Sony's The Tester

I knew someone that was a QA game tester. He hated video games after doing it for a couple of years. And I think he was also suicidal.

Programs centered around playing video games never work. Someday someone will realize this.

Of course, someone will email me asking if I watch it, because it's about video games and I love video games.

Why would you want to play an unfinished and glitchy game? I never understood the attraction of "testing" games.

I've done plenty of "game testing" before, it just usually is by accident when they release a crappy half finished game to the market.

This isn't beta testing.

I've said time and time again; We're one legislation or economic/social crisis away from "Battle Royale" becoming an actual reality show.
Fuck this show. Fuck it in the ear.

Nick Aracade....

BEST VIDEOGAME SHOW EVER?

I image the big attraction is that it could put your foot in the door in the industry. And in general its a less physically demanding job.

Game testing is like any QA department. It sucks and it takes a peculiar (or desperate) kind of person to want to get into. Unlike focus testing (which takes a broad range of people and having them play some portion of the game once and provide their opinion) the goal of QA testing is to find bugs, so you'll just do the same thing with slightly different variations over and over again, you'll have a step by step list of ways of testing and need to be able to tell developers how to repeat bugs.

In the course of having conversations with developers about all the bugs it's actually your job to find you may be able to slip in some game play suggestions (or learn more about game design from them). In many case though the testers simply enter the steps they went through to create the bug in a database and moves along. Occasionally retesting for the bug again if someone claims its fixed. With sophisticated bug tracking systems its not uncommon to not even have any sort of face to face conversation between the developers and the testers. Especially when testers (often being considered expendable/replaceable positions) are often grouped together in lower cost of living areas to try to cut costs. Whether its moving it offshore to India/China/wherever or simply to the boonies it's quite possible that you're just going to be sitting in a horrible low-level job with no room for advancement for a slightly early access to a really crappy game (someone has to waste their time testing Petz: Horses).

Oh, this sounds so much fun. I can just imagine the joy. "I'm in Barbie's enchanted palace floor 2 room 14. Opening the doors in A,B,C sequence is OK. In C,B,A sequence it causes a general protection fault. In B,C,A sequence a midget pops out of the DVD-ROM drive, fingers my asshole and spits in my hair. Now on repeat no. 67."

Microsoft's show: 100,000 prize, airs on TV.
Sony's show: 5,000 prize, airs on PSN.

Couldn't Sony get some sponsors?