Hey! Are you a fresher or a software tester looking forward to switching or joining as a game tester in some organization? Are you someone looking to make a decent salary out of a video game QA job?
Video games have taken a rise amidst the pandemic and the industry is growing continuously to meet the needs of its clients and customers. A lot of freshers or graduates might want to know about the video game tester job and the salary range one can make out of it. A lot of software testers might have an interest and would want to switch to game testing.
In this blog, we are going to cover the qualifications, game tester salary, and perks involved with the game tester job.
Responsibility of a Video Game Tester
Video Game Testers are people who work for game testing companies to find or detect any bugs or glitches or any other problem. A more advanced professional term that can be used for a tester is QA professional. Be it a simple QA tester or a Highly Skilled VideoGame Quality Assurance Tester, the duty is to minimize the load of the developer by detecting and checking the overall quality of the video games before the final launch of the game.
- The job of a video game tester is to check the flow and overall functionality of the game by using different devices, platforms, environments, and techniques to break and play the game. This helps to identify the bugs or any glitches in the game.
- A video game tester identifies and checks for a variety of bugs that could cause the player to get stuck or can be anything related to graphic distortion.
- One primary objective of a video game tester is to create a Test Plan and check the game under various permutations and combinations as there could be different possibilities that the developer might not have anticipated.
Now, let us discuss all the key requirements for a video game tester.
Educational Requirement
As far as game testing is concerned there are very few institutes that teach video game testing. However, someone with a background in software or hardware would have an added advantage to quickly learn game testing. Preferable degrees, diplomas or certificates for a game tester could be in software testing, software engineering, game design, and programming. This will make your job easy and will help you to understand the game in a better way.
Game Testing Skills
Now there are a few techniques and skills which are highly recommended for game testers. Many basic skills & abilities that you will need to be a successful game tester:
- Knowledge about the games industry, different genres of games, different platforms, and general points that are important to develop a good video game.
- Great writing skills and communication skills. It is important for the developer to clearly understand and follow the path you have suggested.
- Also as a video game tester is it important to know the basics of troubleshooting because it is easy to detect the bug but can be difficult to recreate the bug to help the developer understand exact glitches in game design and codes.
- Critical thinking around the potential input variations and good experience of testing tools important for a game tester.
Experience
Experience is an important aspect of this job. The more experience you have in working with different genres of games the more you are paid. In game testing, a non-gaming QA professional cannot necessarily be effective. But in case of testing non-gaming applications, an experienced game tester can prove to be very effective. A video game tester is a software tester, but with additional skills and domain knowledge around the gaming industry.
SALARY OF GAME TESTERS
Now the salary for game testers usually depends upon certain criteria such as skills, experience levels.
- According to the Game Developer Survey, people with a bachelor’s degree earned around $44000 whereas people who had only a high school diploma earned around $52000.
- According to ZipRecruiter, in the United States, the hourly pay of game testers is around $33 as of Jan 2020.
- As per the surveys conducted by Ziprecruiter, the average weekly pay is around $1300. In the US 25% of people got $600 and the rest 75% got $2000 weekly pay. This could be due to experience and skills in the industry.
- Game Testers at their early stage career in India may not expect even 1/10th of the amounts mentioned above. There are multiple factors responsible for this including but not limited to-
- Currency difference seen as primary factor for QA rate negotiation
- Huge competition among 3rd party game testing agencies
- Super aggressive rates for outsource QA services
- Highly skilled QA testers willing to work at lower salaries for the video game QA vendors etc.
Still, in addition to manual QA testing, if you are skilled enough in various automation and performance testing tools and if you are having experience of playing a huge number of games, you always have a chance of earning your dream salary.
Perks of Being a GAME TESTER
One of the biggest perks of becoming a game tester is you get exposure to new games before anybody else. If you are an avid gamer then it is the best thing for you. This could lead to a high paying job in the future. Based on your interests and skills, you may even use the Game Testing profile as a path towards becoming a Game Developer or a Game Producer.
Conclusion
If you are an avid gamer and you want to build your career in game development, the above blog will probably clarify most of your doubts. In any case, it is important to have passion for games if you want to set your mark in this industry.
