I love how "the bad" section is almost three times longer than "the good". Pretty self-explanatory.

Play testers should definitely be paid more since the company relies heavily on how the public thinks about the day 1 release and that determines the sales in the future

I've been working in video game testing (QA) for almost 16 years now, and while I could relate to some of the things you highlighted in your video (I've worked on contracts where you get fired at the end of the project), I'd have to say the title should be amended to 'What It CAN Be Like To Be A Video Game Tester'! Unfortunately it seems like you worked at a company still using pretty old and pretty bad practices that ultimately just end up with a disgruntled workforce and bad products. Please believe me that there are plenty of companies out there who really value their test teams and have much better processes in place! For example, a lot of bigger companies now will outsource the bulk of the more basic bug-finding or test script following stuff to companies that specialise in testing. This means they can still reduce costs by cutting the bulk of the test team when projects end (i.e. their contract with the testing company ends), but those testing companies have work from multiple companies at a time so they don't have to fire their workforce every few months and they just move testers onto something else. The development company is still likely to have a core team of test employees who are more skilled and experienced, and they do other test-related activities like test planning and writing test scripts so they can roll onto the next project, so it is possible to have a full-time testing job within a development company. I would also add that the ugly part you describe about tracking bug numbers and pitting testers against each other is a particularly out-dated practice that anyone in their right mind can see is just awful and benefits no one. Most companies have realised the same pitfalls that you observed and use other metrics to track employee performance. As you point out, judging testers on bug numbers just means you'll get higher numbers at the expense of everything else, and it is detrimental to the game's quality - any QA team (QA stands for QUALITY assurance!) worth their salt would never use bug numbers alone as any sort of key performance indicator. As I mentioned at the start, I've been in QA for almost 16 years and I still love it. I'm full-time at a well-established company, and I get paid well for the skills and experience I bring to the job - which at this point is beyond playing the game looking for bugs, instead I specialise in game performance and working with large data sets to identify regressions and opportunities for optimisation (basically helping to make the game run faster and smoother). QA is a very deep and rewarding profession that goes a lot further than playing the game 8 hours a day, and I would encourage anyone to give it a shot, you can definitely make a career out of it - just try to avoid the companies that are still using the bad practices mentioned in the video!

I've been working as a game tester for several months, and when it comes to the "ugly section", it's nothing like that for me. Everyone takes their time to report bugs and we work as a team to make sure it's happening for everyone. There is no scoreboard on who is reporting the most. We TALK ABOUT WHO IS REPORTING WHAT BUG, that part was just insane to me like nobody wants duplicates in the database. Maybe it's cuz I work in Europe or the company is just more normal?? One part is legit and that's the low salary and getting sick of playing games xD

*Plays destiny for 12 hours everyday and constantly finding new bugs* Sounds great

Game time: Play for 2 hours take a break for 1 hours play for 2 hours. Home time: Day 1 sleep 8 hours, day 2 sleep 9 hours and so on

Just imagine what mess had been going on in CDPR before CP2077 released

The ugly portion sounds so much like my experience as a call center agent -_-

This video is such a good insight into the difficulty of working in the game industry, seriously this needs more views. The section about "The Ugly" really shows so much about the game industry from a unique one time perspective.

My son is thinking about doing this and it’s been great hearing all the good and bad things and the interview tips. Also great to read in the comments that some companies work more as a team when reporting bugs and don’t keep scoreboards so thank you all for your time - it’s been very helpful.

I was an artist for a video game, but I was basically a couple rungs above the game testers in terms of "Hierarchy" and I often worked with them closely cause I was the in-between for visual bugs and the art team. I want to say that what you mentioned is the same all the way up the ladder till you get to the big guys like the faces of the company and the leads. I quit the video game area for basically the same reasons. Lay offs being the worst since I would be let go once a game was completed, and mind you I was a full time employee too. I was lucky a few times and got shifted to a new game in the company but most of the time it was bye bye, even some of my leads were let go in the same group as me. There was even a horror story where a group of co-workers couldn't get into the building cause they laid them off during lunch and they came back to find their entry cards not working. I couldn't handle having to find a new job every couple of months, and it was a fight against other people being laid off at the same time. Not to mention I had to move close to 3 times in 2 years just to accommodate these jobs.... cross country too...... it got too much.

This is very interesting. Thank you for this information

This is probably the most positive video I have come across so far. And it does explain part of why there are so many bugs in games these days. And its pretty funny cuz the last video I watch of someone telling his experiences said that the number of bugs found didn't matter as much to his company. People would keep people on based on how much they liked them. Thanks for sharing. I love hearing everyone's opinions and experiences.

You seem like such a genuine guy. I wish you all the best mate 👍🏻

Thanks for the video man. I’m thinking about taking on a part-time tester job since I already have a great full-time job. I like to know what I’m getting into before I do it and this was very helpful. Even with all the bad parts, I don’t feel dissuaded, but I do feel informed as to exactly what I’m getting myself into.

This is depressing, in my mind I had the job as a game tester as my ideal job, but not anymore 😓

Hey thanks man for this video really opened my mind in the world of video game testers (the bad side and the ugly side hit me more) planning on becoming a video game tester as well :D

This is my reason to recommend the QA Tester job: I actually have purely good experiences being a QA Tester in Germany, I got payed a bit over minimum wage, but I had a super friendly and fun work environment. Overtime is a real thing that can happen, but I requested a contract that allows me to work only 4 days a week and the company allowed me to do that so that's pretty good. Also we were able to take short breaks every hour that did not count towards the lunch break. Everyone would get up once an hour, go down the stairs, walk around the building or stand in the sun, then go back up, so I never had sore legs from sitting or anything like that. I don't want to name the company despite me only saying good things about it because other people may have other experiences and I can only report on how I felt. I would wholeheartedly recommend this job if you are the kind of person that loves to try and find bugs and feels accomplished when you do find something. If you are ready to try to reproduce the same game breaking bug 30 times in a row to make sure its really fixed and if you are able to communicate bugs that happened to you in detail to the people you're working with by writing a helpful bug report. You just need to know that you're not often going to be "playing" rather "messing around with it" and trying to get outside of the map and things like that.

Thanks for that ❤️

I will have the interview for the QA/QC game position at Ubisoft, I really nervous now because I'm not good at English and don't know the question that they are going to ask. But I feel more confident, after I watch your video, thanks a lot.

Great informative video! But, here in India, they do not even train the game testers, instead, they expect them to know software testing while applying for jobs. Knowing it is obviously a perk, but not everyone will know it. I have been rejected for internships as well as jobs for over 50 times now and I have been playing games for more than 10 years.

Dont be a game tester, be a game developer, much more rewarding than a test subject.

I'm writing a research paper about video games, this was super helpful and interesting! Thank you!

im a So-Cal American expat living in the Philippines, i used to work at call centers here seasonally, i got lucky and found EA games needed testers/ customer service people for Star Wars Knights of the old Republic. That was right up my alley, i love Star Wars , im a Gamer go, go, go. got the job, became the batch leader, i loved the game it was EA games and Bioware at the time i thought was a Top 10 rpg game ever. my roommate worked there also and the dude was there at work 24/7 they had to cut his overtime off so he was working OT for free, dude never came home. almost 9 mos later SW KOTOR went public so they had to let us go. that sucked, but Diablo 3 was opening so everyone gave that a try, Call of Duty opened too but needed me to relocate out to a different city it wasnt worth it. so I started customizing Motorcycles instead which is cool too but every geek/gamer has always wanted to work for EA, Bioware, and Star Wars it was great, probably my funnest job. no complaints from me except the massive lay off was the worsest thing, grave yard shift sucked too those were the hours cause of the US/EU time difference. id do it again...

Thank you for sharing your experience. This was a very detailed video.

Thank you ! Your message is detailed, clear and useful.

Cyberpunk 2077 moment 15:00

Oh man, so weird this popped up recommended for me today out of nowhere, but I've been in quality assurance for 17 years at this point. I went into video game testing early in my career hopeful and lasted all of 4 days before I noped out. I have a lot of opinions on why the state of it is what it is (at least in part, the bulk of what I would say was the issue then still happens now and your video shines light on that) but I have way too much to say about it to just put a novel in the comments. Just know that there are reasons for the flaws in game testing, some of them are well known and perpetuated purposefully and others happen because the powers that be within the industry lack experience and don't know any better.

I learned that trying to fix a large number of bugs requires more work from the staff, and more money to pay them. Its a tricky formula with these sort of companies. They want you to test the bug over and over because they want to confirm its a major problem that effects development. If the bug isn't that noticeable then they'll acknowledge it and worry about it later. You can look at this from different angles and see good and bad outcomes for the team and their audience.

The reality of the matter is most jobs consist of you doing something that you don’t want to do to get a piece of paper to make somebody else do something they don’t really want to do, that is why we call this work……

My favorite games are Division 1 and destiny 2… playing the same levels repetitively will not be a problem.

This explains how battlefield V and mass effect Andromeda happened.

Thanks for sharing your experience. The approach of evaluating people according to how many bugs they found is ridiculous, and causes games to fail again and again. It's amazing and horrendous that gaming companies just don't learn. It's about the quality and the process, not the quantity

Mulțumesc , pentru impresiile împărtășite; exprimate de un OM liber, și foarte sincer. ‘Visul meu’ , sa spulberat, DEFINITIV. Auto-sclavagismul , se perpetuează : la infinit…

This video is a great example of what happens to every company that ends up making it to the top. They let the bean counters take over. Then, all they care about is money and numbers. It's not just the video game world. It's people who take their focus off what they're doing because they're to hypnotized by dollar figures.

Been farming the exact same wow raid since 2009. So repetition is not a problem..I started as a game tester, and now i work as a game developer developer

I did paid focus testing for a game once, and even that was a slog a lot of the time. I remember one moment in particular where all I wanted to do was take a break from the game. But it was my job to be playing the game, so I just had to keep wandering around an unpolished level for like a half an hour looking for an exit. I was so glad when it was time for a lunch break. It made me realize that if focus testing could be a soul crushing slog then I absolutely did not want to be a regular games tester.

The most memorable and annoying video game glitch I’ve ever experienced is in the first “Dying Light” video game that I have for PS4 and there was like a floating raft on the water that was being used as a safe house to protect you against the infected. The problem is that after a while that floating raft completely disappeared, but the people were somehow still standing there floating above the water. I couldn’t get to it because you had to jump to it if I remember correctly and I just couldn’t get to it because it completely disappeared but somehow the characters in the game could still stand there. I don’t know if this only happened on my copy of the game, or if everyone else has experienced this glitch, but it’s definitely an annoying glitch to remember.

Me who is introvert and doesnt has a sociall life: Oh so i can play whole life for money, well great deal

I appreciate your honesty. I was trying to decide between game testing or mobile testing but now I think I'll go for mobile for sure.

The video was really helpful for me as I am a software tester and thinking of becoming a game tester and the points you mentioned were great that they made me reconsider my decision.

Whats a social life?

Incredibly small world! Came across your video looking into a job ad that popped up. I hope you're doing amazing.

Really good video, man! Great insight on what doing that for a living would be like!

Moment of silence for Cyberpunk's game testers, they have to find bugs by working 24/7.

this was very informative, thanks for the input

Thank you for explaining how the job work.

Love this video! It was real and detailed

Lol I play all day almost every day at the moment, just waiting for lockdown to end so I can do gigs on some days as well

Sounds like the actual game is keeping your job, instead of making the videogame good! Thanks for sharing

Im just 14 and already thinking about my future job Since in good at gaming i might as well think about being a video game tester

Being a FQA sucks. I did it for a year and a half at Square Enix Montreal and it was the worst. However this brought me to become a development tester and then a QA Specialist which both are 1000% better than being a FQA tester. What you describing is a FQA job. Development tester is such a better position in any shape or form

Great video I really needed to see this thanks man

I'm interviewing for one of these positions tomorrow. Thank you for sharing information no one else is talking about

You really got 6 ads on this video lol gezze

The best people to get into the industry as a game tester is those who have other skills and plan to move up. Gamedevs…..animators…artists etc. like they say with McDonald’s….mcdonalds isn’t a job for living….its more for teens and newcomers to the work force. Same here. Get a game test job as a means to get into the industry and the first chance you get to move to another position, take it.

Thank you for the video. I am looking to become a temp or contract Game Tester. But after this video, I am not too sure because, like you, I value the quality of my work and would not like to post a bad report to get it in first.

As a kid I used to think it this was a dream job...as I got older I realized not so much.

You deserve way more subs man

Great example of how mismanagement can make an entire aspect of game development counterproductive. Incentivizing employees to do quantity over quality in terms of bug reports filed leads to all sorts of unsavory outcomes. The “stars” finding tons of (supposed) bugs probably don’t do a great job making sure that they can consistently reproduce the bug, while also doing unsatisfactory bug report write-ups. Meanwhile, there are testers who are actually thorough about reproducing their bugs, and also writing up detailed bug reports. These employees, who are actually doing the job correctly, get disenfranchised or, even worse, disciplined by management for not doing big numbers. This yields poor results. Many testers would prefer finding many small, inconsequential cosmetic glitches versus a complicated game-breaking error. Obviously, the latter should be given priority for repair. But those bugs are deprioritized in the testing/reporting side.

thank you so much for this it helps alot

"Happiness is priceless" hit hard

This is why we play video games because the most important thing about it is to have fun, even online.

I think that's how CG industry is you have to support during crunch time

So basically it is the same as IT Professionals who develop, test, support and analyze Enterprise Software Systems except the software is a video game prodcut

Grate presentation. THX

thanks for the informative video

This was a very helpful review. Thanks 👍

I am a video game tester and I can tell you most of the things depend on the company. I do work for an indie company and I am treated like a human although sometimes I feel overworked and tired and I want more free time to relax. Also my payment is not minimum wage or slightly above. Quite the opposite, it is fairly high.

Ok when he said a tester can pretty much be max lvl online it explains why on cold war i saw someone max prestige no a couple of ppl. I would feel bad doing something like that. Takes the fun out of playing.

The company I applied to actually has this video linked to their application haha

That thing about the quality of writing the bugs, the ethical dilemma; I just thought about most of the jobs (if not all) that I have had, and most of the jobs friends have told me about... sooo many jobs have things like that, that it didn't surprise me at all

I actually love it im even preparing for ISTQB game tester exam im already a Software tester but playing games drives me on even playing crap over and over i replay resident evil all parts anually :) like when its winter time irs Re for me

"you play with other gamers" My fucking face hearing this contorted to sadness because i can count about 3-4 teammates that are actual gamers

I've applied for a job at ubisoft as a game tester. Idk if I have the job yet but I hope I get it. Thanks for the informative video. I'll rem everything u have sed just so I dont fall behind Update: I did not get the job 😢

Just one question if most game testers get paid above or at minimum wage then why am I hearing other people say they get paid 2 to $3,000 to play certain games?!

I’m in the UK and wanted to get into video game testing. Does this video still apply to UK game testers ??

I wanna have the list of the all testers that worked with CD project Cyber Punk I wanna torture them personally for killing my gaming soul over & over again due to the amount of bugs it had even after latest fix releases

this sound like the perfect job for me. I am also good at breaking things, Pretty much have no social life to the point my family argues over it lol

thanks for the video.

Game tester should Be A Side Hustle

The game tester positions I see online require mutiple languages for translation, and technical knowledge sorts. I think.

ok now I'm wondering if being a beta tester is worth it cause I just want to find a job that pays more than the one I have now

Great video

Phone being taken away during work hours - he must have been at Ubisoft or EA. Only AAA would do that - I've been in the industry 22 years as a designer and never once have I had to do that or have ever heard of that going on... but then I've always worked for smaller studios, not done any AAA stuff.

General rule of thumb, don't make your hobby your job. Once you are forced to do it all the time, the less you'll like it over time. If you must make it a business, don't have it as your main income/main job. Preserve your interest and don't make it forced.

Today is my interview... I will put some of this points

Used to play games 12 hours a day with no sleep and don't need to have a cup of coffee to wake me up :D

Interesting, were you guys testing based on some kind of requirements doc or just freestyle? Coming from a gov office testing I was always curious to know how do you get a decent testing coverage in video games as the variety of actions and functionality is almost endless.

Something I've always thought about and actually insightful. Thanks and I don't think I want to kill video games for myself lol

Seems like a VERY bad environment to work in?! I was like "hey this job seems fun" so i went in on google to search for some info and found this video.. After watching this I be like " IM OUT" Seems like a hard work and also very stressful. Also one thing: Im playing BF5 like everyday since 2018 and I think ive seen 150+ bugs for real!!!. NOW I understand why!

Greed, selfishness, arrogance, confusion, and other ignorances are no stranger to most forms of employment.

If you are a Speedrunner playing something over and over is something you are used to

So basically minimum wage , seasonal, and corporate bull that literally every single company has, but with developers are starting to make two to three games at a Time now give it another 5 to 10 years they'll keep game testers full-time the only real down side is the minimum wage

is that a way for finding bugs? my technique is just to go where there is a lot going on on screen and just do random stuff

its weird the bad stuff hes talking about sounds right up my alley, infact i already sit for 12+hrs a day playing games for free.

Well it seems easy enough, Try being a animator and keeping up with deadlines and all i am thinking about maybe going into game testing since it seems fun.

🇿🇦thanks a lot for the info about game testers great video have good day life

thanks

Funny how my current lifestyle is the first couple points of the bad part lmao. Tells you how bad my style is. Not that i don’t exercise at all, but im behind a screen sitting down most of the day after the workout doing things on computer