How do you get into QA? (game testing)

[Arturo Sanchez]

Its that eternal problem of getting a position in an entry level job where people ask for experience in a job where you apply to get experience.

I just applied to a few, hoping harassing Keyvias is called experience. Plus I do have a dev key for the dev app and do wanna do some beta testing (when it's finally needed), guess that counts as being a beta tester?

But yeah... how do you get experience in a job you haven't got professional experience in?


As for my realistic chances. I ain't getting my hopes up.

[Canon Whitecandle]

QA pays shit and doesn't give you any roads into development at almost all the big developers. I can't tell if you're uninformed or masochistic...

[Arturo Sanchez]

QA pays shit and doesn't give you any roads into development at almost all the big developers. I can't tell if you're uninformed or masochistic...

Oh at this point I'm just looking for a job. From one dead end job to another. I'd pick QA. I'm not new to being paid peanuts.

And the company I'm applying for is a localisation company based in london. So all I'd be doing is getting sneak peaks on awesome foreign games (mostly from japan). Position I'm applying for is localisation QA as well as functional QA.

[Queso]

Communication skills are a huge necessity for QA. Make sure you make any experience in that regard obvious. That's about all I got

[Squidslinger Gilder]

QA was a thing back when console games released in final forms and couldn't be updated. Nowadays, its a function that is outdated and pointless. All companies have to do is do closed betas or alphas and utilize tons of players to do the QA work for free instead of being paid. At most all you'd want is a small pool of internal testers but like in the past, its an underpaid, overworked, kind of job.

I remember a mag did an interview with one over a decade back when everyone wanted to be a game tester. The guy wouldn't give his name/etc but he basically dispelled all the myths around the job by stating how its actually like. Really made a lot of folks realize it kinda sucks being forced to play games all day long.

[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]

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.

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