Video Games Tester

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Modern video and computer games take from one to three years to develop (depending on scale). Testing begins late in the development process, sometimes from halfway to 75% into development (it starts so late because, until then, there is little to nothing to play or test). Testers get new builds from the developers on a schedule (daily/weekly) and each version must be uniquely identified in order to map errors to versions.

Once the testers get a version, they begin playing the game. Testers must carefully note any errors they uncover. These may range from bugs to art glitches to logic errors and level bugs. Some bugs are easy to document (“Level 5 has a floor tile missing in the opening room”), but many are hard to describe and may take several paragraphs to describe so a developer can replicate or find the bug. On a large-scale game with numerous testers, a tester must first determine whether the bug has already been reported before they can log the bugs themselves. Once a bug has been reported as fixed, the tester has to go back and verify that the fix works – and occasionally return to verify that is has not reappeared.

It is a common misconception that being exceptionally good at playing video games is important to the role of game tester. Whilst it is necessary for the game to be tested at the topmost levels of play, it is perhaps more important that testers try to think like a player who has just started playing – making the kinds of mistakes they will make and trying to imagine the full range of strange ‘incorrect’ things that players will do.

This type of “playing” is tedious and gruelling. Usually an unfinished game is not “fun” to play, especially over and over. A tester may play the same game — or even the same level in a game — over and over for eight hours or more at a time. If testing feature fixes, the tester may have to repeat a large number of sequences just to get to one spot in the game. Understandably, burn-out is common in this field and many use the position just as a means to get a different job in game development. For this reason, game testing is widely considered a “stepping stone” position. This type of job may be taken by college students as a way to audit the industry and determine if it is the type of environment in which they wish to work professionally.

In software development quality assurance, it is common practice to go back through a feature set and ensure that features that once worked still work near the end of development. This kind of aggressive quality assurance—called regression testing—is most difficult for games with a large feature set. If a new bug is discovered in a feature that used to work, once it is fixed, regression testing has to take place again.

All console manufacturers require that the title submitted goes through a series of tests to ensure it meets the rigid standards they have established. Failure to respect the required standards will delay or even prevent the game from being published on the market. Many video game companies separate technical requirement testing from functionality testing altogether since a different testing skillset is required.

So If your interested in getting a game testers job then check out Game Testing Jobs HQ for a full list of available online game testing jobs.