groups stuff.