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How do you get into QA? (game testing)

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HamsterIV:
I worked QA a long time ago. Communication especially written technical communication is important. QA is still important even if devs can patch games post release. By the time a game reaches Beta most of the real testing has already been done on it. Testers are essentially living debugging tools programmers use to find weird edge cases in their code that they did not anticipate when writing the base cod. Your ability to tell the programmer what the mistake is and how to reproduce it will determine your value as a QA 100% of the time.

For example:
Bad: Game sometimes crashes on loading screen
Good: Game hangs for 10 seconds then exits to OS on loading screen transition between area 2 and area 2.5 50% of the time
Very Good: Game hangs for 10 seconds then exits to OS on loading screen transition between area 2 and area 2.5 while carrying the orb of destruction and player is has less than 20% health.

I blundered into my QA job through a Craig's List add. If you want to make yourself look good when applying to these types of jobs, write up a sample bug report of a bug you found in a game you own. Be as specific as possible without wasting words. Also QA jobs especially in the games industry tend to have crap hours, crap pay, and very few avenues for advancement.

Edit:
Just saw you are applying for localization QA for a Japanese company. First off expect to be given the really crap games when you are the new guy. Secondly learn some of the idioms of the native language. To this day I still write bug reports with a slight Indian dialect because the QA I did was for an Indian company and I had to interact with Indian programmers.

Arturo Sanchez:

--- Quote from: HamsterIV on January 06, 2015, 02:18:16 pm ---I worked QA a long time ago. Communication especially written technical communication is important. QA is still important even if devs can patch games post release. By the time a game reaches Beta most of the real testing has already been done on it. Testers are essentially living debugging tools programmers use to find weird edge cases in their code that they did not anticipate when writing the base cod. Your ability to tell the programmer what the mistake is and how to reproduce it will determine your value as a QA 100% of the time.

For example:
Bad: Game sometimes crashes on loading screen
Good: Game hangs for 10 seconds then exits to OS on loading screen transition between area 2 and area 2.5 50% of the time
Very Good: Game hangs for 10 seconds then exits to OS on loading screen transition between area 2 and area 2.5 while carrying the orb of destruction and player is has less than 20% health.

I blundered into my QA job through a Craig's List add. If you want to make yourself look good when applying to these types of jobs, write up a sample bug report of a bug you found in a game you own. Be as specific as possible without wasting words. Also QA jobs especially in the games industry tend to have crap hours, crap pay, and very few avenues for advancement.

Edit:
Just saw you are applying for localization QA for a Japanese company. First off expect to be given the really crap games when you are the new guy. Secondly learn some of the idioms of the native language. To this day I still write bug reports with a slight Indian dialect because the QA I did was for an Indian company and I had to interact with Indian programmers.

--- End quote ---

Oh I'm weeaboo as fuck. Understanding japanese idioms isn't a new thing to me.

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