Games Tester

£5.50 per hour

2006

9 months

United Kingdom

I got the number to the place off a friend of a friend. Had a telephone interview and then I started work the following weekend.

GCSE English and an ability to play games.

We receive a checklist of things that should be accomplished in the game. When we are successful we tick the box. If a bug occurs in the game we fill in a bug form and try to reproduce it at least 10 times.

We spent the entire day playing Battlefield over xbox live. 12 people, 6 man teams in the same room. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Not exactly a worst day, but my friends started not to work as often as I did and the job got boring.

You get to play games all day. The versions we tested were beta versions which technically means there’s hardly any bugs in a game when we play it.

Work was infrequent.

Free soft drinks.

Language testers got paid 1/3 more than English only testers. Also they got more work because they could speak English as well as another language.

£10 per hour

2006

3 months

United Kingdom

I received a call from a job agent and managed to get an interview and succeeded.

GCSE in English and a passion for games help.

We receive bug reports and we have to play a game to check them out. Afterward we need to regress the bugs when a new version of the game comes out.

My team had just finished a game and we merged with another team. A deathmatch was part of our testing procedures and the newbies, us, whipped the team who had been testing the game for ages.

When I got laid off due to the company performing very badly the previous quarter.

You get to hang out with like minded people and play games.

It can get really repetitive.

Free soft drinks. I worked the evening shift so everyone in the office got a free dinner.

You need a lot of patience and a keen eye to spot bugs. Although playing the game is still testing, they kept a close eye on how many bugs you were finding.