Friday, September 17, 2010

Enjoying A Unique Job In Play Testing

The games industry is an ever increasing business, in recent years it has turned out to be amazingly successful, in some occasions rivalling profits and/or sales of Hollywood movies. A lot of individuals play games now, it isn’t only for kids, families can all join in 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 become presented, but wouldn’t it be amazing if you were able to play games as your job. You could certainly aim to become a professional gamer and if successful earn your living from tournaments, but this is no easy accomplishment. Luckily, there is also New careers as a games tester, which might be just the job you were searching for.

It’s no lie, Careers in games testing allow you to play games all day every day. But these Career ideas aren’t just a walk in the park, there is a challenge involved and you should keep in mind that you can’t select the game to play. Let’s get the difficult parts cleared out first. To begin, you must have a good eye for detail, it’s your job to find the problems with the game so that the developers can fix them. You also have to be enduring and patient as you could be playing the same game continuously for the most part of a day. The biggest challenge however is attempting to figure out how different audiences would play the game, not everyone has the same technique as you and you must work out the many ways the game can play out so that you can come across as many issues as possible.

What makes these Career ideas so attractive is the fact that they have no formal qualifications the majority of the time. Anyone with good GCSE grades in English and Maths can be in with a fair chance. Getting a degree in computing or learning programming can increase your chance of acceptance, but to be truthful, the most important thing is good communication skills and a passion for gaming. In relation to actually locating Careers in this kind of work, you can find jobs at outsourcing companies, publishers and even the developers themselves can supply positions. New careers in games testing are quite hard to come by however, so you will need to keep a look out for any openings and don’t be scared to send your CV to many employers, even if they aren’t looking for new staff it doesn’t hurt to make yourself known.

These Careers don’t supply the highest of salaries, usually between £14,000 and £18,000, but the main benefit is more the fact that you’d be employed in a job that you love to do. It’s safe to say if you’re considering these Career ideas, then you’re already a keen gamer and being able to carry out your hobby while at work can’t surely be a bad thing. It’s also entirely possible that if you’re good at the role, you could be offered to join the development team taking on a role such as level design by using the experience you picked up during the testing role.

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