So You Want to be a Games Tester

By Tom Hughes

After well over a decade of experience as a QA in the games industry, where he has moved up from a junior tester, to a lead, to a manager a veteran games tester Tom Hughes offers an insight into working in a world that can seem daunting and difficult to enter. This no nonsense guide gives you an idea of what working in the industry involves, how to hunt out jobs, where to focus your energies to bolster your CV, what questions you might be asked in the interview and a myriad of other topics that will help anyone seeking the opportunity to climb aboard the software testing career ladder the ability to do so without vast amounts of trial and error.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Hughes
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310753152

Book preview

So You Want to be a Games Tester

a straightforward guide by a games tester on breaking into the industry

by Tom Hughes

Smashwords Edition | Copyright 2014 Tom Hughes

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Chapter 1: Introduction

This Guide

Hello! Thanks for grabbing a copy of this guide. I sincerely hope that it helps you on the road to career that you find to be exciting, challenging and fun! I love working in the games industry, I am genuinely lucky to be one of those few individuals that enjoy going to work in the morning. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, but it is incredibly rewarding and I get to work with some of the maddest and most interesting people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting! I also believe that there everyone deserves that opportunity too, and with that in mind, I wrote this guide to help you out the best way I can.

This guide isn’t huge. Comparative to War and Peace, it is but a post it note of text, but there is a good reason for that – it doesn’t need to be big. Getting a job as a tester isn’t about the theory, it’s about getting out there and finding one. Read this guide and start hunting! I have purposely avoided padding for the sake of it, getting onto the relevant points that will have genuine consequence on your job hunt. We both know you want to get to the meat of the subject rather than wasting time hearing stories about what happened to me on my first day of work (incidentally, there is a brief bit on that later on.) I have attempted to write this guide in such a way that you can refer to it quickly should you need to. I encourage you to get through it at a pace that suites you, soak up what I have said, and start searching.

Being a games tester is like any other job when you boil it down. It is an important part of the SLC (software life cycle) and there are always roles coming and going. It is NOT an elusive mystical career that only a selected few are blessed with finding the code to a deep dark doorway that allows passage, and I say that after meeting many people who believe that you have to be lucky or connected to ever break into it. Let me assure you now, I was never very lucky and I certainly wasn’t connected. I worked hard for my place in the industry, and with the same ethos, anyone can find a career as a tester.

What I cannot do with this guide, is make any sort of guarantee. I cannot promise anyone a job working with games. Like any job market, there are fluctuations. The jobs have to be available and ultimately it is up to