Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    How To Become a Game Tester
    How To Become a Game Tester
    How To Become a Game Tester
    Ebook248 pages1 hour

    How To Become a Game Tester

    By LP Klages

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    How to Become a Game Tester is a comprehensive guide to a career in video game testing and quality assurance. Discover industry information, like the different types of game testing, the positions related to testing games, and the important skills game testers need to succeed in the fiercely competitive field. Also included is a guide to all the game development companies in the United States.
    If you want the edge, and you're ready to get serious about becoming a game tester, then you need How to Become a Game Tester.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndale LLC
    Release dateNov 7, 2011
    ISBN9781466125957
    How To Become a Game Tester

    Related to How To Become a Game Tester

    Related ebooks

    Certification Guides For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Develop Video Games With The Godot Engine

      Jul 28, 2020

      Godot is a free (as in beer) and open source video game engine. It’s an impressive toolset provided at no cost and with liberal licencing that enables people to create their own video games without spending months first creating the engine. The idea

      9 min read

    • Article

      Code Witcher

      May 17, 2022

      Code Witcher
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Gallery

      Jul 19, 2022

      The Gallery
      4 min read

    • Article

      Link To The Past

      Mar 24, 2022

      One thousand. That, give or take, is the number of digital-exclusive games estimated to become unavailable for purchase once Nintendo’s 3DS and Wii U digital stores are shuttered. For everyone except those who already own affected games – a situation

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Making Of Dead Space

      Nov 2, 2021

      The Making Of Dead Space
      6 min read

    • Article

      Hold To Reset

      Aug 15, 2019

      Hold To Reset
      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 26, 2022

      > Virus Scanner Slowdown > Moore Fans > Accessibility for All In the January 2022 edition of Maximum PC, Edward posed a question in his letter titled “Hard drives and the theory of speed”. To summarize, he was not reaching close to the stated speed o

      6 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Jan 6, 2022

      We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 come into play. Both of these tests push

      2 min read

    • Article

      Becoming A Game Designer

      Dec 8, 2023

      Our basic rule set is perfectly good for a game at home or with our chums at the club, but as a commercial venture, it is lacking in the style or sparkle that will make it attractive enough for people to put their hands in their pocket and hand over

      6 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Dec 9, 2021

      We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 come into play. Both of these tests push

      2 min read

    • Article

      Code Open

      Mar 21, 2023

      Code Open
      2 min read

    • Article

      Code Open

      Apr 3, 2023

      Code Open
      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Aug 20, 2019

      > Best Coolers > Screen Calibration >Windows Security I am writing about your “Head to Head” article comparing cooling options. The bottom text shows the winner for each category. Clearly, “Air” cooling wins three of the five categories. The “All-in-

      5 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Oct 8, 2022

      How We Test
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Best Of The Freebies

      May 25, 2021

      The Best Of The Freebies
      15 min read

    • Article

      Mobile Games

      Feb 10, 2020

      Mobile Games
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Best Of The Freebies

      Jun 14, 2021

      The Best Of The Freebies
      15 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Jan 4, 2024

      How We Test
      2 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Feb 8, 2024

      How We Test
      2 min read

    • Article

      How We Test

      Dec 7, 2023

      How We Test
      2 min read

    • Article

      QA Q&A

      Jan 5, 2023

      QA Q&A
      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 12, 2019

      Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Help Station

      Feb 8, 2021

      Help Station
      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Fix Glitching Steam Deck Games

      Apr 2, 2024

      Credit: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/ Neil Mohr still can’t pry his Steam Deck from his six-year old’s hands. There’s no doubt Valve Software has done more to propel Linux gaming forward than T almost anything else in recent years. The Steam De

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hold To Reset

      Nov 7, 2019

      Hold To Reset
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for How To Become a Game Tester

    3.5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Some useful information not found in many books; but anemic on content, bogged down with unnecessary appendices which are already out of date and superceded by a u.r.l. link, and riddled with spelling and syntax errors.

      The author should be embarrassed to have a rushjob like this on his résumé.

    Book preview

    How To Become a Game Tester - LP Klages

    How to Become a Game Tester

    L.P.Klages

    Smashwords Edition

    ****

    Copyright 2011 L.P.Klages

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    Cover illustration by Hyun Kim (air0820@flickr).

    Contents

    The Rise of Gaming

    What Does it Take to Be a Tester

    The College Route

    Finding the Jobs

    Game Companies in the United States

    Colleges

    Canada

    United Kingdom

    United States

    Chapter 1:

    The Rise of Gaming

    Gaming isn’t the entertainment industry’s shy little brother at the back of the family picture any more: the industry has charged up to front and center, booming in popularity to such an extent that the Texas legislature declared February 3, 2009, as Entertainment Software Day. That’s according to the ESA, who also reported that the computer and game industries generated around 11.7 billion dollars in 2008. That means that every year, the average person in the United States forks over about $40 to the computer and gaming industry . The statistics don’t stop there: the ESA states that 60% of Americans over the age of 6 play video games. That’s more than the 56% of Americans who pay for cable TV . It’s no surprise then, that game testing is one of the most rapidly growing job markets in the country.

    The games that you see on the shelves most likely took about two years to develop. As a game tester, you’ll step in toward the middle or end of that development process (because up until that point, there isn’t much to test). Once you’ve started testing the game and reporting bugs, you’ll get a new build to test from the development team on a regular basis and your job will be to test those versions and keep track of errors. While game testing can—at times—be a fun job and the envy of all your friends, it’s also an analytical, time consuming, and challenging position that requires you to carefully note any errors that you find. Once the errors have been fixed, you’ll be given a new build with which to perform regression testing.

    One important fact about a game testing job that may (or may not) bother you is that you’re the polisher: the person who puts the final touches on the product before it gets sold. If you’re the kind of person who isn’t interested in being a polisher (maybe you see yourself as more of a designer or builder), then game testing might not be the right job for you. In huge conglomerations like Vivendi, game testing comes after almost every other phase of the project. The game has been designed, the code has been written, and the product is ready to enter the marketplace: but not before the bugs are worked out. In other words, any suggestions you make about added features or design improvements are going to fall by the wayside. If you can accept that fact, then game testing may be the job for you.

    You can think of a game tester as the low man on the totem. There’s a similar position in programming, called a code monkey. Code monkey is a pejorative term for low level programmers who are perceived by the upper echelons of the programming ranks as being too green for the real jobs higher up the chain. Code monkeys are capable of churning out code (possibly not very good code), and they are perceived as being disposable. Game testers are perceived by some in the same way. Game testers test games, a job that nearly anyone can do. It isn’t hard. It doesn’t teach you valuable skills. It isn’t even necessarily well paid. But if, like a code monkey, you want a low stress, even enjoyable job that pays you a decent salary and is likely to be around in a few decades, then game testing might be right for you.

    Sounds easy, right? Not necessarily. Even if you’re lucky enough to land your dream job, you’re going to have to work hard at keeping it. Submit enough bug reports that get rejected with a curt No bug found, and you can be sure you won’t be asked to test game #2. Don’t think that your day is going to be filled with pizza and soda, lounging back on a gaming chair while you mangle baddies. The likelihood is that a large percentage of your time is going to be made up of playing games that you simply don’t want to play. Ever picked up a game, disliked it for one reason or another (too easy, too hard, too cheesy), and took it back to the store for credit? Unlike beta testing, where you can throw in the towel and walk away with a free copy of the game, in regular game testing, it’s going to be your job to force yourself to play the game—even if it sucks. You might be asked to play the same level multiple times with different characters on different difficulty levels; your enthusiasm for the game will soon wear thin if you have to play the same level a dozen times. In fact, you might be called upon to perform a multitude of testing tasks: not all of them glamorous. Some examples of non glamorous testing include:

    •Localization testing. As a localization tester, you’ll adapt a globalized application to a certain location or culture. This sounds easy, but in fact it can be a massive task, depending on regulatory requirements and other factors of the target country. For example, games using American English need to be tailored for use in the United Kingdom, which uses different punctuation, spelling, and words. Trunks had better be called boots, fannies had better be called bums, and for the culinary challenged, desserts and candy are both sweets. Anyone for a bevvie at the pub, mate?

    •Regression testing. If you are a regression tester, after a bug has been fixed, you’ll need to go back and test the fixed part of the game to make sure no other new problems have been created by the bug fix. As a tester, your job during this stage will include having to investigate around that bug, playing all the different possibilities, and purposefully trying to uncover new bugs that might have been created. This stage is sometimes called halo testing.

    •Compatibility testing. Compatibility testing is one of the last stages of game testing. You’ll be testing the game to make sure it’s compatible with all the components (software and hardware) that are likely to be found on a customer’s computer (or game system). These might include different drivers and peripherals or different browsers. You’ll likely be playing the game over and over again on different systems, checking that the game works for all users on a multitude of configurations.

    •Unit testing. Unit testing is just like the name sounds—a test on a small piece of software (a unit) to make sure it does what it’s supposed to. For example, if you are playing an online game and have to sign up for an account, there’s a piece of code that will check to make sure no other user is associated with the email account you enter. In unit testing, a programmer or QA department will set up a secondary piece of software to automatically enter a wide range of possible data to trip up the code that checks for the e-mail. Most often, this stage of development is done by the programming team before the game is even off of the starting block, but QA might be part of this type of testing.

    •Soak testing. Soak testing is like clicking the mouse button continuously on your computer to see how long before your computer crashes. In a regular alpha or beta test, a game tester plays for a few minutes on each spot, moving through levels and switching behaviors, gear, and challenges. However, it’s sometimes useful to know how long you can stay in one spot, hammering the controller, before the system crashes. The test is usually automated and simulates mouse or controller clicks or other mundane actions (who really wants to sit there and hit a mouse a hundred thousand times until the system crashes?), but in smaller game dev companies, you might be the person allocated to soak test the game manually. The test makes sure that a user can bash the mouse key a few dozen times in frustration without the worry of the game freezing up.

    •Beta testing is an entirely different kettle of fish. It’s more fun than the non-glamorous kinds of tests, but it’s also usually not paid work. In beta testing the game is released for testing to a wider audience than the initial team. The audience might be a select group of testers, or it might be a wide public release. For example, when World of Warcraft was tested in 2004, about 10,000 beta testers were invited from each region to test the game. Bear in mind these weren’t paid positions: all you got was access to the game, and if you were participating in the stress test, you likely experienced major performance issues as well. Beta testers might also be called upon for load (stress) testing. When World of Warcraft tested the capacity of their system in 2004, a whopping 100,000 users signed up to assault the servers and test the maximum capacity of the system and help Blizzard analyze the types of performance issues that might happen at heavy load times. The pay? Zero, but 720 people were chosen from the pool of 100,000 to continue on to a prized (but still unpaid) closed beta test where they could continue to play the game until release.

    If you want to become a beta tester, that can be a bonus point on your resume, especially if you put your full effort into the task. There are two types of beta testers: those that just play the game, and those that give helpful feedback.

    If a game development company releases the beta version to 100,000 people, then the company expects that the vast majority of testers will just play the game. Bugs are reported back automatically and the company uses that data to improve the game. However, a good beta tester will carefully look for bugs and balance issues and explain to the game company what they found with frequent reports. If you do that, you’ll be passing on valuable information to the game company.

    Of course, you’ll get nothing more than a free game for your trouble. However, you can put it on your resume. You can mention how helpful you were in your interview—how you went the extra mile and found a series of bugs. You can find beta testing opportunities at Blues News (http://www.bluesnews.com) which carries public beta testing announcements. You’ll have to apply, just like everyone else, and it works more like a lottery than a job application. There’s no guarantee you can get in, and there’s little you can do to improve your chances.

    If you do decide to try out for some beta testing jobs to pad your resume, beware of the Online Sharks. Many companies on the internet will try to fool you into parting with cash for the opportunity to make hundreds or thousands of dollars as a part time game tester. Unfortunately the majority of these are scams. Watch out for the tired old sales tactics:

    •There’s a lengthy sales letter to convince you to sign up to join a discussion board, download an e-book, or obtain some other secret information. Nothing on the internet is secret. If it really worked, it would be spread all over the web faster than you can say peanut butter.

    •The price is dropped as a special, usually from something ridiculous (for example, $99 or $149) to a low price. $37 seems to be the magic number.

    •An acquaintance of mine, Julie, signed up for one of these online programs, after she found a Craigslist ad promising her that she could get paid to beta test unreleased video games. The program she signed up for cost her eighty dollars over the course of four months, and at

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1