Yesterday marked the momentous occasion that I heard the capricious “I want to be a game tester” comment for the umpteenth time.<\/p>\n
“It’s basically a dream job,” the wannabe tester proclaimed. “I’ll sit on my rapidly-expanding ass stuffing my face with pretzels and play games you peasants have yet to even see the high-rez trailer of.” <\/p>\n
Okay, that last bit may have been paraphrased somewhat, but that was the gist of the pipe dream laid out by my starry-eyed friend at the pub last night. What I can’t believe though is that there still exists this stereotypically indolent gamer living in his mom’s basement who predicts that his third-favourite pastime, behind sleeping and “fiddling with his joystick”, is as much fun as a real job as it is playing beer pong with Mountain Dew or waking up before the crack of noon.<\/p>\n
I mean c’mon, fellow gamers: It doesn’t take much forethought to realise that playing a completed game is not the main constituent of an average game tester’s vocation. (This trying task is usually reserved for the most senior testers, the head developer’s pudgy offspring, or the game publisher’s courier who nicks a copy for himself before altruistically uploading the plunder to BitTorrent.) No, as with any software testing, bug hunting and painfully repetitive tasks make up the bulk of most working days, and needless to say this is inversely proportional to the amount of fun to be had in the retail version of said game.<\/p>\n
Unless, of course, you would happen to glean immense pleasure from such compelling titles as “Error Replicating Hero: World Tour”, the Wii’s “Missing Texture Fun Hunt”, or every masochist’s favourite, Fallout 3’s “180 Hours of NPC Dialogue (DLC)”.<\/p>\n
It’s actually not unlike a job as a fireman, or an astronaut. Sure, it sounds like oodles of fun heroically saving amorously-grateful damsels from burning buildings, or orbiting Earth while eating supper from a toothpaste tube, but face-melting third degree burns and combusting upon re-entry are sobering reminders that there’s no one out there who’s willing to pay you just to have fun.<\/p>\n
Perhaps even more similar is the apparently arduous task of being a porn star. Every excessively-horny schoolboy (read: aforementioned stereotypically indolent gamer living in his mom’s basement) dreams of starring in the skin flicks he’s become so adept at relieving himself to, but it’d take little more than a quick Google on one’s sticky keyboard to reveal that the majority of ‘adult entertainers’ complain of slavish working hours, a remarkable variety of abuse, and a general dislike of having their genitals made to obey a director rather than Mother Nature.<\/p>\n
And that, porn star Padawan, is assuming you get into the hard stuff: unfortunately, though, most newbies learn the ropes in that softcore Saturday night pillow-f***ing nonsense on eTV. Similarly, a game tester will usually log thousands of hours wading through crash reports and living off dry Salticrax before they’re even allowed to plug in a controller.<\/p>\n
Oh, and that hot new game that you’d be working on which everyone at your LAN parties would be so jealous of? After a year of testing you’d not only have the ability to blaze through the 12 hour single-player campaign in just under an hour, but the Vietnam-esque Blue Screen of Death flashbacks that’d keep you up at night will bear remarkable resemblance to the buggy FMV sequences you’d be made to stare at until LCD burn-in tattooed your corneas.<\/p>\n
Another friend of mine is a mobile game tester for a cellphone software developer, and he’s had to remind me on numerous occasions that being a game tester is a job just like any other. Seriously, if people were willing to pay you for mundane activities like sitting on your couch playing PS3 there would be a lot more slackers climbing the career ladder of a professional hammock tester or growing tail-like appendages from student medical trials.<\/p>\n
So, oh wannabe game tester friend of mine: before you get too far in the construction of your elaborate pipe dream, consider that there may be some wisdom in seemingly naive children when they say they want to be astronauts or firemen “when they grow up”.<\/p>\n