“Testers play games all day”

One of the first things people will ask if you tell them you’re a games tester is “Wow! You mean you play video games all day long and get paid for it?” Admittedly the honest answer is “Yes”, but therein lies an assumption that “playing games all day” is actually fun. People outside the industry often fail to realise that testing is not really “playing” games as you and I would normally play them – my experience is that it’s more the sort of thing you might do when you’ve played a game to death and want to eke a few more hours worth of entertainment out of it (i.e. trying to climb the castle in Mario 64 without using the cannon). It is also important to remember that testers do not get to choose the games they test – for every lucky soul playtesting Perfect Dark or Shenmue, there are thousands of others lumbered with much less exciting fare during their 9-to-5 (in the spirit of Christmas, I won’t be mean and single out any game in particular).

One way to imagine “playtesting” is to think about a recent game you played – not one that was outstanding or excessively awful, just a game mediocre in its fun quotient and middle-of-the-road in terms of replay value. Now imagine playing that game for four or five months in a row, ten hours a day, every day. Not only that, but it is most likely your own testing schedule will focus on only two or three levels in that game (although eventually you will be expected to know the entire game inside-out). If you are still thinking “Hey, that’s OK, it’s still playing a game...” trust me - you are not in the correct mindset! Don’t get me wrong - testing could be quite a lot of fun, but at its core it involves mucho repetitive and painstakingly slow, methodical work.