My Journey as a Video Game Tester

Hi, my name is Hari Panicker. A passionate video game tester, Also, I am a die-hard fan of playing (Role-Playing, Adventure, MMORPG & arcade games.  My unmeasurable love towards game is the main reason why my career as a video game tester flourished.
It all started with the game called Contra and Dangerous Dev in my 4th standard.
The game was so interesting that after school I used to dash towards home to complete my homework then sit and play till bedtime without even flinching. Ah! How can I forget?
As I grew up I discovered more and more intense games like CS, Dota I, Red Alert, AOE (Age of Empires), GunZ the Reloaded Duel and many more. Among the huge list, hands down my favorite, the one, and only Ragnarok Online.
About the game, Ragnarok is an MMORPG created by Gravity. I was so into this game that I used to sometimes skip my study hours for playing the game with my friends (lol..).  I and my friends used to party up and level up our characters, hunt equips /attribute card from morning till noon.
Then in the evening, we party up again for some PVP (Player vs. Player) and GVG (Guild vs. Guild) fights. It was not just playing the game for me and my friends we started to make money by selling some rare items in-game which was very hard to obtain.
After a few years, the game server closed so I had to move to another Ragnarok server. This was a Malaysian Server called Happy Ragnarok Online. I was the No.1 Player of the server which gave me the opportunity to work as a Game Master for this game.
From there my Game Testing life started I had to report Bugs, find out who is using Cheat (Botting) result to permanent BAN and Ragnarok Support (Help players if they have any questions regarding the game).
Moving on I realized that my career is into Game Testing and further started to work in a game testing company where I got to learn many new things about games and how it works (many new terms used in-game, writing bugs, uploading them on Jira, Mantis, etc.) in testing.
Within 6 to 7 months I got promoted to a Senior Test Engineer where I had to handle a team of 8 to 15 people, explains them the task to do, solve their queries about the game, review the bugs properly and send daily status reports.
Games I have tested:

My team had good times and bad times in projects we tested. we were gifted with immense pleasure when the tested game gets positive feedback from the clients with some Goodies (Gifts) 😊, and of course, there is a lot of pressure when the delivery date approaches. But yes, after all, its fun testing more and more games 😊

My craving for games and testing them will never end. It’s like my hobby turned in to my career.

What Are The Requirements To Be A Game Tester?

Playing video games professionally is the fantasy, however, is it a reasonable dream?

From a game tester stance, the short answer is no,

Really no!

This shouldn’t imply that you can’t acquire a good living with game testing. In any case,playing and testing is altogether two distinct points.

Undoubtedly you must be very well acquainted with playing games. It’s a definite requirement! But we’ll discuss rather what it takes to test the games.

If you’re considering for a profession as a “Video Game Tester”, it’s vital you comprehend what this career will want from you. In this article, we will suggest a list of the generally required abilities and training for this profession.

What Does a Game Tester Do?

“QA analyzer” is the professional title of the position. QA= Quality Analyzer. That move in the title recognizes game testing from game playing and is the initial step on a voyage of realigning desires.QA testing is as much playing game as scenes editing in a film seems to be while watching a movie. You could be trying a similar section of the game for quite a long time!

They help to:

  • Find bugs in the product
  • Catch PC crashes
  • Get rid of realistic glitches
  • Manage sound levels and music playback
  • Distinguishing the game against other available games
  • Checking its execution against what the developer expected
  • Guarantee character development and progression of the storyline

Your role as a game analyzer is to break the game. Games in their beta or test form frequently crash, have rough soundtracks and are brimming with bugs. You need to find any code that doesn’t work. So, you need to be somewhat whimsical in your playing and testing.

Requirements to Become a Game Tester

Clearly, capability in computer games is a noteworthy addition. Higher education and advanced training are not required to be a game tester. But having a qualification particular to the sector would be a favorable position, i.e.inthe computer science major. Moreover, hopefuls in this profession must have a dexterity for playing the computer games and in addition a fantastic eye for detail and a capacity to write as well.

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An ability of writing is basic since computer game analyzers are required to record any bugs they discover in the game. Messy composition and poor grammar or spelling structure may make it troublesome for developers to peruse and comprehend game defects.Game testers always speak with developers and designers. They represent game bugs or make proposals to enhance games. Hence, communication skills are also significant.

Next, you should be instructed in different parts of programming and gaming. You don’t really need to be a genuine software engineer, yet you have to comprehend with the fundamental technology of whatever software languages the engineers utilize.

Above all, you spend a normal of forty hours per week troubleshooting a lot of games. Enthusiasm and energy are essential for this job. Skill and coordination are likewise imperative properties of expert game testers.

Core Skills:

  • Conscientious and perception
  • Troubleshooting and investigating aptitudes
  • Analytical thinking
  • Resilience to monotonous and repetitive duties

Other Skills

  • Great oral and written communication
  • Team player
  • Capacity to maintain good coordination with others
  • Potential to meet due dates and work under pressure

Technical aptitudes

  • In case you’re testing computer games, the firm may require that you’re skilled to build a PC and investigate equipment issues. In case you’re doing localization testing you clearly need to ace a language superbly. Compliance testers are relied upon to know the accreditation procedure of different constructors.
  • Computer science major or programming.
  • Testers should likewise have involvement in making and keeping up information databasesand have some education in graphic design.

Further more, game testers must be able to play on a wide range of gaming platforms. Abilities for playing games are significant to be productive in this vocation field. Game testers ought to have a very long time of experience playing a wide range of games. They ought to have learning and playing knowledge in the racing, fighting, role-playing, simulation genre of the games. Learning of each category isn’t important, yet every analyzer must have a strong comprehension of how all the functions of video games.

How These Skills Help the Game Testers?

On playing a game thoroughly, you’ll prescribe upgrades to the development group before it is publicly launched. You’ll play games in detail and in different ways.Computer game testers must have the potential to play out an assortment of PC methodology, from networking to investigating the Internet and programming.

As a rule, they should likewise supply the hardware to play the game and also a top-notch computer gaming. All equipment must be up-to-date.

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Thus, being a computer game tester is fun, but at the same time, it’s diligent work. Most of the time game tester chip away at a game well more than eight hours per day for three to four months or considerably more. Also, they regularly don’t get the chance to pick the games they test.

Conclusion

Game tester job is a perfect position in case you’re still in college and studying for a computer science degree and wish to work in the games sector in future.The computer game industry is quite often in motion – new technology and new games are continuously driving it higher than ever. The income of the gaming business is, in reality, three times higher than the whole Hollywood film industry. Much of the time, taking a profession as a game tester can be a venturing stone to different positions in the gaming industry- like – product manager, supervisor, or assistant producer.