So you want to be a game tester? Well, then you’ll probably have to get interviewed at some point if you want to make testing video games your official job.  This means that you’re going to need to learn a few tricks and techniques about interviewing so that you can get the job in the end.

The video game industry can be all fun and games, although these game development companies take their jobs really seriously and you should follow that degree of seriousness.  Therefore, you should definitely dress the part for the interview.  You don’t have to wear a full blown tux James Bond stlye, but you definitely want to look a little sharp.  I’m not a video game clothes stylist, nor do I know if that job exists, but you should dress with some slacks and a nice semi-formal shirt, I say that a tie would be optional, so wear it if you think it looks cool and its not choking the life out of you.

The Tell Me About Yourself Question For the Game Tester

Before the game testing job interview, you should probably go over the things you expect to take place in this interview.  You might prepare by going over some of the questions that you think they might ask you.  For instance: the question everyone suddenly can’t answer when they’re finally in that game testing interview job or any other job.  Its the old “Tell me about Yourself” question.

Just make sure you don’t reveal too much in this answer. This is your opportunity to shine and talk about how you fit the job description by indirectly talking about relevant things.  This is where you can say things like, I love playing video games and I couldn’t live without playing because my heart would probably stop pounding, or things like that if that’s who you are.   But nobody wants a complete goofball because they might goof off on company money and that’s not good.

You can also talk how you know a lot about video games and that you also have a professional side.  These people are serious about hiring someone and they will be paying you.  Therefore, they want you to have some type of professional business sense.  You can tell them:

1.  how you have been dependable in the past

2. how you’re in an independent person, or

3.  how you enjoy working under pressure when you have to.

The Truth About The Game Testing Field

The truth is that nobody who will hire you really cares about yourself as a person.  They’re only asking questions like these to find out more about your behavior and whether or not you will fit into the company culture.  As sad as it sounds, the video game industry is just like any other.  Video game company managers will be interested only in your performance and what you will be  doing during the 40 or 60 hours that you work in throughout the week.  They could care less if you live in a car, a trailer, a pool (never heard of this one), or a shopping cart (seen this one).

So knowing this, you’re the one that’s going to have to be looking out for yourself and know what you want in a job.  Maybe you won’t take jobs that pay less than 10 dollars an hour or maybe you have different standards.  Be sure to become aware of your standards so you can go fully prepared into your game testing job interview.

Visit  paytestgamers.com to learn more

Watch Game Tester Video

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.