The idea of being forced to test out video games all day sounds like the perfect career for most people. The truth is, according to Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) Senior Release Manager Brent Gocke, all the rumors are true: It’s the dream job for someone who wants to break into the industry.
“If you enjoy tinkering and trying to break things, video game testing could still be potentially a route for you,” he said. “It’s for someone who is meticulous, someone who enjoys games and is passionate about playing these things and the different possibilities.”
Video game testers work in the game development department and test titles to provide quality control for the games. According to Game Developers 7th Annual Salary Survey in 2008, testers start out making $10 – $12 an hour, averaging $25,000 for the first three years and eventually earning about $43,000 with over three years of experience. Testing leads, people who worked as a tester for over six years, could expect a salary of $71,000 a year. Video game testers, who tend to be in the 18 to 35 age demographic, are essentially asked to “break” the game, and find all the bugs and software defects so these errors don’t come up during normal play when the title is released. Depending on your strengths, you could be asked to do a number of different tasks from playing the game through as fast as possible to see if it works to trying the same level over and over again for glitches to trying to load all the different possibilities. Working for a big company like Activision or Sony Entertainment can pretty much ensure big titles to work with, but smaller companies might give you titles that you necessarily wouldn’t want to play. “You might get sick of running through the same level for the fifteenth time,” Gocke said.
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It’s perfect for the person who loves playing games, Gocke said, and can detail their experience to developers. Video game companies put a lot of money into each title, and they expect their QA testers to find all the problems so there aren’t big issues at the last minute when they are trying to publish. He explained it’s also a great way to see the different careers within the video game industry, which is perfect for someone who knows they want to work in gaming but doesn’t know exactly what they want to do.
Gocke himself found himself in that scenario. A fresh college graduate who had started working in real estate, around the mid 2000’s he found the market tanking and knew he needed to transition into a new career. He enjoyed playing video games so he tried to enter through the quality assurance (QA) department as a video game tester so he could learn about the industry. He didn’t have the qualifications that game developers and producers had, and QA positions had the least amount of prerequisites. Gocke went straight for Sony and the big publishers because he knew he was looking at this as the entry-level position in a lifelong career. Eventually, he grew within the company and ended up as a senior release manager, gaining experience and contacts as we went up the corporate ladder. “You can get a foot in the door and learn about the industry and the different positions or stay in the industry and move up in QA through management,” he said.
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That’s exactly what Matthew Brown is hoping for. He recently won Playstation Networks reality TV show The Tester 2 and won a $5,000 signing bonus, a 46” 3D Bravia TV, a limited edition The Tester PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, and most of all, an entry level position as SCEA’s newest video game tester in the Quality Assurance department. “QA is one of the entry level positions that would give me a foot in the door, he explained. “I’m only 24. I have six years of experience, but it’s all lower level experience. I know I have to get my foot in the company somewhere so I’ll start in the bottom and work my way up.”
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Brown wanted to work in marketing and PR for a video game company, so he studied sociology and marketing at the University of California, Berkeley. However, getting a lucrative position with a company like Sony straight after graduation, even though Brown had interned at other non-gaming firms, is next to impossible so he decided to enter the television show competition in order to get a QA job and a chance to get noticed by the company. “It’s who you meet and who you know,” he said. “There’s so many great qualified people. It takes standing out to get a great position.”
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Will Powers, winner of the first season of The Tester, agrees. After his first job as a QA tester, he transferred into Sony’s PR department. Powers worked in gaming journalism for websites like The Big Bag and Gamer Access, but wanted an even more in-depth role in the gaming industry. He initially thought he wanted to go into localization since he had focused on Asian Studies and Japanese in UNC Chapel Hill, but realized that he was more fit for PR, which he believes is the other side of journalism. “In the economy right now, hey, I know people with college degrees who are working in grocery stores,” Powers explained. “One thing that’s really great about QA is sure it’s an entry level position and sure there aren’t necessarily tons of qualifications, but it makes people that are qualified that do the job really well stand out even more.”
“As long as [Brown] goes in with a humble attitude, granted he won this show so he has this great launch pad, QA is a great beginning job for a career depending on his personal drive, if he’s able to jump out and chooses to jump out,” Gocke added. As with any job, the power to succeed is always in the hands of person in control, but it’s especially true for gamers.
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