Alright, so the experts are telling us that we’re in this big bad economy, and the recession and everyone is going to lose their job and go to hell after they burn alive.  Part of that is true, many people are definitely losing their jobs because of the economy, but a fewer select group is also losing their job due to excessive video game playing.

Is this you? Do you have soar thumbs and fingers?  Did the blisters in your fingers, make you to handicapped to do your job as a telemarketer? Pushing buttons can be tough with them blisters.  And after you asked for some unemployment money they wouldn’t give it to you and fired you instead? Sounds like a nightmare?

Wrong! this is the best thing that could of happened to you because you hated that job anyway.  Now you can work at a job as beta tester of video games that you will be hating a lot less.  You can test video games for a living, just plug and play.  You won’t know when you’re working and when you’re playing, you’ll work overtime and get paid more without knowing it.  These are some of the benefits of getting beta testing jobs.  In your face economy!

So what will you be doing as a game tester?  Well you will be doing all kinds of game testing.  Here are some of they cool testing words some people like to use:  localization testing, soak testing, and adhoc testing.

1. localization is supposed to be about fixing up and checking on the game’s commentary and the way the langugage is put together and if the translation was done right and all that nonsense.

2.soak testing is something pretty weird is when you just pause the game or run the game and leave it pretty much alone and see if something happens by itself. (paranormal activity)

3. And adhoc testing is when you run like a crazy man on crack inside the video game and try to break it and mess it up just by playing.  Yes, this is what gets you paid my friend.

On to what else you need:  Serious game tester edge, a kind of morbid curiousity that is just begging to be satisfied by playing a video game again and again, and again.  You may have long assignments and you will need some type of motivation to keep you going, otherwise you will fail and you’ll never meet your father and fight him with a light saber. yeah that’s right.

So to get them beta testing jobs be sure to start as soon as possibly and get some experience under your belt, so you can build up to more and more profitable assignments.  Remember, big game developing companies don’t want to be horribly embarrased by thrashy video games that freeze everytime you pause them and that’s why they need you, if you want it.

You can get a great guide for beta testing jobs here.

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.

Okay so its clear that you don’t have to go to college to become a beta game tester, So what is this funny business talking about Grades and A’s?  Well this is just some plain game tester language that would make you think they were speaking in code if you didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.  

Grade A bugs are the glitches that some game testers encounter when they are going through the game testing phase of developing a video game.  Not only are these bugs icky, they actually happen to freeze the game while you play on your pc or game console.  Basically they crash the game, and they actually give the programmers something to do for the night.  They’ll have to look at line upon line of endless code to try and see what went wrong.

In fact, this is why the person who found the bug would have to report it in a very detailed fashion, like he just had it incrypted and burned into his memory with the precision of finding a needle in a haystack, because that’s just how it feels to be a confused programmer that is told there’s a bug and he can’t find sh** in the code.  If you put yourself in his shoes you’ll see what  a pain that could be.  So always do whatever you can to help out the programming bro.

Companies in the video game industry can have several of these grades to have a systematic way of reporting bugs.  As stated earlier Grade A could be the serious bugs, where Grade D could be a minor gameplay triviality that a game tester thinks is a little sketchy or could be better.  The grading really is just a control for a company and they decide how many grades to have and what they represent.

But don’t worry, its not an entire nightmare working with video games.  Your hard work definitely gets compensated when you get your paycheck, even if its not the biggest in the world, it makes you feel good inside if you just got a paycheck from nintendo or any other such company that you like.

Game Testers can earn from 20 to 25 thousands per year in their introductory periods.  They usually begin as partimers and eventually move into the full time positions, where the salary then increases.  Salary also increases if they move up in the food chain. So after some full time employment grind they may also move up into supervisor testing postions, or travel across departments such as information technology, marketing, or production.  So with some time and persistance this is definitely doable. 

So being a game tester is like a video game in itself.  Except the rules are more having to do with finding bugs and glitchtes in games.  And everytime you go into work you want to break your high score.  You want to find even more glitches than last week or last month or last year if you’ve been at it that long.  Because everytime you find one you get this little feeling inside of your chest, like a little warm pressure of joy.  And you experience that with the rest of your team.

And once the programmer gets that bug fixed by rewriting code or by using a so called patch, the game is given to the game tester again, who will once more continue playing it until his fingers fall of or he finishes his thing.  So that’s all for this post, if this video game tester thing appeals to you visit this test gamer page on how to get the best position as a beta game tester in the best way possible.

So why in the hell would anybody want to learn about game testing? Well, there are actually several mind boggling reasons for it.  One is because I recommended it, and i do so to anyone who is interested in video games and or sleeps with an xbox next to him.  I know some people that did that even though they had teddy bears, but those bears just don’t do it anymore.  Anyway here are some reason to learn about video game testing:

1. Because You like video games: duh! You would never have found this such website if you didn’t put something inside a search engine that had the words video game, game tester, video game tester or some type of similar combination.  You obviously enjoy playing video games so much that you are  thinking about making it part of a career or at least an interesting job.  But don’t get it twisted, being  a beta test gamer doesn’t mean its all pretty pretty princesses.  Its a real job with real competition and you want to come out on top.  I won’t tell you its your dream job where you play video games in your underwear all day without leaving your house and you just play for entertainment because that’s just not the way it works.  This is a business like any other and if you are a paid game tester you need to deliver real results to the company that you’re working with.

2. You may also want to learn to understand this business:  The whole video game industry is a gigantic puzzle or at least it can seem that way when you first begin because you just don’t have the experiences necessary and the knowledge of how things work to put everything neatly together inside your head.  Once you get your foot in the door, you’ll have plenty of learning opportunities where you will learn lots of the behind the scenes stuff in the gaming industry.  You will never look at the same way again.  You’ll see how the funness comes out of a video game that took many people’s abilities and talents to create, design, and even test for gameplay, graphics, and glitches.

3. You may want to become a beta game tester as part of your master plan to become a video game designer, programmer, or high position in game development.  Starting as a video game tester allows you to have extra valuable experiences that will serve you once you get into that career.  You might also come across some very important people in that industry and word can get out of how you’re such a bad ass game tester and dependable worker to work on a project.  If you get really involved with the people who are insiders you may get to places you never thought you could have before.

4. Maybe you just want to test video games because you don’t want to sell insurance.  Hell, when worse comes to worse, with the tedious parts of game testing I would still prefer that job over selling insurance.  Who wants to be out cold calling door to door and getting those things slammed in your face?  Not me, and hopefully not you.  If you are one of those people that likes getting doors slammed in their faces, congratulations you are unique and should stop reading this right now. Good luck.

For the rest of you who are interested in getting a video game tester job. Tony has you covered, in a step by step fashion he guides you through the entire process of securing that position you want as a game tester.  No BS just the real deal.  Go here to learn more about video game testing.

Lets face it playing video games was a waste of time all while you were growing up, at least that’s what your parents told you.  But what if you could become a video game tester?  Not just any video game tester, but the highest rank of video game testers- an alpha video game tester, yeah i know it sounds cheesy but that’s the actual term for a game developer tester.  If you want to reach a high rank like this you must begin as a beta tester.  I used to think beta testing was too low of a rank, but now i changed my mind. 

As a beta game tester you will most likely work from an office/studio/garage or wherever the company has its headquarters for workers.  Sure it would be sweet to just play video games from your bed, but you probably don’t get to do that, unless your an unpaid beta game tester.  As paid, you are on a more serious note, i.e. you play video games in the studio instead of in your bed, so leave your bed at home where it belongs.

Even being a volunteer itself may not be such a bad idea, after all you might want to build up your experience (which would be better if you build it up as a paid beta game tester than a free one) to get to your ultimate job, whether it be an alpha game tester, a video game programmer, a video game designer, or video game producer.  These higher level rankings pay bigger salaries and you  will need more than a burning desire to play video games to get these positions.  And while you study (yes you will need education for these higher jobs) you can get experience as volunteer tester or better yet as a paid beta game tester.  Or you can just be a paid beta tester for games if you’re one of the people that wants to just jump right in.

So what are some of the few things you should focus on in your education life? Or what majors can you take advantage of?  Well if you’re actually going to college and want to work in video games, i’m already impressed.  Some of the majors may come in handy:

mathematics: as it relates to programming and learning the language of code that the average person may die trying to decipher it if their lives depended on it.

computer science: an obvious major in the video game industry as you will face all the major constructs on the creation of these things we call video games for lack of a better term.  Better term= intertainment in a box.

Art : as it pertains to animation and graphic design.  These skills are obviously needed in the video game world, otherwise all games would have unbelievably cheesy graphics like in the old days…

Creative Writing: hey if you got an imagination, you could probably charge for using it and end up writing a damn good story line for a video game.

Anyway, being a video game tester allows you take advantage of that opportunity by acting as tool to catapult you to the next level and into these high paying positions.  In a way, video game testing is like an apprenticeship towards a career in the field, and it allows you to express your talents to managment and make all kinds of good impressions on these people that know people.  You can show how you’re so resoruceful, and willing to dedicate the time and effort you need to in order to solve the problem and be a solution giver. 

Video game testing itself is a puzzle in itself and there are certain things you must do to really kill it and succeed.  You would need someone who already went down the path to really put you up to speed. Lucky for you, you can get the cheat codes by going here for video game tester jobs.