Getting A Job Started As A Games Tester, And What You Need To Expect From This Surprisingly Difficult Job.
Here we’re going to investigate a role that will most certainly interest the geeks among us – myself included – games tester. What could be better than sitting playing games all day, and then getting money for it? To me, and I’m sure to loads of others, it seems like a dream come true. As an individual who is currently looking for New careers to take on, I decided to do some research into games testing as a job, to find out if it’s something genuinely worth contemplating along with my other Career ideas. I thought I ought to share the information I dug up on this career, to help anyone else thinking about what Careers they wish to do, to help give some helpful insight and possibly aid you in making a decision.
First of all, a job as a games tester isn’t just exclusively playing games to check if they are any good or if people will enjoy them. Your aim is to play the game and try to cover as many situations as doable in the levels, and create reports on any bugs you encounter. This means playing through the levels in a meticulous manner – a manner which some people will not have the persistence for. You must have a very good eye for detail, and loads of patience, and also the ability to get down into words the errors you come across, and how they were created. These reports are read by the programmers, who will then need to go back through the coding and search out what particular line of code is triggering the bug, so the more thorough and precise your report, the easier it is for them to complete their job. So, you will need to have a good level of English for this role. You of course should be good at games – you are required to be able to complete and finish the levels. Also, as you are required to play through the levels methodically, it’s not just a case of going through the levels as quickly as possible – you need to find out what happens when you explore every nook and cranny, and try and recreate as many situations as possible that could be encountered by people playing the game through normally. It’s no good releasing a game where the character can drop through the ground if they step along a path in a particular way!
The entry pay for a games tester is a paltry £12,000, although this does increase to around £18,000 for a games tester with more experience. Lead games testers can negotiate higher salary again. If it’s amongst your Career ideas as something you hope to really think about, you are going to need to begin at the bottom and work your way up. However, the same can be said for lots of Careers, so if you think it is something you would like to do, I would encourage getting started as soon as possible, in order to start getting experience. To me, it certainly looks like one of the more interesting New careers I have researched, and, while it sounds like it may be difficult playing through games over and over and over again (could get a little boring!) I think being amongst the first people to play highly anticipated games, and then new games which might be surprise hits, makes it an extremely interesting career choice.
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