GameBanshee Forums

I would think that pre-beta testing is done by the programmers themselves. Am I wrong?

Well - the initial stage of testing will always be done by programmers and after that some test-people because of debugging the code; making sure the code runs (somewhat) as expected. You test constantly as you code, sometimes even setting up automated tests.

Play-testing/Beta-testing has a near finished product, so that is relative late in the process. This is to ensure that the product/game behaves as expected and to weed out such bugs. This is hard to do "in-house", because nobody can be as irrational and ... well, stupid - as the end-users while doing it on messup hardwaresettings.

If you've got some minimal literacy skills and a geek-friendly sense of sarcasm you can get a job at PC Games magazine or whatever and get paid to play games.

Well you may need a journalism degree also, but I think that magazine reviews are definately the place to get paid for playing games.

[QUOTE=frogus23]If you've got some minimal literacy skills and a geek-friendly sense of sarcasm you can get a job at PC Games magazine or whatever and get paid to play games.

Well you may need a journalism degree also, but I think that magazine reviews are definately the place to get paid for playing games.[/QUOTE]

You also have to live in LA, where most of these magazines are located, and accept a minimum wage--assuming you get hired, because there's a line of people who think working by reviewing games is the best thing in the world.

A lot of those older published magazines (as opposed to the flashier, lotsa-pictures type) do require a fairly good grasp of English. At one time they paid much better; in fact, I reviewed games for a lot of pubs starting in 1986, onwards. But when the economy started going sour, the magazines began turning to new grads who work cheaply and don't make waves with big game publishers. But you still can't get by with poor analysis and writing/language skills.

There are English games magazines, so I would not have to pack up to LA if I wanted that career.

I would not want to argue with your experience, but I find it utterly implausable that magazine journalists ever work for minimum wage. I grant you won't get rich doing it, but I presume that the presenter of these sentiments:

'I mean seriously isn't there anyone who is a hardcore gamer like me who dreams of having a job in the gaming industry because you love playing computer games and always will, because i will be gaming well in to my 90's.'

is not going to enter the games industry for the money.

[QUOTE=frogus23]There are English games magazines, so I would not have to pack up to LA if I wanted that career.[/quote]

Of course...! When you wrote PC Games, I immediately thought of the US publication I used to write for, but which went under several years ago. That in itself should have clued me in about what you intended.

I would not want to argue with your experience, but I find it utterly implausable that magazine journalists ever work for minimum wage.

The reasons for this, and for the decline in writing quality over the years, can be attributed in part to the sheer number of people (including college graduates) who think such a job will be a great deal of fun and easy to do.

Actually, it's neither, if you're doing it right. You're working to deadlines, you're playing for logical analysis and detail, you're seeking answers to questions from developers who don't want to provide them, and you've got editors who look askance if you ever slice a title published by an advertiser.