How do you become a game tester for PlayStation?

How do you qualify as a game tester?

You can do it with the help of some friends.

First a couple of thoughts on the general area of testing. It's a broad field that comprises all sorts of work but this post isn't about that. The general theme is to help someone who wants to get into the industry, or maybe even someone who already has years of testing experience but wants some of that practical experience that they don't have yet. I want to cover:

What tester skills can you pick up? How does one start? When are they worth it? The other part of it is how you test. There are four main ways, and I'll show you some examples here so you know the pros and cons for each type of testing. They're:

Playing. This is probably the traditional way of doing things. Play your game, then record it, then play it again on the actual PC, then make those notes for what you'd change if you could go in and do that exact same thing. That's playing:

It doesn't sound like much - it is though, because it's the most common testing method, by an order of magnitude. So that's the first part of testing: play it.

Playing can also help with gathering feedback in other ways. You can listen to a game being played instead of just reading things. People don't really say it like that, but when you hear someone mention the game, or ask them something, it's a good opportunity to see if there was anything weird you missed and whether it could affect the game in real-life. There's a big list of ways to do that, but the most basic is simply by asking questions. For example, "Are the dialogues too loud?" or, "Is anyone talking fast in the dialog?" Or you could try going in yourself and ask people, like that.

The downsides, though, are obvious. You lose a lot of control. You don't have the luxury of doing tests as part of the development cycle, or having all your testing at specific times. You only hear half the conversations, because most players tend to not talk while playing! And you can't record things, like you wouldn't be able to record dialog while you were playing, unless you have a microphone nearby or were recording during play from a TV camera.

Does Sony hire game testers?

I love my PS4 and all but I'm disappointed by the lack of game testers on offer.

So many games are buggy and they will not even patch for bugs they found months after release. I know it's a hardware problem but what can I do to ensure my gaming experience stays positive? Or even more importantly, should I be worried if you don't even see a games tester when you buy a games console?

Well in all honesty, at the end of the day its your money so we're no ones business to tell you to waste it or not. But if I were you, I'd look at this from a different angle: Do you really care that much about playing a certain games you bought, and getting as much value out of it? Well to me, I'd still ask "why do I want to spend money on games?", If there is not one I want to play, I won't really care. If there are titles which truly interest you, you'll most likely be interested in playing them, so why not just buy games like these from the start. But at the end of the day if you're concerned about what other people say or think, make sure you only play what makes you happy and most importantly is fun. So yeah, there is one guy who has been working with Sony on that kind of stuff for years, but that's not a tester, it's a programmer (I would assume most people here would know what a programmer is, but for those who don't here is a small summary from wikipedia.org) A programmer is a software engineer responsible for making computer programs and fixing software bugs. I hope this helps. So yeah, I think the question was directed towards Sony as a whole but I'm fairly sure he didn't answer your question because there is no tester, that's what programmers do, he didn't mention anything like that.

How much do PlayStation game testers make?

Game-testing is a very important part of creating new games, and it's an underappreciated job.

Testers aren't paid enough to get rich, but they are a major contributor to the success of a game, so there must be some way of measuring how much testers contribute to the financial success of a game. After all, how can a company like Sony claim to be "developing games for everyone," if the vast majority of those games go unplayed by the public?

To find out how much testers make, we spoke with two people who spend a lot of their time testing games for Sony, and one developer at the company that's currently working on a title that uses their services. All three people said that tester pay at Sony is competitive and on par with other gaming companies, which is in line with our expectations.

But what happens when a game is delayed, and the delays stretch out over months and months? We reached out to one of the people who works at Sony to find out. "I'm currently working on a project that I believe will launch soon after we complete certification testing," writes the developer on Gamasutra. "Because of this, I can't give a firm release date, but I can tell you that I work for Sony, and I get paid very well for my work. I've been playing games for the last 20 years, and I love the game industry.

"I feel I have a good perspective on what it takes to make a game," the developer continued, "and I can't imagine working on a project for such a small company as Sony, where you are only given what is on the shelf. If they had a large team of testers, then I'm sure I would be at the bottom of the totem pole."

Our three sources all spoke to us confidentially, and we can vouch for their identities. We've been covering the industry for a few years now, and we've never seen any problems with these people sharing information with us. However, Sony is a publicly traded company, and we're not sure if the company has any specific rules about what information can and can't be shared.

For the most part, the information we got was more general than specific, although each person seemed to agree that there's a certain amount of money a tester makes for a game at Sony.