Get a Job Video Game Testing

Quality Assurance for Electronic Arts

Video game tester. 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 Fifa game for the Wii and PSP. So after my two days of training, I was officially a member of the Electronic Arts QA (quality assurance) team.

Going into the job, I was expecting a wide assortment of geeks 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 two gymnasiums crammed with testers, each equipped with their own TV, console, and PC. There were around 500 testers in the room.

My senses were assaulted. It looked like a sweat shop; rows upon rows of people sitting next to each other working like drones. 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 three giant cans of Red Bull at 9:30 in the morning.

A Video Game Tester's Job Description

A lot of people think video game testing is simply playing the games - they're 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.

The biggest misconceptions about the whole process is that testers are generally dorky losers. 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 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 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.