Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Experiencing An Ideal Role In Play Testing

The games industry is an ever increasing business, in recent years it has developed to be very successful, in some occasions rivalling profits and/or sales of box office movies. Countless individuals play games now, it isn’t just for kids, families can get together and play party games and the passionate gamers can challenge high definition epics that will always impress. With the industry increasing so much, so do the Careers that are presented, but wouldn’t it be incredible if you were able to play games for your work. You could of course aim to become a pro gamer and hopefully earn your living from contests, but this is no easy accomplishment. Luckily, there are also New careers as a games tester, which may be just the job you were hoping for.

Yes, Careers in games testing let you play games all day every day. However these Career ideas aren’t just a walk in the park, there is difficulties involved and you should keep in mind that you can’t select the game to test. Let’s get the difficult parts cleared out first. To begin, you are required to have a good eye for detail, it’s your responsibility to discover the problems with the game so that the developers can fix them. You also have to be persistent and patient as you could be playing the same game over and over for many hours in a day. The biggest challenge however is trying to figure out how different people would play the game, not everybody has the same method as you and you need to work out the different ways the game can play out so that you can locate as many glitches as possible.

What makes these Career ideas so great is the fact that they need no formal requirements most of the time. A person with reasonable GCSE grades in English and Maths can be in with a decent chance. Earning a degree in computing or studying programming can highten your chance of acceptance, but to be truthful, the most wanted thing is good communication skills and a love for gaming. In regards to actually discovering Careers in this kind of work, you can find positions at outsourcing companies, publishers and even the developers themselves can offer positions. New careers in games testing are fairly uncommon however, so you will need to keep watch for any opportunities and don’t be afraid to send your CV to different employers, even if they aren’t currently hiring it doesn’t hurt to make yourself known.

These Careers don’t offer the best of salaries, usually between £14,000 and £18,000, but the main bonus is more the fact that you’d be working a job that you love to do. It’s safe to believe if you’re looking at these Career ideas, then you’re already an enthusiastic gamer and being asked to carry out your hobby while at work can’t possibly be a bad thing. It’s also entirely possible that if you’re good at the work, you may be requested to join the development team performing a role such as level design by using the knowledge you picked up during the testing role.

No comments: