My brother had always gamed casually, playing the big named titles: The Zelda’s, Final Fantasies, and Super Mario games. It wasn’t like he’d never picked up a controller. So after my initial pangs of jealousy, I started to think how cool it would be to have a connection into the video game industry.
Fast forward three years. I had just completed my first year in the journalism program and I was looking for a summer job. My brother was a 3D artist for a big time gaming company, and he pulled a few strings to get me a job as a video game tester. Score.
It’s probably the job that majority of males in the world would love to have. For the entire summer, it was my job to test out the newest soccer game for the Wii and PSP. So after my two days of training, I was officially a member of the QA (quality assurance) team.
Going into the job, I was expecting a wide assortment of geeks, and techies (all men) to make up the majority of my co-workers. I was right. But nothing could have prepared me for walking into QA for the first time. It was a single room, the size of probably two gymnasiums put together. The area was split into two sides, each row crammed with testers. Every row had about 15 people, each equipped with their own TV, console, and PC. I think there were around 500 testers in the room.
My senses were assaulted. Visually, it looked like a sweat shop; rows upon rows of people sitting next to each other working. My jaw actually dropped at the sheer number of people testing. Next I noticed a familiar smell. A very strong, almost medicinal odor permeated the air. It wasn’t until I was shown my ‘station’ that I found out what it was. Next to me was a guy throwing back 3 giant cans of Red Bull...at 9:30 in the morning. Little did I know that Red Bull was the drink of choice for testers, no matter what time of the day.
A lot of people think that playing games is all there is to video game testing, but they’d be wrong. There is an actual process involved. First you’re relegated to a certain part of the game: Graphics, Gameplay, Screens etc. Once assigned, you take different paths in the way you play to try and find bugs. Once you find a bug, you search the database to see if it has been entered, and if not, you enter the problem, the path, the severity etc. That’s testing in a nut shell.
The world of video game testing is an odd one. You play the same game for months at a time, test for bugs, then re-test once a new build has been made. You are sitting all day, shoulder to shoulder with someone who will either have a ponytail, bad facial hair, or a Nintendo DS. You’re constantly eating snacks and sipping energy drinks. People play World of Warcraft when taking a break from the video game they are testing. It’s surreal.
The biggest misconceptions about the whole process is that testers are generally dorky losers, and that no girls test. Neither one is true.
For the most part, I enjoyed working with everyone on my team. While none of us will ever be the coolest kid at the party, everyone had a sense of humor and got a long. I enjoyed the people I worked with. Plus, there were girls there! Only seven mind you (two of them were legitimately attractive), but they did exist nonetheless. It was like every gamers dream, a girl who loved games just as much as they did.
I tested for three months, and I’ll admit, there was a week or so where I started to hate it. Playing the same game 8-11 hours a day can break you down. Like a lot of jobs, things can get very repetitive very quickly. But then I realized I was playing video games and getting paid for it, so I sucked it up and really went at it with gusto. I am probably the greatest Manager Mode player this world has ever seen.
So if you like games, red bull, men, gaining weight and being generally unhealthy, I wholly recommend getting into the game testing business. It’s an experience you won't forget.
