Sure you play games, but have you ever considered which makes them? Computer and video game development is a fast-growing entertainment field, that has a lot to offer you professionally and creatively. Your enthusiasm is crucial, but you will also need skill and qualifications. Games are as competitive as any entertainment industry, and it's not easy to obtain that first job. But when you've set your sights on the games biz, we're here that will help you build your skills, make informed decisions, and enhance your chances of BREAKING IN.
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Game Tester Career Path
The very first thing you need to know is simply how diverse a game team is. So we've come up with quite a impressive listing of Career Paths, grouped by category.
If you want to learn more concerning the individuals who from the industry, we're here for you. Take a look at our Developer Profiles to get to know a number of your future colleagues.
For some useful pointers, check out our Resources page. It's got a summary of schools that offer industry-related coursework, and a lot of other game-development-related goodies to help you dig deeper into whatever fields appeal to you.
And for those of you who think gaming is simply a niche market, educate yourself. Interactive entertainment consumes about $9 billion dollars within the USA alone. Games are expected to surpass film box-office revenues in the next couple of years, making it the fastest growing segment of the entertainment market, and an excellent field for career advancement.
Game Tester Methodology
Like a game developer, your creative work may have a wide reach. Based on the ESA, 60% of all Americans age six and older, or about 145 million people, play computer and game titles. And 35% of all Americans identified computer and game titles as the most fun entertainment activity. That's a lot more than television (18%) and movies (11%) combined! In what other industry would you have this much fun, challenge yourself, and get to the hearts of countless fans? None. Check out these pages, get yourself educated, and we'll see you soon.
There isn't any industry standard way of game testing, and many methodologies are produced by individual video game developers and publishers. Methodologies are continuously refined and could differ for different types of games (for example, the methodology for testing a MMORPG will be different from testing a casual game). Many methods, for example unit testing, are borrowed directly from general software testing techniques. Outlined below are the most crucial methodologies, specific to video games.
Functionality tests are most commonly associated with the phrase "game testing", as it entails playing the game in some form. Functionality testing does not require extensive technical knowledge. Functionality testers search for general problems inside the game itself or its interface, for example stability issues, game mechanic issues, and game asset integrity.
Compliance testing is the reason for the existence of game testing labs. First-party licensors for console platforms have strict technical requirements titles licensed for their platforms. For example, Sony publishes a Technical Requirements Checklist (TRC), Microsoft publishes Technical Certification Requirements (TCR), and Nintendo publishes a set of "guidelines" (Lotcheck). A few of these requirements are highly technical and fall away from scope of game testing. Other areas, especially the formatting of normal error messages, handling of memory card data, and handling of legally trademarked and copyrighted material, would be the responsibility of the game testers. A single violation in submission for license approval might have the game rejected, possibly incurring additional costs in further testing and resubmission. In addition, the delay may cause the title to overlook an essential launch window, potentially costing the publisher even larger sums of money.
What's needed are proprietary documents released to developers and publishers under confidentiality agreements. They aren't readily available for everyone to review, although knowledge of these standards is recognized as an invaluable skill to have like a tester.
Compliance could also refer to regulatory bodies like the ESRB and PEGI, when the game targets a specific content rating. Testers must report objectionable content that may be inappropriate for the desired rating. Much like licensing, games that don't get the desired rating should be re-edited, retested, and resubmitted at additional cost.
Compatibility tests are normally required for PC titles, nearing the end of development as much of the compatibility depends on the ultimate build of the game.Often two rounds of compatibility tests are carried out - early in beta to permit time for issue resolution, and late in beta or during release candidate. Compatibility testing team test major functionality from the game on various configurations of hardware. Usually a list of commercially important hardware comes through the publisher.
Compatibility testing helps to ensure that the game operates on different configurations of software and hardware. The hardware encompasses brands of different manufacturers and assorted input peripherals such as gamepads and joysticks.
The testers also evaluate performance and results are employed for game's advertised minimum system requirements. Compatibility or performance issues might be either fixed by the developer or, in case of legacy hardware and software, support might be dropped.
Localization testing act as in-game text editors.Although general text issues really are a part of functionality testing, QA departments may employ dedicated localization testers. In particular, early Japanese game translations were rife with Engrish, and in the past few years localization testers are employed to make technical corrections and review translation work of game scripts - catalogued collections of all of the in-game text. Testers indigenous to the location in which a game is marketed might be employed to ensure the accuracy and excellence of a game's localization.
Soak testing, poor video games, involves leaving the sport running for prolonged periods time in various modes of operation, such as idling, paused, or at the title screen. This testing requires no user interaction beyond initial setup, and is usually managed by lead testers. Automated tools can be utilized for simulating repetitive actions, such clicks. Soaking can detect memory leaks or rounding errors that manifest only with time. Soak tests are among the compliance requirements.
Beta tests are done during beta stage of development. Often this refers back to the first freely available version of a game. Public betas are effective because a large number of fans could find bugs that the developer's testers didn't.
Regression tests are performed once a bug has been fixed through the programmers. QA checks to see if the bug remains (regression) after which runs similar tests to determine if the fix broke something else. That second stage is usually called "halo testing"; it calls for testing all around a bug, searching for other bugs.
Load testing tests the limits of the system, such as the number of players with an MMO server, the number of sprites active on the screen, or the number of threads running inside a particular program. Load testing requires either a large group of testers or software that emulates heavy activity.
Multiplayer testing may involve separate multiplayer QA team if the game has significant multiplayer portions. This testing is more common with PC games. The testers make sure that all connectivity methods (modem, LAN, Internet) will work. This allows single player and multiplayer testing to happen in parallel.
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