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Hello everyone !
Soon, i'll get a lifetime contract for my job as a QA Tester. I'm very happy about it, because this is what I feel I've been made for.
Now I know our work is quite unknown, and has a bad reputation. I'd like to clear things out for everybody who's curious, or interested in doing this job. TL being a huge community, i think some of you might have questions. So fire them!
Projects I worked on at various levels of intensity : - Mars : war logs - Styx : Master of Shadows - Etherium - Magrunner - Blue estate - Constrast - Sherlock Holmes : Crimes & Punishments - Spacerun - Bound by flame - Final Exam - Wargame : Airland battle - Wargame : Red dragon - Farming Simulator 2013 - Farming Simulator 2014 - Farming Simulator 2015 - Tour de france 2013 - Tour de france 2014 - Pro Cycling Manager 2013 - Pro Cycling Manager 2014
I'm under NDA for some stuff but i'll try to answer anything
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So...tell us what you do.
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I work for an editor, not a dev studio. My job is to ensure the quality of the games we produce. We receive builds from the prealpha to the retail game (+ patches/dlcs) and we have to identify, reproduce and report bugs to the devs. For that, we use bugtrackers, and we create test plans in order to keep track of what we have tested and what we must test next.
We also do various tasks : recording gameplay for the marketing and Age Rating process, organizing playtests to receive feedbacks from players, hardware tests to make sure the game works fine on every setup, localization check, quality suggestions to the devs, and console requirements in order to be able to sell the title on all the platforms/
As games and devs are almost always differents everytime, every project is a unique case for us
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lifetime contract ?? please elaborate
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France1887 Posts
By lifetime contract, I think he means a permanent contract, an indefinite contract. It probably won't last all his lifetime, but the end date of the contract is not defined.
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Yes I meant that, most probably, sorry for the mistake
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Testing isn't playing of course
Where I am, we're quite free to test games the way we want, we just have to do something useful. The devs sometimes ask us to test features, or it's the Lead QA and Producers that give us tasks, but we have to accomodate them with our own plans in order to be more efficient. There's always something to test, so you're free to do one of the endless things you have to do !
From what I see, testing doesn't seem to be so bad at dev studios either, they don't appear to be much stressed out.
I hope i'll have a good life too, thanks! The only problem so far seems to be the tendinitis after a long period of work..
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Canada11355 Posts
Without revealing specifics, could you say how much money you make compared to your national average?
Is most of your gameplay "running into walls and jumping into roofs" as my friends in the gaming industry like to call it?
Is there a lot of competition for your job and what makes a good tester vs someone who is just good at games?
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Sounds fun, i've worked as a QA tester before too, for more monotonous software than games though so you are lucky. My question is, do you think you'll ever get bored about the job and whats your favorite part about it? Why QA and not something else?
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Sidenote: If you work for Cyanide, please make sure there next Blood Bowl iteration doesn't suck ass like the current....
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So, is one of the things you do mash buttons in menus? And is another one of the things you do go into a corner and jump a bunch?
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ahh ok
we just have to do something useful.
Please elaborate on some examples
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On October 08 2014 05:51 Nyarly wrote:Testing isn't playing of course Where I am, we're quite free to test games the way we want, we just have to do something useful. The devs sometimes ask us to test features, or it's the Lead QA and Producers that give us tasks, but we have to accomodate them with our own plans in order to be more efficient. There's always something to test, so you're free to do one of the endless things you have to do ! From what I see, testing doesn't seem to be so bad at dev studios either, they don't appear to be much stressed out. I hope i'll have a good life too, thanks! The only problem so far seems to be the tendinitis after a long period of work.. Can you clarify on this please? Who is they?
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Do you read The Trenches?
It sounds like a horrible profession tbh... why would you accept a lifetime contract?? Or you mean a once in a lifetime contract?
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Without revealing specifics, could you say how much money you make compared to your national average? I make a bit more than the national average for a single person. Quite nice if you ask me.
Is most of your gameplay "running into walls and jumping into roofs" as my friends in the gaming industry like to call it? When I see a situation where I think I can exploit the collision system, I do that. But that's not at all what we do all day. Most of the time, we're doing walkthroughs with a defined path : tester1 speed run, tester2 normal run with full objectives, tester3 slow run try to break the game, ..
Is there a lot of competition for your job and what makes a good tester vs someone who is just good at games? Not a lot of people truly want to work as a QA Tester. Most of the time, we have game designers, or level designers, that didn't find a better offer, and spend their internship as QA Testers, in order to have their first experience in the video game industry. It's actually very good to do that because as a tester (atleast where I work), you get to work with everyone involved in the process of making a video game. You learn a lot very quickly. As for good testers, I made my internship paper with this question. Basically, to me, everyone is different, everyone will test something differently, and there are no useless tests, so everyone's useful. => a gamer will make sure the game can be played entirely without any major issues => a "true" tester will make sure the game won't be broken after a misusage
Sounds fun, i've worked as a QA tester before too, for more monotonous software than games though so you are lucky. My question is, do you think you'll ever get bored about the job and whats your favorite part about it? Why QA and not something else? I don't know about this, I might indeed get bored somedays, but i've doing this for 1.5 years and i'm still happy when I find bugs. That's also why I love testing. I've spent 5 years exploring WoW, meaning going through walls and exploiting bugs in order to discover hidden places. When I play a game, I usually try to find outmaps and bugs, that's where I get the fun of playing video games I did 4 years in computer science before that, as a student. If I don't test, I'll probably be a programmer instead. But I always loved the debug part the most when I was coding, and from what I see, testing is still funnier than programming.
Sidenote: If you work for Cyanide, please make sure there next Blood Bowl iteration doesn't suck ass like the current.... I'm not assigned to this project (and i don't love the randomness in it), but our guys are doing the best they can. They know the community has high expectations
So, is one of the things you do mash buttons in menus? And is another one of the things you do go into a corner and jump a bunch? Yes, i'm one of those guys that love to mash buttons, and also love to find bugs with it. But most of the times, these issues aren't considered as a major, as it is not an expected behaviour (people that will find these bugs did force the issue). Too bad, because I found an unlimited gold exploit on of the games we released I also love to jump everywhere and find outmaps, that's what i'm good for really.
Please elaborate on some examples Testing collisions, walkthroughs to make sure there are no blockers, achievements unlocking, switching languages to check the localization, saving/loading/exiting at different occasions to make sure the game is stable, unplugging the controller to check the warning, ... Really, the only useless thing you can do is testing again what another tester did before you on the same build (in the same way).
Can you clarify on this please? Who is they? QA Testers / Devs / Producers I work with
Do you read The Trenches?
It sounds like a horrible profession tbh... why would you accept a lifetime contract?? Or you mean a once in a lifetime contract?
I don't know The Trenches. What makes it horrible to you ? I meant a permanent contract, the company hired me for an unlimited time, until I decide to quit.
Sorry for the delay, I hope my answers are satisfying !
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so how did you get that job? do you have a college degree or did you just apply more or less randomly?
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On October 09 2014 14:58 virpi wrote: so how did you get that job? do you have a college degree or did you just apply more or less randomly?
Since there aren't any degree for testing, I decided to get whatever degree I could get, that was related to video gaming. I applied before at Ubisoft, but I was too young and unexperienced to obtain a job.
In France, after spending 2 years in a public college, you're allowed to make another year in a professionalising cursus in order to have a job faster. (or stay in the same cursus for another 3 years) That's what I did, in order to obtain a degree in level design in only one year. At the end of the year, we had to make an internship. A guy told me about a friend of him that did an internship as a QA Tester, I decided to apply, and I got the job. My boss was impressed by my performances and offered me another contract two months after the end of my internship. I was good again, and that's when they decided to offer me a permanent contract.
I'd say it's fairly easy to become a QA Tester, as long as you have a bit of knowledge about the video gaming industry, and as long as you're doing a good job.
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I think speedrunners would make perfect QA testers. I wonder how many of them are actually involved in it.
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On October 10 2014 04:16 Capped wrote: I think speedrunners would make perfect QA testers. I wonder how many of them are actually involved in it.
We have one guy that's specialized in speedrunning games. He almost earned a contract completing a RPG in less that 2 hours. That's interesting because he can complete a version in less than a day, and detect most of the obvious blockers and critical issues on the way.
We are also hiring a "professional" speedrunner. The guy is starting on monday, and has a webtv with his speedruns, we look forward to what he can achieve. But as always, the thing with testing is that you can't have everyone that's good at the same thing. Testers have to play games in a different way in order to try differents possibilities.
So yeah, speedrunning is definitely a good thing, but testing isn't all about that. Most of the times, you have to repeat more than once the same action to reproduce an issue, and that takes time.
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Yeah, speedrunners really get into games too. They just have that natural tendency to learn little details of the game. I don't think he's saying speedrunners are good QA testers because they are fast.
As someone who's done QA, though not in game dev, I can really admire a good QA tester.
How much of the games are you allowed to tell other people?
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Thanks for the reply!
@@ you actually love debugging?
I abhore that part :/
I'm like "AADFB@#$%&I&WQbe#%QT$^ wtf now WHAT ELSE IS WRONG WITH MY CODE??!?! " when I debug
I'm happy for you to have found joy in your work
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On October 11 2014 11:56 obesechicken13 wrote: Yeah, speedrunners really get into games too. They just have that natural tendency to learn little details of the game. I don't think he's saying speedrunners are good QA testers because they are fast.
As someone who's done QA, though not in game dev, I can really admire a good QA tester.
How much of the games are you allowed to tell other people? Yep speedrunners are curious, this is a very good thing.
During development, I basically can't say anything. When the game is announced, I'm allowed to say I'm working on it. When it's released, I'm allowed to say even more !
It's so hard to keep it all for yourself, so many easter eggs and hidden stuff... We almost triggered world war 3 not so long ago (on this, I cannot say more atm)
On October 12 2014 05:17 JieXian wrote:Thanks for the reply! @@ you actually love debugging? I abhore that part :/ I'm like "AADFB@#$%&I&WQbe#%QT$^ wtf now WHAT ELSE IS WRONG WITH MY CODE??!?! " when I debug I'm happy for you to have found joy in your work Thank you too ! I love debugging because it makes me understand my code way better. You always think it works the way you want it to work, then you realise how it truly works, and be amazed. (atleast for me )
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On October 13 2014 16:24 Nyarly wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2014 05:17 JieXian wrote:Thanks for the reply! @@ you actually love debugging? I abhore that part :/ I'm like "AADFB@#$%&I&WQbe#%QT$^ wtf now WHAT ELSE IS WRONG WITH MY CODE??!?! " when I debug I'm happy for you to have found joy in your work Thank you too ! I love debugging because it makes me understand my code way better. You always think it works the way you want it to work, then you realise how it truly works, and be amazed. (atleast for me )
I get angry because I just want to get it to work but I keep failing haha
However, you're right. I should have that mindset instead :D
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Alright, so first and foremost I don't want the OP to take any of the somewhat cynical postings I have here personally and since he is a game tester, some of the questions I am genuinely curious about. Just remember, I am words on a computer screen, not someone trying to personally attack you.
The one thing that always gets on my nerves is when I'm talking to someone in real life and they say, "I want to be a game tester." like they know the job inside and out before they've actually done it. It is often times the subject of ridicule in magazine or news articles. Imagine if you are someone who has never played any PC games before in his or her life and suddenly read, "I make 22,000 USD a year to test video games and make sure they work." as a headline article.
I remember a nursing student told me, "Oh you just play the game, you find bugs, and you fill journals with notes on it." And I remember just sitting there, laughing at her because she doesn't know that game testers have to be able to fix the bugs that they find on the fly. An old friend of mine who used to work for Ion Storm told me this. That means the game testers in question must have programming knowledge. On top of that, I imagine most game testers are on temporary contracts / freelance, meaning they don't work at the office of the game developer in question. What good will taking notes do?
Again, not attacking you, but the title "game tester" is an oxymoron to anyone who has knowledge of how the gaming industry works. To the industry newby it sounds easy because of the title.
But more objectively, questions that I am genuinely curious about: Pay? How much can someone expect to make from legitimately testing a game? What kind of educational background is necessary? Is it really true that you have to fix game bugs on the fly? What are the best parts of the job and the worst parts of the job?
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On October 22 2014 12:58 BreAKerTV wrote: Alright, so first and foremost I don't want the OP to take any of the somewhat cynical postings I have here personally and since he is a game tester, some of the questions I am genuinely curious about. Just remember, I am words on a computer screen, not someone trying to personally attack you.
The one thing that always gets on my nerves is when I'm talking to someone in real life and they say, "I want to be a game tester." like they know the job inside and out before they've actually done it. It is often times the subject of ridicule in magazine or news articles. Imagine if you are someone who has never played any PC games before in his or her life and suddenly read, "I make 22,000 USD a year to test video games and make sure they work." as a headline article.
I remember a nursing student told me, "Oh you just play the game, you find bugs, and you fill journals with notes on it." And I remember just sitting there, laughing at her because she doesn't know that game testers have to be able to fix the bugs that they find on the fly. An old friend of mine who used to work for Ion Storm told me this. That means the game testers in question must have programming knowledge. On top of that, I imagine most game testers are on temporary contracts / freelance, meaning they don't work at the office of the game developer in question. What good will taking notes do?
Again, not attacking you, but the title "game tester" is an oxymoron to anyone who has knowledge of how the gaming industry works. To the industry newby it sounds easy because of the title.
But more objectively, questions that I am genuinely curious about: Pay? How much can someone expect to make from legitimately testing a game? What kind of educational background is necessary? Is it really true that you have to fix game bugs on the fly? What are the best parts of the job and the worst parts of the job?
Game testers at different companies do entirely different things. At a small company with 50 employees, you might be a programmer that is fixing problems getting paid $100k/year. If you're QA department at EA, where they have a 200 QA department alone, your job is to sit there for 10 hours a day on your cell phone and occasionally hit buttons on your controller for $15 an hour.
"Game tester/QA" is a huge umbrella term, but generally speaking, if a company is large enough to have a dedicated QA department, most of the general contractors are unskilled labour for under $20 an hour in North America.
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+ Show Spoiler +On October 22 2014 12:58 BreAKerTV wrote: Alright, so first and foremost I don't want the OP to take any of the somewhat cynical postings I have here personally and since he is a game tester, some of the questions I am genuinely curious about. Just remember, I am words on a computer screen, not someone trying to personally attack you.
The one thing that always gets on my nerves is when I'm talking to someone in real life and they say, "I want to be a game tester." like they know the job inside and out before they've actually done it. It is often times the subject of ridicule in magazine or news articles. Imagine if you are someone who has never played any PC games before in his or her life and suddenly read, "I make 22,000 USD a year to test video games and make sure they work." as a headline article.
I remember a nursing student told me, "Oh you just play the game, you find bugs, and you fill journals with notes on it." And I remember just sitting there, laughing at her because she doesn't know that game testers have to be able to fix the bugs that they find on the fly. An old friend of mine who used to work for Ion Storm told me this. That means the game testers in question must have programming knowledge. On top of that, I imagine most game testers are on temporary contracts / freelance, meaning they don't work at the office of the game developer in question. What good will taking notes do?
Again, not attacking you, but the title "game tester" is an oxymoron to anyone who has knowledge of how the gaming industry works. To the industry newby it sounds easy because of the title.
But more objectively, questions that I am genuinely curious about: Pay? How much can someone expect to make from legitimately testing a game? What kind of educational background is necessary? Is it really true that you have to fix game bugs on the fly? What are the best parts of the job and the worst parts of the job?
What the guy above me said should be quite true, a QA Tester's job strongly depends on the size of the company. So I'll answer from my point of view :
Pay? How much can someone expect to make from legitimately testing a game? It's a real job, there are no freelance testers, and you usually don't hire testers for only one project (experience is very important for testers). There are test labs though, that you can contract for specific missions. We often call them for TRC/XR and Localization checks. Today, we hired four guys from Globalstep and Quanticlab (romanian and indian test labs) to help us with multiplayer connectivity So you can legitimately expect to earn the same money the average guy will make. But the pay depends if you work for a testlab (a lot), a small dev company (minimum), a bigger one (more than average), or for an editor (honest pay). I'm a bit above the national average and I work for an editor.
What kind of educational background is necessary? Is it really true that you have to fix game bugs on the fly? There are no degrees or school for being a tester. But you need to know other games to be able to know what to expect. If your game is below the average in terms of framerate/texture quality, if it doesn't meet the general criteria (autosaves/settings/red is good green is bad/..), you need to notice it.
Programing and every other skill is a bonus. But you don't have to fix the bugs on the fly, it's not part of a tester's job. You only identify bugs, and it's the dev's task to reproduce with your info and fix them. But I guess devs often have to test and fix bugs themselves in small studios. A dev once told me "please don't tell us your opinion on the issues, because we'll follow your idea, and might lose a lot of time looking at the wrong thing. Just tell us what you see, and how to do it again. We'll see where it comes from."
What are the best parts of the job and the worst parts of the job? That's different for every tester, but to me : - Best part is testing, i love testing, finding bugs, and digging for infos. That's where i'm good at. - Worst part should be the random missions we have, like gameplay capture for agerating or trailers, because I don't know how to play like a common gamer. Or saying to devs "there's not enough time left, you should fix this and ignore this"
To all people who don't know about testing, you can start saying testing isn't playing. It's a real job with repetitive tasks and long hours of work. You don't play the game, you might not even finish it before the release, the only reward you'll get is knowing you made a game a bit better for every player, but no one will see your work.
What the girl said to you was pretty much right, we identify bugs and report them to the devs. There are testers at the dev studios to check the stability of the code additions, testers at editor companies that test the whole game, look for side effects and ensure the quality of the title, and testers in test labs for console requirements/hardware/loca checks.
I hope I answered you right, I don't think I totally got your point, but I felt no offense
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