What do you do?
On a typical day, we first work out what version of
the games we’re going to be sending off that evening
and then throughout the day we’ll have specific
things that we need to test. The development guys will
be finished with certain bits of functionality, so we’ll
go through and test it. For instance, it could be one
level of the art is complete, so we’ll have to
go through and check all the different bits of art,
and see if any of those have a problem. Then we’ll
report that. Hopefully, it will be fixed in the next
version we get, and then we have test it again and make
sure that it’s fixed.
We use a software bug tracker. We open up a report
and save it into a big list. Typically we get well over
a thousand issues per game that we are working on. Once
we’ve written the problems up, they are automatically
assigned to the programmer or the artist who is responsible
for the problem, and they’ll go through and fix
them. Once they are marked as fixes, they will be sent
back to us and then we’ve got our original report
with their details that they’ve attached and their
notes. We’ll work through them with their information,
and try and replicate the problem. If it doesn’t
happen, then it’s possibly fixed.
Testing games can be the ideal job [laughs], but it
depends on whether you are doing different things. Some
of it can involve really long tedious tasks that can
take anywhere up to one hundred hours per person to
complete. It can be tedious. So you have to have a bit
of a mind for monotony.
What skills are necessary for you
to do your job?
You need a keen eye for detail. Excellent written communication
is a must because if you can’t tell the development
team about the problems, there is no point in finding
them. That’s really about it – and a good
thorough mind.
How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve been doing games testing since I was about
five years old, so it was a pretty obvious career choice
for me. I stepped into the company about five years
ago. I came in just as a normal QA guy – just
testing every day, over and over again the same things.
Then about a year ago, I got my first lead project,
with a couple of testers to work with. We ended up with
about seven testers at one point, so I was managing
a larger team. At the moment we are back down to two
testers in the team, which is still pretty small - but
we are working on it.
How important was your education/training?
No formal education is really needed. It’s really
just good English skills and a good
eye for detail. That’s really all you
need - a good mind for it.
Where do you see your career going?
Quality assurance isn’t just in the games industry
– it’s in almost every industry –
so you could move into almost any industry that you
wanted to get into. Not to mention software creation,
anything to do with computer software – or anything
really. And then other things such as hardware testing
- anything to do with quality assurance. If you’ve
done it, then you know the process for any other area.
Quality assurance is also seen as a stepping
stone to other things in the games industry.
It’s good because it gets you into the industry
and you don’t need any formal training for it.
While you are in testing, you can start to learn what
all of the other positions are about in production,
and then see if you might want to go for something else
and start working towards that. You can learn while
you are on the job as well, which is good.
Potentially, if you’ve got the skills of a producer
and you don’t mind learning while you are doing
the testing, it could lead to become a producer.
It would mean that you’d have to be working towards
learning the things that a producer does at the same
time as you are testing, and trying not to let it get
in the way. But for any job in the games industry, if
you are interested in it, then you have to take the
time out to learn about it. People
want to see people who are keen to do it.
What advice would you give to someone
wanting to enter the games industry?
First of all apply. If you don’t know what you
are applying for, don’t bother – you have
to know what you are getting into. If you want to be
a tester, then you have to show that you are keen.
You’ve got to go out and play the games,
and you’ve got to know what’s going on in
the industry. You can do game reviews and
things like that, so we can see your English
communication skills. That sort of thing is
pretty important.
Also, you need to be persistent. We’ve
got guys here who applied seven times for a job and
then finally got through. They just went back and had
a look at what they were doing and just tried again
– they changed what they were doing and it worked
out for them.
It’s hard for someone to prove that they can
be a good tester. It’s difficult in interviews
as well, because we can’t tell at that stage whether
they are going to be any good at it or not. You really
have to get them to test something, watch how they do
it, and read stuff that they have written to be able
to gauge if they are going to be a good tester. |
