Career Chances As A Games Tester: The Essential Job For Geeks
So you spend a lot of time playing computer and video games? So do I. Ever since I was a kid, I have enjoyed games, starting on my dad’s Amiga system with games saved 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 spare time was spent playing games and I had often dreamed of finding Careers creating games. As time went on that dream faded, regrettably I realised I wasn’t going to attain this goal, creating 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 devotedly but there are still Career Choices available to me that permit me to take my hobby further, and that is games testing.
Somebody who doesn’t play games may believe Careers as a games tester is silly, 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 hunting for New Careers, this option is ideal as there are no strict qualifications necessary. Standard qualifications such as GCSE or A-Level are fine, the focal skills that are required are things like an eye for detail and excellent communication skills. While the pay can often be rather low for these Careers, the job itself can be a very satisfying experience and for those with the necessary skills, the job may offer new Career Choices by working up within the studio and development team.
If you’re interested in searching for New Careers in games testing, you may be wondering what exactly is involved. From what has been stated so far, it’s almost like a dream career for geeks. Rest assured, it’s not all fun and games and there is a lot of difficult work involved. Of course, the job starts with you having to play through a given game, now keep in mind here, the game is not of your picking, sometimes you will be required to test games of genres you would not choose play, it all depends on what the studio is presently developing. You will be required to play the game over numerous times, normally for many hours of the day. Your aim here is to detect any flaws and bugs in the game and then write a detailed report of the fault, how you discovered the issue, details of triggering the issue and the frequency of occurrence. You are also tasked with making sure the game plays OK, and pick out any tweaks that may be made, after all, the developers may intend the game to be played one way, but actual customers may go about it differently.
Games testing certainly isn’t a walk in the park, deadlines are firm and playing the same game over and over can get a bit tiring, especially if it’s of a genre you usually wouldn’t play. That being said, as far as Career Choices go, you couldn’t ask for anything better 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.
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