The Gamer's Dream Ad - "Game Tester Wanted"

It's a game player's dream, finding out that there is a game tester wanted at his favorite game company. If you'd like to make a career in a game firm, perhaps move up someday to a supervisor or manager, you'd be off to a good start if your first job with the firm was as a game tester. College students often try game testing part time to make some extra money for school, but also to see if the business is really right for them as a career.

It's not unheard of for a part time game tester, working from the dining room table at home or at the frat house, to become respected for finding bugs in the software and helping software programmers fix them. Testers this good get noticed by management and could find themselves installed in an office at the game company, working full time as a QA specialist. It is exciting to think about a career in such an exciting industry.

Don't make the common mistake of thinking that a beta game tester has to be a superior game player. The game company doesn't want your game playing skills; the game testers wanted by them must have the ability to think abstractly and pay attention to details. If you have good English communication skills, can meet deadlines promptly, and can learn how to play the different games well enough to test them, you could be the type of video game tester wanted by the big game companies. A game tester is really an investigator searching out problems to report to the programmer.

While the job itself offers some exciting possibilities, don't expect to be operating at a fever pitch at all times. Playing the same game over and over again can become boring after a while, but that's the way testers find problems, by repetitive playing and challenging the limits of the game. If gaming is your hobby and are thinking that a career as a beta game tester would be a challenging and exciting, remember that the video game testers wanted by top game companies are not expected to enjoy playing the game, but to carry out assignments to the best of their ability for the purpose of improving the game company's products by helping to make them error free.

Occasionally you'll see an ad in the Sunday paper employment classifieds saying beta game testers wanted. Sometimes they're legitimate and sometimes they are scams. One gamer tells the story of being taken in by an advertisement that offered a free software application that would help him to find contacts in the big name game companies. There was no charge, but he needed to pay $20 to file an application with Microsoft. Of course it was a scam. They managed to get another $80 from him before he wised up.

Scams like that are always out there, but that fact shouldn't discourage one from trying to get into the field. Recruiters are always looking for specific skills. Find out what those skills are and prepare your resume and application to respond as much as possible to those needs. There are a lot of opportunities for game testers out there. When there is a game tester wanted out there, there's no reason why the job cannot have your name on it.