The primary task undertaken by a professional game tester is the repeated organized testing of video games to discover, identify, and report bugs in the game to enable game programmers to correct the code causing those bugs. The work is repetitive, sometimes tedious. The game is played over and over again, often the repeated playing of one small game event using different tactics and strategies in an attempt to reveal an error. The game tester’s mission is to ensure that all bugs are found before game release, by him rather than after release by the customer. The average week for a game tester is about 35 hours, although overtime can be significant during the crunch time immediately before the scheduled release date. Evening, weekend, and holiday work schedules are not unheard of. Most game testing is conducted onsite at the game company’s offices.
Experience is important in determining a game tester’s salary, but it’s not necessary to have any previous experience testing games to get your first job as a game tester. It’s important only that you enjoy playing video games and can do so for the purpose of revealing bugs and documenting the conditions under which they appear. Game testers come from varied backgrounds, education, and degree of game playing experience. Some are artists or graphic designers who are using the game testing opportunities to establish credibility within the gaming company in the hopes of moving into character creation or game programming positions in the future. Regardless of their backgrounds, they all share some common characteristics: excellent oral and written communications skills, persistence and a willingness to play games repeatedly for long periods, a methodical and analytical approach to testing, ability to pay attention to detail, and a love for playing video games.
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