Should Girls Be Video Game Testers?

Whenever you think about video games you probably don’t think about girls, although they probably come into the picture if you’re playing something like dead or alive or any game where the girls are in 2 piece swim suits.

But that’s not what i’m going to talk about here (i know, disappointing?) anyway, when you hear the word game tester you probably don’t think of a girl.  At best you probably think about a few young guys in their twenties who like to play video games and wear t-shirts that say I love StarWars or something like that.

This brings up an interesting question: Should girls be video game testers?  Well, that depends on whether women possess the traits necessary to be successful as a video game tester.  And by they way, yes they do exist.

I know a girl that is just a freak about video games and plays them all the time.  She actually blogs about video games too, which is strange because I didn’t know she was good at writing.  Anyway, she inspired me so much that I had to write this post right now.

If I told her she should be a game tester, i would probably tell her to imagine she was like this fancy food tester.  All she had to do to get paid, was visit restaurant after restaurant and taste the food.  And after tasting the food (the new video game) she would report and tell the chefs (the programmer) if the soup had any flies in it (bugs) or if there was anything wrong with the recipe (errors).  Wow that took a lot of my creativity, i usually don’t get this creative.

Anyway, I don’t know if she would be able to handle a job as a video game developing tester.  Girls usually aren’t acustomed to working long hours and she’s a pretty girl that’s kind of spoiled, since people buy her all kinds of video games all the time for any occassion.

Also, you may have to play the same game for span of a few months, and this girl i know tends to not have a big attention span.  She would probably be able to stick with it for 3 weeks tops.

Finally, another issue would be that most girls tend to “spread the word” a lot about all kinds of things.  This would probably come in handy in the marketing stage, but definitely not in the video game testing stage.  In fact, having lots of girls being game tester might increase piracy rates because they might just feel the need to share the current new game she was was given to test.

I mean, there are so many different ways a company can stop piracy with more restrictions and systems, but some girls just can’t keep a secret, you know?  I don’t know if any companies descriminate about hiring women as game testers, but other then the above issues, i’m sure women can be excellent game testers.

Feel free to tell me your own perspective on this, I find it very interesting. And if you’re interested in beta testing games, go ahead and visit this game tester job paradise to find out how you can get the best game tester job.