subject: Video Game Testing As A Career [print this page] Video Game Testing As A Career Video Game Testing As A Career
The gaming sector is worth billions of dollars each year to the economy, and is a serious business. If a game is released with bugs, glitches, and errors, it will cost the game publisher money. Critical reviews and poor feedback for the gaming community can destroy sales and damage profitability. The Video game tester, more generally known as the quality assurance tester is employed to find these bugs, glitches and problems before the game is released so that they can be fixed by the programmers. This ensures that the final game released to the public is polished, playable, and gets good reviews and feedback. Very good reviews and feedback = higher profits for the games producer. Video game testers are the last line of defence against bugs and glitches.
Unfortunately, games publishers are not going to pay you money to just play the games the way you play them during your leisure time. You will be working on a particular project with set parameters, where you will be testing very specific areas of a particular game. This is how the game tester, earns his hard earned cash. You will be in essence, attempting to "break" the game.
For example, a few months ago I was assigned to testing a first person shooting game, testing one specific stage. My jobs was to test the map , which involved trying to access areas of the map I was not suppose to be able to access. I also fired weapons at the walls, boundaries, and other objects in the game.. The goal of this testing session was to check whether or not the map boundaries were working properly, and whether other in game objects reacted propery when fired upon.
Other examples of projects are testing a track in a racing game, driving round it in different directions, at different speeds, driving into the boundaries, and generally trying to wreak havoc and find something that wasn't supposed to be there.
Some additional taks you will be required to perform are checking loading times, and that levels load correctly, and making sure that things such as lighting effects, and the weather, are displayed properly. You will have to keep your eyes open to spot anything out of the ordinary or problematic that may negatively affect the customers gaming experience.
In short, you will be needed to treat playing the game as a job, and not a hobby. You will be conducting yourself in a thorough professional manner, following your project guidelines, and thoroughly testing every aspect of the game as stated in the project. As you may have realised, this can become very repetitive. You may have to play the same part of the game over and over again spending hours upon hours testing every minute detail laid out in the initial project. You will often be totally sick of a game by the end of the project! Quite often, game testers will rack up hundreds of hours of game play on just one project.
When a fault or glitch is discovered, the tester will need to compile a report which details what the problem is, and where it is happening, amongst other details. All glitches are categorised according to the impact they have on the gaming experience. The most serious bugs are those that cause crashes and game freezes. Conversely, the least serious are errors such as graphics that don't look how they are supposed to. Quite often, minor bugs and errors will be left in the game, particularly if a deadline is looming.
The database of reports is consulted by the programmers again, bugs are fixed, and the game is then retested. It is very rare for games to be released with major problems, as publishers know full well the damage this can do to their reputation.
Due to the hard work of games testers, customers gaming experiences are kept pleasant, and games publishers can continue to produce profitable products.
